打坐炼静 Sitting Meditation and Stillness Cultivation [excerpt 1]

打坐炼静
Sitting Meditation and
Stillness Cultivation [excerpt] [1]
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by Xing De

If there is any disturbance externally, the door to the Heavens will not open. In the Heavens there are three doors, which are very narrow. It is three, not only one as in the bible. Soaring up, there is a last door, the last vertebra, the first bone, which is difficult to pass through [2]. It can constitute major troubles. If you are without direction and without methods, if the Heart-Mind is not calm and you have not let go of desires, once you open the door, you will be gone. That is its danger. So, let go of everything.
Maybe Jesus and Shakyamuni appear and beckon you, ‘come with me’. ‘Are you going to go with them?’ All sceneries you may see during sitting meditation and stillness cultivation, apply the following rule:

见怪不怪。
One should see the strange as not strange.”

Because you have not opened the differentiation power and wisdom yet, but you have just opened the door to the supermarket, where lot of tools tempt you, you still fall short of meeting the requirements for maybe ten to twenty years.

-Li Shif Fu

On the one hand, Qi Gong is practiced to its own set of protocols as a moving exercise on the inside, with the goal to learn how to move one’s Qi to later use it effectively. It could be compared to a revolving orbit from large to small scale. It is about directing one’s Qi in a certain trajectory and for a certain purpose. This will be important when it comes to Qi Gong healing. On the other hand sitting meditation is about accumulating and gathering Qi in one’s storeroom, whose Qi comes from the moon, the sun and planet Earth [3].
Longevity and Internal Alchemy practices are both good goals, equally with sitting meditation and stillness cultivation as their beginning. It is very common fr new practitioners to falls asleep at the early stage of one’s routine of stillness practice, because one’s Spirit is not complete. But over a period of months it will be unthinkable for one to possibly doze off anymore. The issues during sitting meditation and stillness cultivation which affecting the cultivators are many, and hopefully some light will be shed on them in the following chapters.

What are the requirements?
How should one do it?
Why even do sitting meditation and stillness cultivation?
How to return to Point Zero and then progress to the left?

In order to do so, one must adhere to the Three Regulations [san tiao 三调]; namely and the regulation of the body [tiao shen调身], the regulation of the breath [tiao xi调息] and the regulation of the Heart-Mind [tiao shen调心]. Before delving into the comprehensive three-fold regulation, one must seek an environment conducive and suitable for one’ practice of sitting meditation [4].

[1] This article will be published in full as part of a book about meditation, stillness cultivation, abstention from grains [bi gu辟谷], sleeping gong [shui gong睡功], dreams, vegetarianism and diet in Daoism, formulae for fasting and meditation incense, including several chapters from the alchemical classic The Essentials of the Shortcut to the Great Achievement [da cheng jie yao 大成捷要]. It will be a mixture of anecdotal and oral transmissions from my teacher Li Shi Fu and translations of a number of chapters from ancient texts.

[2]Possibly referring to the Jade Pillow [yu zhen 玉枕], the last and highest of the Three Passes [san guan 三关].

[3] It has to be pointed out that in compliance with Li Shi Fu’s teachings, Qi Gong is practiced when the Yang starts rising in the morning and sitting meditation is practiced when the Yin is increasing after dusk. Li Shi Fu pointed out that the most Yin phase of the day, the two hour time slot from 11pm-1am [zi shi 子时] is the most ideal time to practice. Applied to the course of the year it would the winter solstice [dong zhi 冬至], when Yin is at its peak.

[4] https://purplecloudinstitute.com/%e6%89%93%e5%9d%90%e7%9a%8…/.