ON TANTRA'S ROOTS

Tantra in China: Chinese Buddhism (Ch'an)

Zen/Ch'an/Dhyana/Meditation

"Zen - Japanese; an abbreviation of the word 'zenna' (also 'zenno'), the
Japanese way of reading Chinese Ch'an-na (short form, ch'an).  This in
turn is the Chinese version of the Sanskrit word 'dhyana', which refers
to collectness of mind or meditative absorption in which all dualistic
distinctions like I/you, subject/object, and true/false are
[resolved]....

"Exoterically regarded, Zen, or Ch'an as it is called when referring to
its history in China, is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that developed in
China in the 6th and 7th centuries from the meeting of Dhyana Buddhism,
which was brought to China by Bodhidharma, and Taoism....

"The essential nature of Zen can be summed up in the four short
statements:  (1) '(a) special transmission outside the [orthodox]
teaching'...; (2) 'nondependence on [sacred] writings...; (3) 'direct
pointing [to the] human heart...; leading to (4) realization of [one's
own] nature [and] becoming a buddha.'...

"Esoterically regarded, Zen is not a religion but rather an indefinable,
incommunicable root, free from all names, descriptions, and concepts,
that can only be experienced by each individual for him- or herself. 
From expressed forms of this, all religions have sprung.  In this sense
Zen is not bound to any religion, including Buddhism.  It is primordial
perfection of everything existing, designated by the most various names,
experienced by all great sages, saints, and founders of all  cultures
and times.  Buddhism has referred to it as 'the identity of samsara and
nirvana.'  From this point of view zazen is not a 'method' that brings
people living in ignorance (avidya) to the 'goal' of liberation; rather
it is the immediate expression and actualization of the perfection
present in every person at every moment."  

_Dictionary of B and Z, pgs. 261-3.


"Dhyana - Sanskrit; meditation, absorption (Pali, jhana; Chinese,
ch'an-na or ch'an; Japanese, zenna or zen); in general any absorbed
state of mind brought about through concentration (samadhi).  Such a
state is reached through the entire attention dwelling uninterruptedly
on a physical or mental object of meditation; in this way the mind
passes through various stages in which the currents of the passions
gradually fade away....

"The first absorption stage is characterized by the relinquishing of
desires and unwholesome factors...and is reached through
conceptualization... and discursive thought...  In this stage, there is
joyful interest... and well-being....  The second stage is characterized
by the coming to rest of conceptualization and discursive thought, the
attainment of inner calm, and so-called one-pointedness of mind, which 
means concentration on an object of meditation.  Joyful interest and
well-being continue.  In the third stage joy disappears, replaced by
equanimity...; one is alert, aware, and feels well-being.  In the fourth
stage only equanimity and wakefulness are present.

"In Chinese Buddhism the notion of dhyana has a much broader
application.  It includes all meditation practices such as anapanasati,
kasina exercises, contemplation of the body, and other similar
techniques that have concentration or one-pointedness of mind as their
objective.  Thus it also includes all preparatory practices necessary
for dhyana in the narrower sense.  From Dhyana Buddhism, which was
brought to China by Bodhidharma, among others, Ch'an (Zen) developed." 

_Dictionary of B and Z, pgs. 56-57.


From Meditation to Enlightenment:  Bodhidharma and Hui-neng

"Bodhidharma - ...the twenty-eighth patriarch after Shakyamuni Buddha in
the Indian lineage and the first Chinese patriarch of Ch'an (Zen)....

"It is not certain whether he died [in North China] or again left the
monastery after he had transmitted the patriarchy to Hui-k'o.... After
nine years... he became homesick for India and decided to return there. 
Before departing, he called his disciples to him in order to test their
realization.  The first disciple he questioned answered, 'The way I
understand it, if we want to realize the truth we should neither  depend
entirely upon words nor entirely do away with words; rather we should
use them as a tool on the Way (do).'  Bodhidharma answered him, 'You
have grasped my skin.'  The next to come forward was a nun, who said,
'As I understand it, the truth is an auspicious display of the
buddha-paradise; one sees it once, then never again.'  To her
Bodhidharma replied, 'You have grasped my flesh.'  The next disciple
said, 'The four great elements are empty and the five skandhas are
nonexistent.  There is in  fact nothing to grasp.'  To this Bodhidharma
responded, 'You have grasped my bones.'   Finally it was Hui-k'o's turn. 
He, however, said nothing, only bowed to the master in silence.  To him
Bodhidharma said, 'You have grasped my marrow.'

"The form of meditative practice the Bodhidharma taught still owed a
great deal to Indian Buddhism.  His instructions were to a great extent
based on the traditional sutras of Mahayana Buddhism...  Typical Chinese
Zen, which is a fusion of the Dhyana Buddhism represented by Bodhidharma
and indigenous Chinese Taoism and which is described as a 'special
transmission outside the orthodox teaching'..., first developed with
Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Zen in China, and the great Zen masters
of the T'ang period who followed him." 

_Dictionary of B and Z, pgs. 23-24.


"'Sects are merely a reflection of the number of disciples.  If
disciples proliferate, then the lineage tends to divide into new sects. 
If they dwindle, the sect may disappear.  All sects have the same root,
and the differences between them are not essential.  They are just a
question of lineage....'

"This has not always been understood by Western investigators accustomed
to the idea that there is a connection between sect and doctrine., nor
by the Buddhist specialists of Japan, where sects have remained
exclusive and their doctrinal differences have been preserved.  Some
Japanese have taken it as evidence of decay and this may be one of the
reasons why they have avoided the study of modern Chinese Buddhism.

"The classification of monasteries in modern China has been almost as
nominal as the classification of monks.  Essentially each belonged to
the sect of the founder, that is, of the ancestral master who 'opened
the mountain.'...

"In this technical sense there were very few monasteries in China that
were not Ch'an."  

_The Practice of Chinese Buddhism,  Welch,  p. 395.


"Hui-neng - ...the sixth patriarch of Ch'an (Zen) in China...   Hui-neng
was one of the most important Ch'an masters.  He gave Ch'an, which had
hitherto been strongly marked by traditional Indian Buddhism, a typical
Chinese stamp.  Thus he is sometimes regarded as the real father of the
Ch'an (Zen) tradition.  He never transmitted the patriarchate formally
to a successor; thus it came to an end....

"With Hui-neng, who as an uneducated layman received the transmission of
the patriarchate against all conventions of the religious establishment,
a decisive step was made toward the assimilation of Indian Dhyana
Buddhism into the Chinese mind-set, as well as toward the development of
a native Chinese Ch'an that was at  least as strongly marked by Taoism
as by Buddhism.  It was this Southern school with its radical rejection
of mere book learning (a view already exemplified for centuries by
Taoist sages), and its practical down-to-earthness combined with dry
humor, so typical of the Chinese folk character, that produced all the
great lineages of Ch'an."  

_Dictionary of B and Z, pgs. 95-96.


"Tongo - Japanese, literally 'sudden [ton] enlightenment [go, satori]';
the teaching of sudden enlightenment, associated with the Southern
School.  It is contrasted with the teaching of gradual enlightenment
(zengo) associated with the Northern school.  The distinction between
'sudden' and 'gradual' is, however, a superficial one - deeper Zen
realization makes evident that there is no contradiction between  the
two.  Thus Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Ch'an (Zen) in China, who is
considered the founder of the school of sudden enlightenment, stresses
again and again... that sudden and gradual are not in the dharma: 'In
the dharma there is neither sudden nor gradual.  Because of delusion or
enlightenment, it goes slow and fast.'"  

_Dictionary of B and Z, p. 228.


"Maya - Sanskrit, literally 'deception, illusion, appearance.'  The
continually changing, impermanent phenomenal world of appearances and
forms, of illusion or deception, which an unenlightened mind takes as
the only reality.  The concept of maya is used in opposition to that of
the immutable, essential absolute...  The recognition of all dharmas as
maya is equivalent to the experience of 'awakening'... and the
realization of nirvana.  According to the highest teachings of Buddhism,
as  they are formulated, for example, in Zen, it is not actually an
illusion or deception to regard the phenomenal world as real; the
deception consists rather in taking the phenomenal world to be the
immutable and only reality and thus to misplace the view of what is
essential.  Fundamentally, the relative and the absolute are one and
identical, and maya (...delusion) and bodhi (enlightenment) are one."  

_Dictionary of B and Z, pgs. 141-142.


Struggle to Enlightenment:  Kendo and Mondo

"Kanna Zen - Japanese..., literally 'Zen of the contemplation of words';
an expression coined in the lifetime of the Chinese master Ta-hui
Tsung-kao...to designate the style of Ch'an (Zen) that regarded the koan
as the most important means of training on the way to awakening
(enlightenment, kensho, satori)."  

_Dictionary of B and Z, pg. 111.


"Mondo - Japanese..., literally 'question [and] answer'; Zen dialogue
between masters or between master and student in which one party asks a
question concerning Buddhism or some existential problem that has
profoundly disquieted him and the other, without recourse in any way to
theory or logic, responds in a way that invokes the answer from the
deepest layers of his partner's heart-mind...."  

_Dictionary of B and Z , p. 146.


"Kendo - Japanese, literally 'Way of the sword'; fencing in the Japanese
style, in which the sword is wielded in both hands....  it was customary
for adepts of kendo to train in Zen in order to develop the presence of
mind, the ability to react spontaneously (joriki), and fearless
readiness to die.  Some Japanese Zen masters were at the same time
outstanding masters of the sword.

"In a text by the Zen master Takuan, in which he compares the mental
attitude of a practitioner of Zen  with that of a sword fighter, we find
: 'From the point of view of the right understanding of ken, not only
Zen but also the great law of Heaven and Earth as well as all the laws
of the universe are nothing other than kendo; and  conversely, from the
point of view of Zen, not only ken but also everything in the universe
is nothing more than the motion of waves on the ocean of Zen.  More
incisively put, the unity of ken and Zen refers to that stage in which
there is neither ken nor Zen, and yet we cannot find anything in the
universe that is not ken and not Zen'..."  

_Dictionary of B and Z, p.. 115.


"The mind must always be in the state of 'flowing,' for when it stops
anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption
that is injurious to the well-being of the mind.  In the case of the
swordsman, it means death.

"When the swordsman stands against his opponent, he is not to think of
the opponent, nor of himself, nor of his enemy's sword movements.  He
just stands there with his sword which, forgetful of all technique, is
ready only to follow the dictates of the unconscious.  The man has
effaced himself as the wielder of the sword.  When he strikes, it is not
the man but the sword in the hand of the unconscious that strikes."

_Zen in the Martial Arts_, by Joe Hyams, p. 92.


"Hossen - Japanese, literally 'dharma contest'; the method typical for
Zen of demonstrating the living truth directly, without recourse to
discursive thinking or philosophical or religious doctrine.  Hossen,
like Mondo, consists of an exchange of words, questions and answers,
gestures and responses between two enlightened people.  While the mondo
usually consists of one question and one answer, the hossen can develop
into an extended encounter.  Most koans consist of hossen or mondo that
have been handed down by tradition.

"In contrast to what the term dharma contest might suggest, a hossen is
not a matter of debate; it is not a question of defeating an enemy in
discussion or determining which partner is the 'better man.'  The
participants in a hossen speak from their Zen experience, which admits
of no antagonism, no I-you split.  They make use of these occasions only
to test the depth of their own experience in an encounter with a person
of greater spiritual power and in this way to train themselves further." 

_Dictionary of B and Z, p. 87.


"Koan - Japanese, literally 'public notice'; the Chinese kung-an
originally meant a legal case constituting a precedent.  In Zen a koan
is a phrase from a sutra or teaching on Zen realization..., an episode
from the life of an ancient master, a mondo or a hossen - whatever the
source, each points to the nature of ultimate reality.  Essential to a
koan is paradox, i.e., that which is 'beyond' (Greek, para) 'thinking'
(Greek, dokein), which transcends the logical or conceptual.  Thus,
since it cannot be solved by reason, a koan is not a riddle.  Solving a
koan requires a leap into another level of comprehension.

"...Since the koan eludes solution by means of discursive understanding,
it makes clear to the student the limitations of thought and eventually
forces him to transcend it in an intuitive leap, which takes him into a
world beyond logical contradictions and dualistic modes of thought...

"In general koan practice is associated with the Rinzai school (kanna
Zen), however koans have also been used, both in China and Japan, in the
Soto school (mokusho Zen).  To begin with, koan practice prevents a
student from falling back after a first enlightenment experience...into
'everyman's consciousness'...; beyond that, it helps the student to
deepen and extend his realization."  

_Dictionary of B and Z, p. 117.


"Why is it, then, that Ch'an masters encourage their followers 'to eat
when hungry' and 'to sleep when tired' but drew the line at 'Have sex
when feeling randy'? - especially in light of this exchange in a text
attributed to Bodhidharma, The Grand Patriarch of Ch'an.  Bodhidharma
states emphatically, 'Lay people as well as monks and nuns are
intrinsically Buddhas, and if they see into their natures they become 
enlightened.'  A puritan Buddhist objected, 'Lay people still engage in
sex, so how can they attain Buddhahood?'  Bodhidharma's rejoinder: 'Once
one sees into his or her nature, sexual desire is perceived as
essentially empty, and one no longer delights in it as purely physical
pleasure.  However, even if one continues to indulge in sex, it is
performed as a function of Buddha-nature, free of attachment."

_Lust for Enlightenment, p. 89.


"In 845 there was a brief but vigorous persecution of Buddhism by the
Taoist Emperor Wu-tsung.  Temples and monasteries were destroyed, their
lands confiscated, and the monks compelled to return to lay life. 
Fortunately, his enthusiasm for Taoist alchemy soon involved him in
experiments with the 'Elixir of Immortality,' and from  partaking of
this concoction he shortly died.  Zen had survived the pesecution better
than any other school, and now entered  into a long era of imperial and
popular favor.  Hundreds of monks thronged its wealthy monastic
institutions, and the fortunes of the school so prospered and its
numbers so increased that the preservation of its spirit became a very
serious problem.

"Popularity almost invariably leads to a deterioration of quality, and
as Zen became less of an informal spiritual movement and more of a
settled institution, it underwent a curious change of character.  It
became necessary to 'standardize' its methods and to find means for the
masters to handle students in large numbers.  There were also the
special problems which arise for monastic communities when  their
membership increases, their traditions harden, and their novices tend
more and more to be mere boys without natural vocation, sent for
training by their pious families.  The effect of this last factor upon
the development of institutional Zen can hardly be underestimated.  For
the Zen community became less an association of mature men with
spiritual interests, and more of an ecclesiastical boarding school for
adolescent boys.

"Under such circumstances the problem of discipline became paramount. 
The Zen masters were forced to concern themselves not only with the way
of liberation from convention, but also with the instilling of
convention, of ordinary manners and morals, in raw youths.  The mature
Western student who discovers an interest in Zen as a philosophy or as a
way of liberation must be careful to keep this in mind, for  otherwise
he may be unpleasantly startled by monastic Zen as it exists today in
Japan.  He will find that Zen is a discipline enforced with a big stick. 
He will find that, although it is still an effective way of liberation
at its 'upper end,' its main preoccupation is with a disciplinary
regimen which 'trains characater' in the same way as the old-fashioned
British public school or the Jesuit novitiate.  But it does the job
remarkably well.  The 'Zen type' is an extremely fine type - as types go
-  self-reliant, humorous, clean and orderly to a fault, energetic
though unhurried, and 'hard as nails' without lack of keen aesthetic
sensibility.  The general impression of these men is they have the same
balance as the Daruma doll: they are not rigid, but no one can knock
them down.

"Still another crucial problem arises when a spiritual institution comes
into prosperity and power - the very human problem of competition for
office and of who has the right to be master.  Concern for this problem
is reflected in the writing of the Ch'uan Teng Lu, or 'Record of the
Transmission of the Lamp,' by Tao-yuan in about 1004 [e.v.].  For one of
the main objects of this work was to establish a proper 'apostolic
succession' for the Zen tradition, so that no one could claim authority
unless his satori had been approved by someone who had been approved...
right back to the time of Buddha himself.

"Nothing,  however, is more difficult than establishing proper
qualifications in the imponderable realm of spiritual insight.  Where
the candidates are few the problem is not so grave, but the process of
teaching and testing requires standardization.  Zen solved this problem
with a remarkable engenuity, employing a means which not only provided a
test of competence but - what was much more - a means of transmitting
Zen experience itself with a minimum of falsification.

"This extraordinary invention was the system of the kung-an (Japanese,
koan) or 'Zen problem.'  Literally, this term means a 'public document'
or 'case' in the sense of a decision creating a legal precedent.  Thus
the koan system involves 'passing' a series of tests based on the mondo
or anecdotes of the old masters.  One of the beginning koans is
Chao-chou's answer 'Wu' or 'No' to the question of whether the dog has
Buddha nature.  The student is expected to show that he has experienced
the meaning of the koan by a specific and usually nonverbal
demonstration he has to discover intuitively."  

_The Way of Zen, Watts, pgs. 103-105.



TANTRA IN CHINA: TAOISM

"In the West, just as the division into sects has often been accompanied
by a release of energy, so has the combination of sects (not unlike
chemical reactions).  But once again nothing comparable has happened in
the recent history of Chinese Buddhism, perhaps because little energy
can be expected from combining things that are already closely
interlocked.  The same applies to Buddhism's relationship
with...Taoism....

"...Organizationally [Taoism] was a separate religion.  Not even the
most simple-minded peasant could make a mistake about this, for Taoist
monks wore their hair in a top-knot, whereas the Buddhists were shaven. 
But there was a mutual borrowing of gods and rites, in which the Taoists
probably owed more to the Buddhists than vice versa, particularly with
regard to the monastic system.  This  would help to explain why Taoist
monks were allowed to stay...in the wandering monks hall even at model
Buddhist monasteries.  They knew how to conduct themeselves when they
attended devotions, when they took their meals in the refectory, and
when they sat in the hall for reciting buddha's name.  What they recited
themselves was not necessarily the name of any buddha."

_The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, p. 401.


"For the non-abstract mind, the least unsatisfactory way of visualizing
the Chinese concept of creation is as a kind of multidimensional weather
map, with constantly varying channels of atmosphere pressure, air
currents flowing, colliding, and recoiling, cloudes teased out into
whisps of cirrius, fluffed into slow-moving cumulus, or towering into
thunderheads.  And weaving an erratic vapor trail through them all,
powered as if by a serious of spectral gear wheels, the force known as
ch'i - the vital essence, the breath of life - whose path is the Supreme
Path, the Way, Tao.

"The key feature of this Chinese perception of the world, as of the
weather map, is movement, unevenness, undulation.  All the elements are
in a continuing state of advance or retreat.  When one thrusts forward,
another must fall back.  When one contracts, another expands.  There is
no active without a corresponding passive, no positive without a
compensating negative.

"Until the middle of the first millennium B.C. these ideas remained
vague, understood but unexpressed.  Then the divination manual, the
I-ching (the 'Book of Changes'), named the passive force yin and the
active yang and described how they meshed together to propel the ch'i
along the Supreme Path.  'The interaction of one yin and one yang is
called Tao, and the resulting constant generative process is called
'change.''

"The philosophy that grew around the concept of the Way was known as
Taoism, and its adherents believed (and still believe) that long life
and happiness, immortality even, would result if instead of being
subjected to the artificiality of tightly structured societies man could
learn to live in perfect harmony with nature.  To achieve this, it was
necessary for each individual to aim, in his or hier own existence, at
the same harmonious interaction of yin and yang as was responsible, in
nature, for energizing the ch'i, the breath of life, and to learn how to
strengthen both elements as, in nature, they were strengthened by
contact with, and absorption of, each other.

"The opposing yet complementary foces of yin and yang could be observed
in many natural phenomena.  The moon and winter were both yin, the sun
and summer yang.  When the sexual parallels came to be drawn, woman -
despite a common misapprehension not only in the West but sometimes in
China itself - was classified not as pure yin but as 'lesser yin,' and
man, similarly, as 'lesser yang.'  It was a recognition of the 
psychological truth that there is an element of active yang in even the
most passive woman and of negative yin in even the most positive man. 
The associated belief that, in both sexes, the subsidiary element fed
and strengthened the principal one was to play a crucial role in the
development of Taoist and indeed all Chinese views on sex.

"Since it was the exercise of the mind and will that has led humans
astray from the natural Path, the disciplines that led back to it were
ncessarily disciplines of the body.  One of the most important of these
was, of course, sex, whose relevance was easy enough to explain without
recourse to too much obscure symbolism.  It took  little effort of the
imagination to recognize that sexual intercourse was the human
equivalent of interaction between the cosmic forces of yin and yang,
even when the parallels were drawn not in the direct fleshly sense of
vagina and penis, but more subtly as yin essence (the mosture
lubricating a woman's sexual organs) and yang essence (man's semen).

"The sexual disciplines of Taoism were easy to understand and, within
limits, pleasurable to follow, but others required a more positive
approach, a deliberate dedication.  This was not because they were
mysterious in themselves.  Indeed, few modern doctors asked to prescribe
a regimen for a long and healthy life would find much to argue with in
the basic Taoist program - regular exercise, balanced diet,  good breath
control, sun therapy, and a full sex life - although for the final item
on the list, the elixir of immortality, they would probably substitute
its twentieth-century successor, the vitamin pill.  When the
requirements of yin-yang harmony were grafted to such a program,
however, most of the disciplines ceased to be simple either to perform
or to understand.

"The whole philosophy of Tao, in fact, became at an early stage so
abstruse, so inextricably linked with the mysteries of divination, that
only the most committed student could hope to progress beyond first
principles.  The real problem was that although the basic concept could
be perceived without very great difficulty by means of instinct or
intuition, it was resistant to the constraint of language.   Words,
except for the true adept, only too often made nonsense of it.  'Being
is Non-Being and Non-Being is Being... The Real is Empty and the Empty
is Real....'  Partly as a result, diagrams, calligraphy, painting and
sculpture - whose meaning did not have to be filtered through the
rational mind - became a characteristic philosophic-religious device. 
Whereas a Renaissance painting of the Virgin and  Child, or the Last
Supper, or the Crucifixion, illustrates only a fragmentary part of the
whole of Christian belief, a thirteenth-century Sun landscape conveys
the entire philosophic harmony of yin and yang.  This this same harmony
could also be conveyed by frankly erotic representations of sexual
intercourse was a bonus for Taoists who were low on artistic
sensibility.

"The Tao Masters lived and thought on a level too rarefied for the
common man, their dissertations as unrelated to the mind of the
'average' Chinese as those of modern theologians to the once-a-month
Western churchgoer.  On the level of ordinary life, as a result, the
convoluted, sophisticated philosophy of Taoism was transformed into a
magical creed whose followers abandoned reason in favor of faith.  But
just as the Fathers of the early Christian church helped to shape the
attitude toward sex of  the whole Western world, so the Taoist Masters
helped to shape that of the Chinese.  Just as the European of early
medieval times knew, without quite understanding why, that sex was
sinful but occasionally permissible, so his contemporary in China knew,
without quite understanding why, that sex was a sacred duty and one that
he must perform frequently and conscientiously if he was to truly
achieve harmony with the Supreme Path, the Way, Tao.

"Since sexual intercourse was one of the main highways to heaven there
was no reason to remain silent about it.  Quite the opposite, even if
normal Chinese reticence on personal matters often had the effect of
excluding it from general conversation.  This scarcely mattered, for it
was the Chinese who produced the world earliest known, most
comprehensive, and most detailed sex manuals.  Many  Westerners even
today would regard these as pornographic, but pornography is a matter of
cultural conditioning.  To the Chinese they were serious works,
seriously designed to educate their readers in the manner of achieving
yin-yang, woman-man, harmony.  Since they were Taoist in conception and
Taoism was a yin creed, calm, flexible, intuitive, they were intended as
much for the woman as for the man, and indeed were frequently given to a
bride before her wedding."

_Sex in History, by Reay Tannahill, pgs. 165-170.

"The ideal, according to the handbooks, was for the man to prolong
intercourse for as long as possible; the longer he remained inside the
woman, the more yin essence he would absorb.  He must also, without
fail, rouse her to orgasm, when her essence reached maximum potency.  To
the Chinese, uniquely, a woman's orgasm was no less important to the man
than to herself.

"But there is an important qualification.  There was little purpose in
strengthening the man's yang essence if he promptly squandered it by
himself reaching climax.

"The basic way of avoiding this, said the Master Tung-hsuan (who is
believed to have been a seventh-century physician), was as follows.  At
the last moment, 'the man closes his eyes and concentrates his thoughts;
he presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, bends his back, and
stretches his neck.  He opens his nostrils wide and squares his
shoulders, closes his mouth, and sucks his breath.  Then [he will not
ejaculate and] the semen will ascend inward on its own account.'  What
the Master recommended, in effect, was a few moments' powerful
discipline.

"As well as this method of coitus reservatus, the Chinese used coitus
obstructus.  It was described in _Important Matters of the Jade
Chamber_.  'When, during the sexual act, the man feels he is about to
ejaculate, he should quickly and firmly, using the fore and middle
fingers of the left hand, put pressure on the spot between scrotum and
anus, simultaneously inhaling deeply and gnashing his teeth scores of
times, without holding his breath.  Then the semen will be activated but
not yet  emitted; it returns from the Jade Stalk * and enters the
brain.'  What this method achieved, in fact as distinct from theory, was
diversion of the seminal fluid from the penis into the bladder, from
which it would later be flushed away with the urine.  It was a kind of
coitus interruptus and had the same contraceptive effect; in fact, it
was used for birth control purposes in later times by Turks, Armenians,
the islanders of the Marquesas, and the sophisticated nineteenth-century
commune founded by John Humphrey Noyes at Oneida, New York."

[* - 'Jade Stalk' was one of several Chinese synonyms for the penis, and
the reference was not, of course, to green jade but to the more
precious, creamy-colored 'white' jade.  Other synonyms were Red Bird,
Coral Stem, Heavenly Dragon Pillar, and Swelling Mushroom.  A woman's
sexual organs might be The Open Peony Blossom, Golden Lotus, Receptive
Vase, or The Cinnabar (or Vermillion) Gate.] 

_Sex in History, pgs. 170-171.


"In alchemy the pairs of opposites are at first antagonistic and later
unified through the 'work', but in Taoist alchemy the antagonism is not
stressed so much as the interaction and co-operation of the two
principles, male and female, sun and moon, spiritual and temporal
powers, red and white, sulphur and quicksilver.  Nor did Chinese alchemy
employ the symbolism of gold to the same extent as other branches of the
work.  Gold with its associations with money and commerce, was
considered vulgar and beneath the notice of the scholar and outside the
range of interest of  the Sage; the Chinese alchemist originally
belonged to the scholarly and cultured class.  It was longevity and the
elixir of immortality that chiefly engaged their attention.  Alchemy is
essentially initiatory and so its ideas are in line with the normal
practice of Taoism, which presupposes the transmission of esoteric
knowledge from master to pupil and a discipline of meditation and
contemplation.  A sharp distinction must be drawn between the mystical
alchemy of the scholar, working on an entirely spiritual plane, and the
debased alchemy which appeared later in the hands of an ignorant
priesthood whose 'alchemy' was largely indistinguishable from magick,
spiritualism and shamanistic practices.  It is more than likely that
decadent Taoism borrowed from these ideas and magical rites direct  from
shamanism, since 'the notions of the 'herb of immortality', of animal
and vegetable substances charged with 'vitality' and containing the
elixir of eternal youth, as well as myths concerning inaccessible
regions inhabited by immortals, are part of a primitive ideology going
far beyond the confines of China.'  The ignorant and foolish
misunderstood the 'work' of alchemy and looked for the making of the
material, instead of the spiritual, riches or 'wealth'.  These mistaken
and stupid people were called 'charcoal burners' by the genuine
alchemists of the West, and 'blowers' in the East.  They laboured under
the delusion that the work was material, that lead could be turned into
solid gold instead of into the pure gold of effulgence of spiritual
enlightenment.  The transmutation sought was, in fact, that  of man
himself from his 'base' metal or leaden state into perfection of the
light symbolized by gold, a purely inner work of transformation.  The
immortality, the 'changing skins' sought in the elixir was
enlightenment, realization of the Tao, changin from one state to
another, passing from death to life, 'from the unreal to the real', that
'out of darkness one may go forth into light'.  The old, ignorant nature
must be dissolved and transmuted into the new man; this is the 'chaotic'
state of alchemny in which dissolution takes place within the sealed
vessel, often symbolically egg-shaped, and is employed in Taoism to
represent the state of return to the undifferentiated attained in
mysticism in the abolition of duality and the return to the Tao.  Here
it is of interest to note that, in China, the butterfly is the  symbol
par excellence of immortality, having, between states of earthbound
caterpillar and etherial butterfly, gone through a process of complete
dissolution before rebirth into the winged state of freedom."

_Taoism: The Way of the Mystic, by J.C. Cooper, pgs. 89-90.


"Today Taoism is either a metaphysical and spiritual method, as
expounded by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, by which one can guide one's life
and seek enlightenment, or it is, amongst the people, a decadent mass of
superstition.

"After the life of a founder and his immediate followers, the first
purity of a doctrine suffers at the hands of those who have found the
teaching too hard or too austere and who seek to turn it into an easier
way.  Mankind is naturally lazy and looks for something more easily
understood or which can be manipulated to suit its tastes.  Lao Tzu's
teaching of the Tao was, as he said, inexpressible in any case, and the
ideas of self-emptiness, the void, wu-wei and the emphasis laid on pure
being were too metaphysical and intellectual a standard for the
understanding and taste of the average man who prefers the familiar
terrain of moral codes and creeds.

"Decadence set in after the Sung Dynasty when, under the Wei, those who
professed Taoism developed a nihilistic attitude, abdicated from the
world, draowned their disillusionment in wine and formed a school of
artists, philosophers and poets known as 'the Seven Sages of the Bamboo
Grove'.  They were men of keen wit, but who lacked, in their egoistic
renunciation, the balance of the true Sage.  Taoism fell graduallly from
the sublime metaphysics of a noble and spiritual culture to the  lowest
form of popular superstitions and beliefs in all manner of gods and
demons.  From being non-theistic, it developed a vast pantheon of gods
and tood over decadent Buddhism's pantheon as well.  It catered for the
innate superstition found in human nature and so beloved by it, so that
the pure teaching of union with the Tao fell into the crude cult of
longevity and personal immortality.  Decadence sought to prolong the
physical life instead of renewing the spiritual.

"The element of distortion and exaggeration must always be present in
decadence, so from having no Heaven and Hell, both were established with
all their most lurid concomitants.  The supernatural became wholly
divorced from the natural.  Pure alchemy descended into the hunt for
drugs of 'liberation', the use of which is always symptomatic of
decadence, both spiritual and physical.  Instead of mastering his own
nature, the Taoist, now a priest and magician, set out to master the
forces of nature.  He claimed that he could, literally, ride on the
backs of dragons and fly on  cranes, symbolic of the messengers between
gods and men.  All tehse were physical interpretations of that which had
once been the symbol of the liberated mind and powers of the spirit,
just as the Taoist sword-juggler of the theatre and market-place was the
denerate form of the symbol of the knife-bridge or ladder of the
perilous and difficult passage to enlightenment.  The magician
concentrated on levitation, walking on waters, immunity from burning by
fire, and generally sank into shamanism, complete with mediumistic
communication with the dead, witchcraft,  demonology and all the
extravagances of extreme psychism.  The body was cultivated, not to use
it as an aid to the spirit, but in order to preserve it for the maximum
number of physical years.  Indeed, at the conquest of China by Mongols
under Genghis Khan, the decadent Taoist priests found themselves in
complete accord with the shamanistic beliefs and practices of the
conquerors and attached themselves to teh new dynasty in considerable
numbers."

_Taoism: The Way of the Mystic, pgs. 93-94.


-------

Tagi Avidhyasambhava Nagashiva, Templar, Regent and Anarchist (TANTRA)
Shiva of the Dragons, who sacrifices all that is born of ignorance
                                       who is a Temple of living flesh
                                        who rules in absentia and
                                         who absents rulership.