Monday, November 22, 2010

The success and failure of internal gazing

The next few chapters deals with success and failure of internal gaze. Sleepy mind everybody knows being a failure. According to the text, the worse situation is fleeting mind in which one will fantasize into ghostly world, again this caution by the text is well warranted, as modern psychiatric studies inform us that those with latent psychological problems might have their problems brought to the surface by a fantasizing mind without external stimulation, as in deep meditation. Care has to be taken.

Success here deals with signs for progress with Taoist meditation (or Taoist yoga). And Taoist writers were very proud of themselves of having definite signs for progress in their practice. Light (bright white light) is usually taken as sign-post for progress (more shall be dealt with in Hui Ming Ying). My personal view is that in actual practice we should take easy with these sign-posts and not to fixate our mind too much into them. I shall discuss these issues when they arise later.

Lastly in Chapter 7, the text mentioned in a passing manner that the feeling of internal gaze should be carried over to daily life. Usually this kind of attitude is more prevalent in Zen meditation, in which the meditative state (or a reduced form of which) shall be carried over to daily activities such as walking, doing daily chores, sitting and resting. For Zen practitioners, it is very important to continue the Zen experience into daily life (as a kind of sign-post for progress actually), where Taoist practitioners (in the past) were more eager to reach the higher level of Immortality quickly.

Modern man certainly likes to carry the Zen experience to his daily life - when nowadays high EQ is much praised. Hence, as a living practice, there are indeed much to be learned from Zen practice.

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