Review: Thomas Cleary’s Vitality, Energy and Spirit and Taoist Meditation
When I first noticed Thomas Cleary’s wide range of translations from Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and later Islam, I was dismissive: ‘Too many books,’ I thought, vaguely, something along the lines of ‘jack of all trades, master of none.’ Furthermore, looking into these books, they did not have the detailed endnotes of the scholar, despite his PhD from Harvard: why this Chinese character was chosen for this sentence, instead of that; what other authorities thought and said.
‘Shallow,’ was my judgement.
After having it brought to my attention that such a judgement might be hasty, and over the intervening years having perhaps matured, to an extent, in my appreciation of some things, a revisiting of the Cleary books brought a very different conclusion. That conclusion, steadily reinforced with the passage of time, was that these translations are an accurate conveyance of the original practical intent of the texts he has chosen to translate; not simply translations of the words, but a conveyance of the heart of the text, the underlying meaning, done by someone who understands that meaning.
He recounts in the afterword to one of these books that this understanding came from ‘my own introduction to the golden flower practice of “turning the light around,” long before I knew of the existence of this particular book [the Secret of the Golden Flower]. Finding this method of mindfulness extremely powerful and versatile, I subsequently spent many years studying its use in experience and looking for tested information pertaining to its objective application.’
Thomas Cleary is not unique in this. A dear friend of mine found that using the practice of turning the light around allowed a flowering of the hidden resources of their mind, and that through this opening my friend was able to access and understand the otherwise incomprehensible literature of Western alchemy. What they found was an ontology of being, a clear meaning and purpose that described an inward process of ripening, transmuting and, ultimately, a rebirth of the soul. Alchemy, they said, was an organic and consistent doctrine with a clear-cut corpus of rules that were repeatedly laid out by the alchemical adepts--although they all used different terminology.
Furthermore, what was most interesting for me was to find that everything my friend told me about Western alchemical theory and practice, gleaned from their deep search, was completely consistent with my own investigations of Chinese alchemy, although my friend did not read Chinese and there was no possibility of cross influence.
When I asked how this could be, they simply said “When you know the practice and have experienced the fruit of it, you become able to see reality even through all the layers of confusing terminology and even deliberate misdirection that one might find in the literature.”
Thomas Cleary found that similar techniques of mindfulness played an important role in many if not all religions, although ‘dressed’, as it were, in very different costuming. Peeling away the packaging revealed a surprising identity of content within these religions, albeit expressed with characteristics determined by the culture: quiet, simple and practical for Chinese, for example, while the Indians might express the same core experience in colourful emotional ways.
In short, it seems to me there is a fair chance that Cleary knows what he is talking about, from experience. The texts are practical, that is, intended to be used. This is explicitly stated in his book Immortal Sisters: secret teachings of Taoist women: ‘The present volume addresses itself to individual pragmatic issues, and not to the sociology and politics of times gone by, for the simple reason that it is only by tackling practicalities on an individual level that the living element of Taoism can be brought out of past history and localized culture into the present reality of everyday life. This means seeking the essential rather than the incidental, the fundamentals rather than the outgrowths, that which applies to the human mind itself rather than to a specific mentality alone.”
In other words, Cleary is of the opinion that it may be more valuable to learn to access the living flow which gives rise to Daoism and equivalent streams, a flow which is present now, rather than simply try to look like or act like a 12th century Daoist.
In the Taoist series, probably the best books to begin with are Vitality, Energy, Spirit: a Taoist Sourcebook, and Taoist Meditation. The former has selections spanning the whole history of Daoist thinking, in particular regarding Jing/essence (vitality), Qi (energy) and Shen (spirit), their appreciation, conservation, cultivation and ultimate unification.
In the much shorter Taoist Meditation, Cleary says: ‘Meditation is one element of Taoism that interests a broad spectrum of people, because the state of mind is central to the well-being and efficiency of the whole organism. Taoist meditation is for enhancement of both physical and mental health, as these two facets of well-being are intimately related to one another.’
The practicality of these texts is shown in the clear directions provided for checking one’s own progress, and warning indications for when things are going wrong. An example is in this excerpt from the Tang dynasty Sima Chengzhen’s Treatise on Sitting Forgetting:
"‘As long as the mind does not stick to things, and you can remain unmoved, this is the correct foundation for genuine stabilization. If you stabilize the mind by this means, your mood will become harmonious; the longer you do so, the lighter and fresher you feel. If you use this as a test, error and truth become evident.
If you extinguish the mind whenever it is aroused, without distinguishing right from wrong, then you will permanently cancel awareness and enter into blind trance.
If you just let your mind be aroused without collecting or controlling it at all, then you are after all no different from an ordinary mortal."