THE GOAL OF VARIOUS TAOIST PRACTICES

Ch’ang-sheng pu-ssu Chin., lit. long-living, nondying; immortality, the goal of various Taoist practices. Immortality can be either physical or spiritual. The idea of physical immortality goes back to the very beginnings of Taoism and its attainment is the aim of most schools of religious Taoism (tao-chiao). The followers of the alchemical School of the Outer Elixir (wai-tan) strove to become immortals (hsien) by swallowing various life-prolonging substances. Other practices for attaining physical immortality were abstention from eating grain (pi-ku), various breathing exercises, gymnastics (tao-yin), meditation, and certain sexual practices (fang-chung shu). A person who is physically immortal ascends to Heaven (sheng) in broad daylight or dies in appearance only; when his coffin is opened, it is found to be empty (shih-chieh). The philosophical Taoism of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu strives for spiritual immortality, i.e., enlightenment and the attainment of oneness with the highest principle (Tao) a state in which the distinction between life and death is dissolved and yin combines with yang. The followers of ihe inner elixir (nei-tan) also strive for spiritual immortality. Spiritual immortality implies not only freedom from life and death but also from time space and sexual identity; for that reason immortals may be depicted as either male or female.

Common immortality symbols found in Taoist inspired art are a crane, a gnarled staff of wood, pine trees, peaches (Hsi wang-mu), the mushroom of immortality (ling-chih), the god of immortality (Shou-lao, San-hsing), etc.

It may be difficult to determine which type of immortality a particular school or practice strives for, because many texts employ esoteric terminology that can be interpreted either way. Even some passages in texts of philosophical Taoists such as Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu can be taken as pointing toward physical immortality: descriptions of places such as K’un-lun or the isles of the immortals (P’eng-lai, Ying-chou, Fang-chang), which are considered to be dwelling places of immortals, can be understood either abstractly or concretely. Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, the first Chinese emperor, organized several albeit unsuccessful expeditions with the aim of discovering the mysterious isles of the immortals and obtaining the draught of immortality. Some commentators consider such passages to be descriptive of a spiritual journey into the center or essence of man.

This ambiguity applies to alchemical texts in general; e.g., followers of the inner elixir (nei-tan) may employ the language of Outer Alchemy (wai-tan) to describe processes of consciousness. In the early stages of Chinese alchemy the inner and outer methods for achieving immortality were coexistent and of equal importance until ca. the 6th century C.E. when immortality increasingly came to be considered as being of a spiritual nature; instead of trying to manufacture a pill of immortality from gold, cinnabar, and other chemical substances, alchemists were almost exclusively concerned with developing the inner gold, the golden flower, the sacred embryo (sheng-t ‘ai). By the 13th century C.E. the Outer Elixir School had faded into insignificance, although its language continued to be used. The followers of the Inner Alchemy despised those who tried to attain immortality by the transmutation of chemical substances. The influence of Buddhism above all, Zen-decisively contributed toward the spiritualization of the search for immortality, so that ancient alchemical texts were consistently interpreted in accordance with the teachings of the Inner Elixir School.

In the search for immortality specific sexual techniques played an important part in many schools of religious Taoism and were practiced in public (ho-ch’i) from the 2d to the 7th century, when they were forced to retreat to the private domain under the pressure of Confucianist morality but continued to be performed as a preliminary to Taoist meditation.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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