free jin dan seminar in Guelph saturday

[mixjourneyman]

Saturday Oct 4 at the Red Brick Cafe in downtown Guelph (Douglas St.).

I will be teaching on the subject of creating "xiao yao" or small medicine in the lower dantian.
The texts were are working from are "da cheng jie yao," "Dao de jing chan wei," and some other sources.
We will focus on how to create vitality through the use of the dan tian theory.

The seminar is from 10 -12 and is free.


the following weekend we will have another seminar and a tea tasting.

notes for tomorrow

Saturday Oct 4 2014

Jin dan daoism meditation basics:



Today's class is focused on building a foundation in the root curriculum of Daoist meditation practice.
We will both study meditation theory and practice some excercises.
The first criteria of discussing meditation in a Daoist context is to set out goals and motivations behind practicing in this modality.
The first major point of focus is that Daoism is different from other religious practice.
Daoism
- does not focus on worship of god or messiah
- does not seek to obtain release from things like the cycle of karma
- does not have any specific moral precepts which are unchangeable or immutable.
- does not view the physical body as something to be discarded after a high level of practice is achieved
It does
- focus on nature and being naturally
- attempts to enlighten people through the practice of meditation and positive lifestyle choices
- does view kindness and caring for others as a prerequisite for caring for oneself, and views a main objective of practice is becoming saintly in nature.
- views the body as being worthy of care and protection.

Viewing the final two points as especially important – we can further interpret that Daoist people have many types of practice that improve the situation of the lives of individual practitioners and those around them.

Among those practices are meditation, martial arts, calligraphy, music, chanting, tea ceremony, and many other things which basically fall into the realm of “Dao Tong culture” (connected principle culture).
Because meditation is one of the most direct methods of achieving the goals of Daoism, it is seen as one of the most important areas to place emphasis.

Daoist meditation is alternatively known as “neidan” (internal elixir) “dandao” (the way of elixir), “xiudao” (to cultivate the dao) and “jin dan” (golden elixir practice).
This different things all basically mean the same thing – but have slightly different intonation in meaning.
Neidan essentially refers to the inside of the body as having an intrinsic medicine (elixir) which circulates around and nourishes the organs. Neidan is a type of practice which cultivates this medicine.
Dan Dao is basically the same meaning – but in this case, Dao refers to the universe or universal way of things. In this regard, it is the universal practice of elixir. Xiu Dao refers to the active cultivation of the way – so it can refer to anything including art, culture, work, relationships, government, or anything else which is capable of being used as a way to make progress in the study of the dao.
Jin dan, which is the topic of the day, simply means the cultivate the true elixir – or the golden elixir.
This type of practice is most commonly spoken of after the Ming Qing era of Chinese history (AD 1400 and onward), and is most typified by books such as “xingming guizhi” and “Dao de jing chan wei” among others. Jin Dan is a very well developed practice and has a profound theory that goes well beyond the mere practice of meditation, but also includes a full curriculum of understanding about how the energy of the body works in accord with the universe. As a practice, it is not complex, but as a way observing practice, it requires a great deal of research and attention to detail.
Neidan and Jin Dan are basically the same thing , so the words are interchangeable.

Lets touch on how jin dan is practiced:

The book Da Cheng Jie Yao (great achievement shortcut. The first real Daoist self help book),
says that there are three types of energy in the universe. To put it the most simple way, the the energy of the heavens is called great elixir – the energy of the earth is called spirit elixir – and the energy of people is called golden elixir.
Now we should understand that these energies are not separate phenomenon.
Daoism views the energy of all things as being mixed in a chaos and as interacting in harmony with each other.
The human body is also exemplified by three energy centres – the top centre being the home of the spirit – the middle centre the home of vital energy – and the lower centre being the home of human essence.
Daoists believe that the lower centre of the human body represents the earth – the middle represents humanity – and the upper part represents the heavens. Or to put it in a different way – the space between heaven and earth is humanity, but both heaven and earth are prerequisites to life. The middle centre of the body is where the yin of earth meets with the yang of the sky.
Because early Daoists observed life in all of its permutations – they knew certain sets of scientific rules, for instance, all things accord to gravity and even if moving from up, always tend to eventually move back down.
Because of this, article “Da dao shuo” in the book “xing ming gui zhi” says “the heavens are vast and honest, the earth is deep and real. Move honesty and diligence to the earth, and truth and depth will rise to the heavens.”
Practically, this means that when people move the trajectory of their intention toward the lower half of the body with great veneration and honesty – there will eventually be a feeling of positive energy moving up the body toward the sky.
It also says “I believe that for you to truly be satisfied with the rise of great light – you must first focus on the origin and opposite of Yang”
This means that if one wishes to manifest positive energy, they must focus first on the root of the positive, which is yin, or the energy of the earth. Alternatively, it means that male or active energy is always created by female or passive attention.
Also “to get to the dark and mysterious gate, one must focus on obtaining the root and opposite of yin.”
this means that if one wishes to take their practice beyond the normal realm and into the place where the whole body begins to feel as though it is clear and being healed by energy – one must practice with great dillegence.
Later it says “the general must all day continue moving forward without ceasing,” and “moving forward with true yang energy, one will return back to the dao.”
In other words, to achieve great enlightenment, one must put great effort into practicing.
It also means that the goal of practice is to achieve the true state of Yang, or the true positive energy in the universe.
This does not mean that Yin and Yang should be unbalanced, but it means that the ultimate expression and end result of practice should be that great progress is made and that the practitioner should become fully realized, healthy, and happy.
So from all this, we can interpret that a basic practice of Daoism is to move the mind toward the earth.
A basic exercise for this is to sit upright in a chair.
Close the eyes and relax the face – begin to feel the breath. Simply monitor the in and out breath and nothing else. Next, begin to set the mind in the lower abdomen (several inches below the navel), and do not allow it to move back up. The mind, if leaving the abdomen, should always simply be placed back there. The breath should be calm, vast, and relaxed. The mind should gradually slow down, and the body should begin to relax.
The breathing should go downward on both the in and out breath, with the in breath expanding and downward (the in breath is true yin, because it always moves to the earth), and the out breath should relax and move downward in the abdomen (the out breath is true yang, because breath is expelled from the body). After staying this way for a long time, the mind will naturally relax, as will the nervous system, and gradually the feeling will begin to move in the body. It is normal for the feeling to move to the head. Sometimes it may initially be felt in the back and then in the head. The next action is to let it stay in the head for a short period of time, and then as it gradually stirs, to move to the centre of the chest for a period of time – and then back to the abdomen.
This circulation should take between five minutes and one hour – simply depending on how well developed your practice becomes. Yin and Yang are balanced simply by turning the intensity of the mind down or up as energy builds or declines. This is done according to feeling, but it is safe to say, staying in the middle of the range of feelngs is quite safe. Going to great extremes of energy does not allow the mind to become calm – being too soft and gentle causes sluggishness and emotional problems such as meloncholy.
It is always best to stay balanced and not get too high or too low in practice.
The energy can be circulated as many times as desired – but to end the practice, the attention should always be brought back to the true centre of the body, just behind the navel. If the feeling is in the whole body, that is also an acceptable way to hold the mind when ending practice. It is important though, not to hold the energy in the upper body at the end of practice.

The overall goal of this practice is to make the body feel relaxed and as though there is a positive, medicinal feeling moving throughout the body. It can also have the spiritual benefit such as causing the mind to become silent, and causing the mind and body to feel as though they are melding together. Higher achievement can include things like the body melding with the world, and also enlightenment experiences of various sorts, as well as increased sensory abilities, such as the ability to feel glands and hormonal releases.
As we touched on previously, this type of energy is believed to manifest originally in the body as a result of the male semen fertilizing the female egg during conception. Because the place where the reproductive system rests in the human body is near the abdomen, the area above the genitals is considered to be very important for developing vitality. Because the foetus is fed through the umbilical chord, it is also considered that the area around the navel is very important in nourishing the energetic body. Laozi called this being “nourished by the great mother.”
because the area between these two important centres of energy is the lower abdomen – then daoists believe that the lower abdomen is a good place to fix the attention – causing the energetic elements of both of these areas to mix and create a synergy of yin and yang within the rest of the body.
Therefore, the first and most important step of jin dan practice is to use the mind to cultivate the energies of the lower body in order to nurture the “dan tian” (elixir field).

Because this is the first major step of our practice – your homework is to go home and meditate by fixing your attention on the lower abdomen and observing the breath. Try this for many days and if you have the experience of the energy moving in the body, simply follow nature and allow it to move on its own. If the energy moves to the head – simply let it stay there until it is ready to move to the chest. If it moves to the chest, let it rest naturally with the breathing until it moves to the abdomen and so on. The most important thing is to begin to create small medicine in the lower abdominal area.
Do your best, and if you have any questions, please contact me.