Tao

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
auto
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Re: Tao

Post by auto »

Coëmgenu wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 7:15 pm The fourth link, https://web.archive.org/web/20120306001 ... oe_idx.htm, has some translated scriptures, but unfortunately has no dates associated with them. Given the previous posted material, it seems that a lot of these scriptures might be extremely apocryphal. Here is the first translated scripture from there, entitled "The Supreme Jade Emperor's Heart Imprint Scripture," translated by Frederic Henry Balfour:There are three degrees of Supreme Elixir: the Spirit, the Breath, and the Essential Vigour.
..
This references "the Elixir," which is to-do with Chinese alchemy. These two, alchemy and exorcism, are topics fundamental to Dàoism that are rarely heard of in the West.
Here's one unaffiliated work,
Baizi Bei
http://tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Baizi_Bei:_The_Hundred_Character_Tablet wrote: Unaffiliated work from the Zhou Dynasty, entitled Da Xue (大學), or the “Great Learning.” This is an important work derived from the Classic of Rites (禮記 Liji).
wrote: To nourish the vital energy, keep watch in silence;
In order to subdue the mind, act with non-action.
Of movement and stillness, be aware of their origin;
There is no work to do, much less someone to seek.
The true and constant must respond to phenomena;
Responding to phenomena, you must be unconfused.
When unconfused, the nature will stabilize by itself;
When the nature stabilizes, energy returns by itself.
When energy returns, the elixir crystallizes by itself;
Within the pot, the trigrams of kan and li are joined.
Yin and yang arise, alternating over and over again;
Every transformation comes like a clap of thunder.
White clouds form and come to assemble at the peak;
The sweet nectar sprinkles down Mount Sumeru.
Swallow for yourself this wine of immortality;
You wander so freely—who is able to know you?
Sit and listen to the tune played without strings;
Clearly understand the mechanism of creation.
It comes entirely from these twenty lines:
A true ladder going straight to Heaven.
Mount Sumeru seem to be anatomical place in body.

elixir crystallizes.. by this term crystallizes can search from other text and there there is different term for elixir,
https://www.mantakchia.com/teachings-of-immortals-chung-and-lu/ wrote:..Next you will hear a crack of thunder...Next the jade elixir will coagulate into a sticky sweet fluid. Next the luminous fluid will become a creamy substance. The fluid will gradually fill the mouth and then flow down to the belly.
it seem the elixir is white clouds, sweet nectar, wine of immortality.. name might be dependent on stage and place on body.
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Coëmgenu
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Re: Tao

Post by Coëmgenu »

I find it very interesting that there is still a religion out there in the world wherein practitioners try to transmute the Elixir of Life, and within their own bodies to boot. In the context of "Western religio-science" (a term that I just made up), Western Christian or para-Christian alchemists would try to transmute the Elixir of Life as an external substance. A lot of their methods ended up being used by modern science, but a lot of their other methods are not to used, because they resemble esoterica and ceremonial spellwork that would circulate in the clerical necromantic underground of the Renaissance (i.e. what gets called "magick with a K" in modern parlance). Very interesting, the cultural connections and disconnections. If there had been better communications between the East and West in the 1600s, for instance, I wonder what kind of dialogue these Western and Eastern alchemists would have had.

Giordano Bruno, for instance, like Hypatia before him, was misrepresented by the documentary "Cosmos" as an early martyr for science. In truth, however, he was an alchemy-practicing Renaissance magician deeply into ceremonial and initiatory magical practices. Whether his magic worked or not, that was his principle business and what he saw himself as doing when he made para-scientific breakthroughs. These sorts of figures, even Isaac Newton who was deeply into alchemy and such things, are the ones I think it would be interesting to see having a conversation with Chinese alchemists.
What is the Uncreated?
Sublime & free, what is that obscured Eternity?
It is the Undying, the Bright, the Isle.
It is an Ocean, a Secret: Reality.
Both life and oblivion, it is Nirvāṇa.
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