Xiaoyao sits in on a session of Shijie's Daoist circle, where she guides them through the ancient Bǎi Gǔ Guān--the White Bone Contemplation, a meditation routine designed to settle random thoughts and, when taken to its final conclusion, to "study death."
Then Xiaoayao, Xiaojing and Ling Ling describe their own investigations of the Xing Ming Gui Zhi (Principles for Essence and Life), an important book on internal alchemy which draws from the "Three Schools": Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
Xiaoyao puts his foot in it, again.
SHOW NOTES:
Xiaoyao Xingzhe, the self-styled carefree pilgrim, has lived and worked all over the world, having crossed the Gobi in a decrepit jeep, lived with a solitary monk in the mountains of Korea, dined with the family of the last emperor of China, and helped police with their enquiries in Amarillo, Texas.
FAN MAIL is. a new feature now available to leave feedback on episodes, love or hate them. Look for the button in the top ribbon when you click on “Episodes.”
Visit the Fat Monk Website: https://thefatmonk.net/
for pdfs of all recorded chapters and a few more, as well as other bits of interest on Daoism, Buddhism and Neidan, with an emphasis (but not a limitation) on pre-twentieth century authors such as Huang Yuanji and Li Daochun.
If you would like to support the production costs of this podcast, you may do so at Ko-fi.
Check out the wonderful Flora Carbo and her music:
https://floracarbo.com/
Xiaoyao sits in on a session of Shijie's Daoist circle, where she guides them through the ancient Bǎi Gǔ Guān--the White Bone Contemplation, a meditation routine designed to settle random thoughts and, when taken to its final conclusion, to "study death."
Then Xiaoayao, Xiaojing and Ling Ling describe their own investigations of the Xing Ming Gui Zhi (Principles for Essence and Life), an important book on internal alchemy which draws from the "Three Schools": Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
Xiaoyao puts his foot in it, again.
SHOW NOTES:
Xiaoyao Xingzhe, the self-styled carefree pilgrim, has lived and worked all over the world, having crossed the Gobi in a decrepit jeep, lived with a solitary monk in the mountains of Korea, dined with the family of the last emperor of China, and helped police with their enquiries in Amarillo, Texas.
FAN MAIL is. a new feature now available to leave feedback on episodes, love or hate them. Look for the button in the top ribbon when you click on “Episodes.”
Visit the Fat Monk Website: https://thefatmonk.net/
for pdfs of all recorded chapters and a few more, as well as other bits of interest on Daoism, Buddhism and Neidan, with an emphasis (but not a limitation) on pre-twentieth century authors such as Huang Yuanji and Li Daochun.
If you would like to support the production costs of this podcast, you may do so at Ko-fi.
Check out the wonderful Flora Carbo and her music:
https://floracarbo.com/
When eyes do not see, hún (魂) returns to Liver. When ears do not hear, jīng (精) is in theKidneys. When the tongue is still, shén (神) is in the Heart. When there is no awareness of odour, pò(魄) is in the Lungs. When these four do not leak, the jīng water, shén fire, hún wood and pò metal all collect in the centre, harmoniously.
–Caption to an illustration in the Xing Ming Gui Zhi (Principles for Essence and L
“It’s cruel, in my opinion
“What is?” Xiaojing wapruning a bonsai, bending her tall body, studying the branches and making occasional precise clips. We were in the upper room of Shijie’s restaurant, waiting for the others. I had wanted to turn on the heater, but she had objected that the room would soon warm.
“Forcing what could be a beautiful large tree to live in such a cramped and confined space.”
She just looked at me and rolled her eyes. “What, you think I am being over-sentimental?”
“Not at all. I think you are being deliberately stupid, trying to annoy me.”
I frowned. Frankly, I didn’t have a clue what she meant.
“You really don’t understand, do you? Well, Shijie encourages us to look and think about what we see around us. You have heard of wu yan zhi jiao – silent teaching? You have been around us long enough to know that, at least.”
She brushed up the snippings. The silence grew awkward.
Finally she turned to me and said “All right, if you must be told. That bonsai is us. We live cut off from our deepest source of nourishment, that which would allow us to grow into our greatest potential.” She emptied the snippings into a container destined for the compost, then continued. “Society trains us, constrains us, forces us to direct our energies into certain narrowly defined directions.”
“Yes, it’s cruel, terrible, like I said.”
“But there is more. Silent teaching is never just one side, it is always a whole, multi- dimensional. For example, here we have a chance to see that sometimes training and restraint can lead to extraordinary beauty; that submission to a higher design brings out abilities we would never naturally develop, and that we can turn for our nourishment from a lower to a higher source.”
“So which is right?”
Xiaojing’s voice rose. “I don’t know what makes you so dumb, but it really works. If your …”
“What’s all the noise?” Shijie swept in, heading a train of her disciples, most of whom worked there at the restaurant. A few, however, were removing outdoor winter jackets and scarves. They fanned out around the room, arranging tables, and setting the chairs into a rough circle.
“Shijie, it’s nothing. Only Xiaoyao …”
“I know he annoys you,” Shijie said. “That’s why I asked you to look after him when I found out Fatty couldn’t make it. Now I want you to turn to him and thank him sincerely for helping you to refine yourself.”
“But Shijie …” Xiaojing stopped as Shijie gave her a steady look, then pressing her lips together turned to me, bowed and said quickly “Thank you for making me a better person.” She then spun on her heel and crossed the room to put as much distance between us as possible.
The other disciples settled themselves into a circle, some on chairs, some on the floor, while Shijie pulled a cushion into the centre. “As the harmony of this room has been somewhat disturbed,” she said, sitting, “after our usual several minutes of opening silence, I want to go through the Bái Gǔ Guàn (白骨觀), the white bone contemplation – just the short version – before the sub-group begins their look at the Xing Ming Gui Zhi.” She looked around. “All right, settle down, and remember to extend yourself towards contact with that spirit that moves with the Dao.”
The chair scrapings and rustlings gradually ceased, and we sank into silence. I had no idea how to “extend myself towards contact with that spirit” so I simply deepened my breathing, quieted my internal dialogue somewhat, and tried to assume an attitude of openness.
The White Bone Contemplation
After three or four minutes Shijie began to speak in a calm voice, modulated to just reach every part of the room.
“The bai gu guan, for those few who have not done it before, is a contemplation in your mind’s eye of the human skeleton, in as much detail as possible. In the old days, my teacher told me, it was not uncommon to find an old battlefield with skeletons everywhere. All one had to do was sit on a rock or log and study one, memorising every bend and crack, turning away and visualising, locating unclear areas, then going back, until it was better than a photograph; it was three-dimensional. One should be able examine the skeleton in your mind’s eye from all angles with incredible accuracy.”
She looked around at the silent circle. The windows were shaded but the light of the evening sun crept through the gaps, tinging the room blood-red.
“All right, let’s start. Imagine the space between your eyebrows, Yintang, and the brows themselves, no flesh covering the bones. Look carefully how white and clean the bones of the skull are.” She paused for the space of a breath.
“Now move to the eye sockets, just under the bumps of the brows, no flesh, no eyeballs, just deep round crevices extending back into the skull.” Another breath.
“Now see how between the eye sockets, there is a hole where the nose would be, just a short bone there, no cartilage, just empty.” A slightly longer pause.
“To either side, the cheek bones stretch around, back to the bones around the ear canal. No ears, just a hole.” Her voice had become a soothing drone.
“Contemplate the bones of the back of the skull, moving up to the vertex, at Baihui, then down again to Yintang, to the eye sockets, to the cheekbones.”
A pause.
“Now view the upper jaw, white teeth extending downwards, no lips covering them, roots of the teeth reaching upwards deep into the bones of the skull.
“Look at the lower jaw …”
As she went on Shijie’s voice slowed, each instruction leaving plenty of time to view the structure in question, imagining in detail at each part of the skeleton from the skull down to the vertebrae of the neck, the clavicle, the scapula, the thoracic vertebrae, the ribs in order, the sternum. Then she went back up to the humerus, down to the radius and ulna, the bones of the wrist, the metacarpals, the phalanges.
When her voice stopped it was a long time before I opened my eyes. My whole body tingled from the force of the attention that had been poured into it, and it felt as if the room itself had been energised. Many of the people in the circle sat with their eyes half-closed; some had them open and were looking at Shijie. There was a solemn silence.
“Any questions?”
A young girl on the other side of the room, next to Xiaojing, cleared her throat, then asked “There are differences between a man’s skeleton and a woman’s. Does it matter which we visualise?”
“A woman ideally should visualise a woman’s skeleton.” Shijie said. “Harder to find on a battlefield, though.” Her mild jest lightened the atmosphere of the room.She continued “but it’s about the same these days. Audio-visual replications are OK, but if you can find the real thing it is more effective.”
One of the men in the circle, who wore a stained kitchen apron and looked like a cook, said “When should we use this contemplation? You have taught us that we should be turning the light around and looking back into the source of mind, whatever we are doing throughout the day, but this seems quite different and specific.” “Yes,” Shijie said. “This is quite specific, and not something you want to habituate yourself to. In fact, ideally you end up dissolving that skeleton away completely, and your sense of self with it.” She looked around, then continued, “but the expedient use of this contemplation is very valuable, for instance, when you find yourself unable to settle your mind, or distracted by desires, especially sexual desires …”
There was a rustling across the room, the young girl next to Xiaojing seemed to have nudged her. But Shijie continued “and that is why it is best for men to visualise a male skeleton, and women a female skeleton.”
“Unless you’re gay,” the girl spluttered. I saw Xiaojing inch away from her, but there was low laughter around the room. Shijie smiled too. “Naturally you use your common sense and do what it takes to achieve your aim. You want to lessen your fixation, not increase it.”
She stood up and directed the rest of us to do likewise. We all stretched for a few minutes. I turned to the older woman next to me and was just going to make small talk when she shook her head and put her hand by her chest, palm facing me. It seemed clear that it was preferable to stay in tune with the group mind, rather than split into individual discussion. Later I was to see that two-person interchanges were not uncommon, but that they tended to express the questions or concerns of the group as a whole, basically bringing them out of the group subconscious for general observation, and sometimes for explicit comment by Shijie.
At the moment, however, people around the room seemed to maintain an awareness of everyone else, a presence within the whole. Shijie signalled everyone to sit down again, and said“Lingling’s comment is quite useful as a reminder that eyes are the key to this work. All of the basic texts have statements like this. Lao Zi said refusing to look at the desirable makes your heart peaceful. But pay attention here: it is not that you put a lot of effort into refusing to look at desirable things – that just makes you more fixated on those things.
The cook indicated a desire to speak, and Shijie nodded slightly.
“When I was younger, I studied with a Daoist who quoted the Yin Fu Jing which says ‘the mechanism is in the eyes’. But he said that this meant that every time you inhaled, you swivelled your eyes upward, and every time you exhaled, you rolled your eyes downward.”
There were a few chuckles around the circle. But I had heard or read something similar, and was not sure.
“The Book of Balance and Harmony says that there are 36 hundred side paths, and we should aim at the highest practice. Here, we can actually find a useful quote in the book that a few of us will be starting to look at tonight, the Xing Ming Gui Zhi. In the chapter called ‘the first oral teaching’ it says: the heart is the pivotal mechanism, but eyes are the robbers. When desire subverts the heart, it first captures the eyes.”
Xiaojing asked: “What does it mean, the heart is the pivotal mechanism?”
Shijie smiled. “Good question. To really get this, you need to understand that we as individuals are composed of layers and levels, some layers more material and gross, others more subtle. The more we turn towards the world with our mind and heart, the more we are pulled towards that gross material realm. When we turn the light around, we are turning towards the more subtle realm. In the beginning, all is darkness there, but as we pay attention into it, it begins to open up for us. This is how we accumulate de, that energy that helps us approach the Dao.”
“Oh, I get it,” Lingling said. “So it is our heart that decides to look inward or outward, and that is why it is the pivot.”
“Yes,” said Shijie. “Of course, we use the eyes to do that, actually or metaphorically, so you could just as well say the mechanism is in the eyes. If you are not careful, though, the eyes take over, and suddenly all that de is just pouring outward through them.”
She turned to me. “Xiaoyao, didn’t the Abbott tell you something about that?”
“He said that when we look at something, we should draw their essence and spirit inward through our eyes, don’t pour our own essence and spirit outward.” I thought for a moment. There was something more, what was it? “Oh yes, he said to be careful about what we look at like this.”
“What do you think he meant by that?”
I didn’t know what to say, at first. I heard Xiaojing snicker on the other side of the room, and felt my cheeks grow hot. Finally I said “I think he meant that we can open ourselves deeply to bad influences, and so we should learn to use our discernment.”
“For example? What do you think, Xiaojing?” Shijie must have heard the snicker.
Xiaojing sat up straight and said with composure, “I think he meant we can and should look deeply at things that have a natural beauty, like trees or flowers, things that possess de, like certain rock formations. We should be careful of man-made things, unless they are artefacts made by skilled artisans who put love into their work, or artists who have a natural or cultivated link with the Dao.”
So she had already thought about this. I had to admit I was surprised.
Lingling, next to her, chimed in “Advertising, factory-made plastic junk, horror movies, porn.” There was a general rumble of agreement.
“Yes, Lingling is right, these are definitely things to avoid if you are opening yourself to outside influences.” Shijie said. “And it is worse than you may think: we each of us are portals into the general mind of humanity. Humanity is one big organism! And what we pay attention to finds its way into that mind, enriching it or poisoning it as the case may be. So our actions do not just affect ourselves.”
There was a stirring around the circle. Members looked at each other, disturbed.
“On the other hand,” Shijie continued,“as my teacher told me, many of our impulses and thoughts also well up from that same source. So when you have bad or evil thoughts, that does not mean you are evil -- these can well up in anybody, even saints--the important thing is whether you allow those thoughts to remain, or even worse, invite them in and feed them.”
She turned and picked up a book lying next to her cushion, opened it in the middle, then flipped a few pages, then pointed with her finger. “It is as this quote says,
Do not fear the arising of thoughts, only fear noting them too slowly. The arising of thought is the sickness, and here is the cure: Don’t follow them through.
That quote is contained in the Xing Ming Gui Zhi. Most of you know this book well. After our break, those of you who are already familiar with it can leave, or work on your own practice separately; I’ll work with the sub-group that is going to look at it in detail: Xiaoyao, Lingling and Xiaojing.” She rose gracefully to her feet. “But first, let’s have some tea.”
The Xing Ming Gui Zhi
Xiaojing and the young girl Lingling sat with Shijie and I at a table. The room had emptied except for one or two people sitting on cushions in different corners.
Shijie turned to me. “Did you have a look through the whole book as Shidi asked you to?”
“Yes.”
“What struck you?”
I thought for a moment, then said: “The number of quotes from Confucian and Buddhist books, together with Daoist ones. When put together like that, they seemed to all be referring to the same thing.”
“Indeed they do, for the most part. That is one reason this book is so valuable. They are all talking about the same basic experience, the experience of living a fully human life. And we can see how three different traditions, from three different angles, bring out distinct facets of certain aspects of being.”
She opened the book, found a page, and said: “For example, in relation to what we were discussing before the break, here is a quote from a Buddhist scripture:
Throughout the Three Realms, the mind is the master. Those who can observe the mind will attain liberation, those unable to observe it will, in the end, sink.
She looked down again at the book. “Right next to that quote is this one from the Song dynasty Confucian scholar Zhu- Xi. He says Control the outside so as to nourish your inside, and next to that is this quote from the Analects of Confucius: If it is improper, don’t look at it.”
Lingling rolled her eyes. “Sounds like my parents.”
Shijie nodded. “Yes, that is a problem nowadays. Many centuries of these Confucian sayings have been used to bludgeon people into submission, and they come with so much emotional baggage now that it is almost impossible to take advantage of their original intent.”
“It is the same back in Europe,” I said excitedly. “The churches got involved in politics, torturing and killing while quoting scriptures, and now I have friends who can’t even listen to a reading from the Bible without feeling sick.”
Xiaojing turned on me. “What are you bringing them up for? We have our own problems. If you are so worried about them, why don’t you go back where you came from?”
Lingling raised her eyebrows and looked back and forth between us, a slight smile on her lips.
Shijie ignored the outburst, remaining silent and running her finger down the page. Xiaojing looked at her, and murmured “Sorry, Shijie,” then turned to me and said “Sorry” in such a low voice that it was barely possible to make out the word.
Lingling pursed her smiling lips and looked down.
Shijie went on as if Xiaojing hadn’t spoken. “This book has some other unique features. It directly compares Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, and minces no words in pointing out the weak spots of each approach. Xiaojing, do you feel capable of saying something about this?”
Xiaojing swallowed and said “Of course, Shijie.” She composed herself for a moment and said “the author says that Daoists pay too much attention to qi as an aspect of life, and over-emphasise refining qi, and therefore are partial to life in preference to essence. Can I see the book for a moment?” Shijie handed it over, and Xiaojing paged through it rapidly, slowed, then backed up a page and read:
they look for marvels in the realm of the water organ to establish their religion. Thus they talk in detail regarding life and hardly mention essence. This ignorance of essence, however, is in the final analysis actually ignorance of life as well.
“Lingling,” Shijie said, looking at her, “what does that mean marvels in the realm of the water organ?”
“I think he means that Daoists emphasise the cultivation of the Kidney too much.”
“What is the problem with that?” Lingling reddened.
Shijie said “I can see you know. It all too easily degenerates into focusing on sexual practices, and this is what they end up teaching others to do.” She took the book back from Xiaojing, looked at the same page, pointing at the words.“But he goes on to say that the Chan people take the spirit as essence, and make refining the spirit into their aim. They refine the practice of stillness in the Palace of Li, and make that into their religion; thus they talk in detail regarding essence and hardly mention life. This ignorance of life, however, is in the final analysis actually ignorance of essence as well.”
I asked “What is the Palace of Li?” Xiaojing rolled her eyes, but kept quiet. Shijie explained, “It’s the Heart/mind,
symbolised by the trigram Li (☲), just like the Kidneys are symbolised by the trigram Kan (☵). We had better review these associations...”
Xiaojing burst out “Shijie, do we have to? That is first grade stuff! Why should we …” Shijie cut her off by raising a finger gently. “The Abbott instructed that we go through the Xing Ming Gui Zhi with Xiaoyao, to make sure he has a good grounding.You will benefit as well, and not only in cultivating your patience. We will do that as soon as we finish this topic.” She sighed. “It is all too easy to think we know more than we do.”
She turned back to the text.“He was saying that the Chan people focus on refining the spirit, and so over-emphasise essence, so they don’t understand how to refine life. Then he goes on to say:
Don’t they know that essence and life are inseparable in their very root, and that Daoism and Buddhism are not different religions? Spirit and qi are two uses of the one fundamental thing, and thus essence and life need to be mutually developed. A wise person will both cultivate the spirit by turning the light around at all times to nourish essence, but will also refine the body in order to fulfil their allotted term of life.
“The author then goes on to explain how to do that, in detail.”
“How?”
“We will get to that. But it is getting late now, and we have to look at some basic alchemical symbolism, concerning trigrams and hexagrams. I know you have at least some familiarity with the concepts, so I will be brief.”
Just then the double doors to the room opened and my friend the fat monk entered. He looked frazzled and exhausted, and exchanged looks with Shijie as he sat. “Done?” she asked, and he grunted in return. He poured himself some tea, and finished the leftover snacks the cook had made, and soon was back to his old self.
Meanwhile, Shijie continued.
“If you remember the line from the Dao De Jing that says the Dao produces one, one produces two, two produce three, and the three produce the ten thousand things, it is all illustrated there for you in the trigrams. Dao, unseen, below the single yin and yang lines, those lines combine into two lines, and those combinations form three lines: the ba gua which encompass all changes.
“Remember that yin is dense and heavy, but also takes in and nourishes, allowing growth. Kun (☷) is the Earth.
“Yang is immaterial, light, formless, but provides the impetus to start things. Yang sets things in motion, it is action. Qian (☰) is Heaven.
“These two are known as the doorway to the Yi Jing (Book of Changes), the mother and father of all the changes. And even if you are not interested in the Yi Jing, these are important for understanding alchemical symbolism as well. In the earliest dictionaries we have, the word guà – hexagram or trigram – is explained like this: gua zhe, gua ye (卦者，掛也). Gua means ‘to hang’. And …” Shijie stopped for a moment, then turned to the fat monk and said: “Do you remember, Shidi, when our teacher was telling us about these things for the first time?”
He chuckled, and his eyes brightened. “Like it was yesterday. That was the time we’d spent all day climbing. We’d reached a high point, and were looking south, when the clouds cleared. It was one of those rare evenings when the sun and the full moon were together in the sky, equally visible, and our teacher used the chance to describe the trigrams Qian, Kun, Li and Kan.”
Shijie looked pensive. “Yes, I too remember most clearly. Perhaps it was the drama of the setting. Our teacher said that all the phenomena we see in the universe, everything there before us, was as it were a painting hung before us, a moving canvas of change. And everything we see can be encompassed by the symbols of the trigrams and hexagrams: sun, moon, wind, thunder, mountain, waterways, it is all there. But Heaven is far above us, earth is solid beneath us, and all the realm of change happens between these two, the Qian and the Kun.”
They were both silent for a moment.
“We didn’t really feel what he meant, then, I think. He went on to talk about the Sun and Moon particularly, the two trigrams Li (☲) and Kan (☵) .
The fat monk said: “Yes, it was striking, what he said. Those two things, the sun and the moon, are the biggest things we see, and there they were hanging between heaven and earth, moving, circling, immense symbols of meaning forever in front of us, and forever ignored. Without these two there would certainly be no ten thousand things, or us either.”
He looked down, thinking, then continued “Later he explained that Li (☲) the Sun, with the broken line in the middle, is the symbol of Heaven, brought down into the realm of changes by the shift of its middle line to yin. Kan, the Moon, is a piece of the Earth, lifted into the heavens by its middle line of yang ☵).”
Xiaojing and Lingling looked at each other.
Shijie glanced at the two girls and said “our teacher went on to say that within the human body, Li symbolises the eyes, while Kan stands for the ears. So when you are meditating, these two should be circulating inside.”
Lingling said “Oh! It’s like the story of Hundun.”
Xiaojing looked puzzled.
“I know that one!” I said, proudly. “Its from Zhuang Zi. Hundun was the ruler of the central region, and had two friends, Hurried and Heedless, who ruled the territories on the boundary of the central region. Hundun was very kind to them, and they wanted to repay him. So they said to each other ‘Everyone has holes to see, hear, eat and smell, but our friend Hundun has none of these. Let’s give him some!’ So every day they drilled a hole in Hundun, and on the seventh day, he died.”
Xiaojing looked even more puzzled. “What does that have to do with Li and Kan?” she asked me.
“Um, well,” I said. “I just know the story. I didn’t mean …”
“Bèn dàn!” Xiaojing said, under her breath.
Lingling smiled and said, “I don’t know, I just suddenly had a flash of insight when Shijie was talking about the eyes as the sun and the ears as the moon circulating inside of us as we meditate, and I realised that the story of Hundun was showing a picture of self-contained wholeness, ruined when essence leaked out through the senses,” she finished breathlessly.
“Indeed. And in the first chapter of the Xing Ming Gui Zhi there is actually a short quote from Zhuang Zi referring to Hundun,” said Shijie. “It is in this passage:
People are born due to the generative forces of Heaven and Earth, and up until puberty those forces remain fully yang and pure. Who isn’t virtuous and righteous at that age? But then a command is received from Heaven, and those who wish to repay Hundun arrive, everyday drilling a hole, until the pure yang runs out, becoming yin in the second line. Thus Qian cannot remain pure, and becomes broken, turning into Li, and its middle yang line transfers to Kun, making it into Kan.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Lingling. “Maybe I saw it there, and it stuck in my mind.” “This will often happen.” Shijie said.“It is a process of digestion. An undigested concept will keep coming up, in ideas, in questions, in dreams, until we absorb it and move on.”
“That’s right,” said the fat monk, glancing at me. “Some people keep asking the same questions, over and over, in different formats, and never seem to take in the answer.”
Shijie continued. “And often they project those questions or problems onto the people around them, rather than recognise them as aspects of themselves that are irritating them inside, asking to be cured.”
Lingling gave Xiaojing a pointed look. “Anyway, to return to our topic,” said the fat monk, “the trigram Li (☲) refers to the sun, but also to fire, to heat, and as we’ve said, to the eyes. The trigram Kan (☵) refers to the moon, but also to water, to cold, and as we’ve said, to the ears.”
Xiaojing seemed more patient with me now that the fat Daoist had arrived, or maybe she was just tired. Lingling seemed in awe of him, but she gathered her courage and said “We talked about the Palace of Li earlier, and the Water of the Kidneys. That is related to these trigrams, right?”
He gave her an approving look, and nodded.“Li also stands for the Heart/mind, immaterial, engendering, active. Like the heart itself it is there, working indefatigably, in the chest. It stands for awareness, which is an attribute of Heaven. When the middle line changes from yang to yin,” he said, dipping his finger in tea and drawing it on the table, “so that Qian becomes this trigram Li, this can mean two things. The first represents the usual uncultivated mind, the mind of everyday consciousness. In that case the yin line stands for the muddying effect worldly concerns have on our primal awareness, shown by the yang lines on the outside.” Since the lines had dried out, he redrew two strong unbroken lines with tea. “The second meaning is the opposite, the yin line shows receptivity in the midst of primal awareness, resulting in open consciousness.”
He turned to me saying, “and before you ask, both are right.”
I nodded, but my own consciousness had started to cloud at that stage. The girls by contrast seemed to be taking it all in.
The fat monk went on: “Kan, on the other hand, is Kidney water, deep, quiet, storing, potential, but with a point of yang within, deep in the pelvis. It is that yang which stirs when your vitality is aroused.” Again he drew the lines on the table, two broken lines on the outside, one solid one inside. “But Kan can also refer to the deep quiet original knowledge of the mind of Dao.”
I was now thoroughly confused by all the changes in the meaning of the symbols, and said so.
“Change, fluidity, flow,” said the fat monk. “That what this is all about. A symbol can represent many things. The key though is that those things have common qualities. The symbol helps you look for that commonality.” He chuckled. “The changes keep your mind flexible.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. The fat Daoist got up to refill the teapot. Shijie had her eyes closed, but then she opened them and said: “Shidi, we were talking before about the fundamental identity of the three religions, and the other day you were telling me something interesting you had found.”
“What?” he said, frowning, as he returned to the table.
“About Chan and the symbols of the Yi Jing.”
“Oh, yes,” he turned to us. “It’s fascinating when you look behind the scenes a little. Way back in the ninth century, the Chan school of Cao-Dong used the hexagrams to illustrate their doctrine, especially Dong Shan.” Teacups were replenished as he spoke. “Dong Shan talked about using the yang line in the trigram Kan to repair the hole in the middle of Li, of course this was referring to subtle aspects of meditation. Later this became a very popular part of the Golden Elixir alchemy. But it started with – or at least was preserved by – the Chan people. They were more Daoist than the Daoists!”
Shijie chuckled softly, tilting her teacup to look at her tea, then swirling it.
“It is getting pretty late,” she said, “so we’d better finish up. I just wanted to preview the topic for the next meeting, so that you can roll it around in your minds. Remember that the eight trigrams show more subtle variations and combinations of yin and yang than the four simple pairs of yang and yin lines can do. Likewise the six-lined hexagrams can again show more subtle aspects of change than the trigrams alone.”
She paused to sip her tea. “To round off tonight, then, I just want to introduce you to the 12 sovereign hexagrams, the bi gua. We’ll talk more about them next time. They clearly demonstrate ebb and flow, rising and falling, and are quite important for the alchemical work. I’ve made a copy of this diagram showing their relation to the waxing and waning of the moon, and I’d like you to become familiar with them. Perhaps when you see the phase of the moon, on clear nights, you can picture in your mind which hexagram that might be in the cycle of the bi gua.”
She handed them out, then said “All right, let’s finish as we began, taking a moment or two in silence to extend ourselves toward contact with that spirit that moves with the Dao.”
Home
Out on the street it was dark and cold, and even though there was no snow, there were few passers-by. Shijie waited to lock the door while the fat monk retrieved his bicycle from the lower hallway. Lingling had wound a scarf around her neck and was zipping up her yellow down jacket; Xiaojing was wearing an old-style mian ao and studiously ignoring me. The two girls walked off, arm in arm, then Lingling lo1oked back over her shoulder to wink at me.
“Waves crash to and fro on the surface, but ocean currents run deep,” the fat monk said, cryptically, as he threw his leg over his bike. “See you next week.”