On Symbolic Language, pt 1.
Namaste all,
my next few posts in this thread will be to address some broad areas of Taoist Alchemical praxis and theory. as such, some terminology may be a bit unfamaliar to the causal reader, for this i apologize.
this thread will lay bare the essentials of understanding Taoist Alchemical writings. i'm indebted to Thomas Cleary and Lui-i Ming for this text. the text is called Chin tan ssu pai tzu chieh and is translated into English as The Inner Teachings of Taosim.
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The ancient classics on the science of cultivating reality often speak of the path of nondoing, but seldom of the path of doing. However, on the path of nondoing, only those of superior knowledge become suddenly enlightened and attain complete comprehension, understanding everything in one realization, immediately assending into the realm of sages. Mediocre and lesser people, those who are dull, deeply conditioned, and lacking perceptivity, will find that their power is insufficient to practice the path of nondoing; they will not be able to transcend all objects and reach the goal directly.
During the Han dynasty (second centruy C.E.) Wei Po-yang, a Taoist adept, composed the Triplex Unity (Ts'an t'ung ch'i) to guide those of middling and lesser faculties. He used images to present the imageless, used forms to allude to the formless. This was the beginning of the term Gold Elixir and the technical symbolism of lead and mercury, sand and silver, raven and rabbit, dragon and tiger, the baby, the girl, medicinal substances, the furnace and cauldron, cooking and refining, and so on.
Later on, many real people who had attained the Tao composed alchemical treatises, all based on the Triplex Unity, to expound the subtle principles. Their intention was for students in later times to use the former to study the later, and use the later to understand the former.
Nevertheless, later students did not look into the meaning of the code words and did not figure out the principles of the symbols. Seeing talk of gold elixir, lead, mercury, cauldron, and furnace, they thought it refered to the preparation of potions to ingest and the took to chemistry. Seeing talk of raven and rabbit, dragon and tiger, they thought it referred to the internal organs, and they took to visualization exercises. Seeing talk of other and self, yin and yang, male and female, they thought it referred to conjugal elixir, and they took to sexual yoga. Seeing talk of going along, reversing, and inverting, they thought it referred to forced effort and they took to energy circulation exercises. Seeing talk of nondoing to cultivate essence, they took it to mean utter quiessence, and they got involved in quietism. Seeing talk of doing to cultivate life, they thought it meant exercise, and they came to cling to form. These and other schools arose, all taking a deer to be a horse, taking a crow for a phoenix, not only without benefit to essence and life, but eve to the detriment of essence and life. Could this have been the intention of the ancient teachers in using symbolic language?
Symbols are representations, speaking of one thing to allude to something else. Take an example from the field of commond knowledge and experience, consider the cooking and brewing of food and drink. The pot is the "cauldron"; the stove is the "furnace." Water is put in the pot; fire is kindled in the stove. The basic tendency of fire is to flame upward, that of water to flow downward; when we put the water in the pot above and the fire in the stove below, water and fire are thus "reversed" --- they complement one another, so that the food and drink are cooked and brewed. This represents ordinary water and ordinary fire complementing each other.
The strength in people is impetuous and volitile, so it is associated with fire; flexibility is relaxed and calm, so it is associated with water. Using flexibility to nuture strength, using strength to complete flexibility, strenght and flexibility match each other, so that there is neither haste nor dwadling, effecting a return to equipose, with the result that the Tao is easy to accomplish. This is the principle of the mutual complementarity of psychological water and psychological fire. Using the image of complementarity of ordinary water and ordinary fire to represent the principle of complementarity of psychologcial water and fire, that principle is clear.
Let us consider another example. Suppose a man is originally prosperous, but becomes profligate and squanders his fortune; then, on the verge of destitution, he repents of his errors, struggles and labors for a living again, gradually accumlates substance, and eventually re-establishes his fortune. This symbolizes return to the origin. The vitality, spirit and sacred energy in the human body are orginally complete and full; mixing with temporal condition, going along with the process of creation, expends vitality and belabors the spirit, so that the basic energy declines and the source wanes. If, on the verge of exhaustion, one can turn back, quell anger and cupidity, get rid of falsehood and preserve truth, by gradual application of effort one can eventually return to the root and restore life. This is the principle of return to the origin. Using the image of restoration and recovery of a man in the world to represent the principle of return to the origin by practice of Tao, that principle is clear.
