Chapter 18 Chapter 17 Yoga and Alchemy

Su Dongpo once said, "There is no one who is not strict but can be enlightened."The liberation of Buddhism and Taoism begins with the self-discipline of the mind.To obtain spiritual tranquility (which Buddhists believe is liberation), one must first overcome emotions such as fear, anger, and sorrow.During Dongpo's stay in Huangzhou, he began to study Buddhism and Taoism, which added luster to his subsequent ideas and works.He plunged into the mysteries of the soul.He asked himself, how does one achieve peace of mind?Both Indian yoga and Taoist mysticism propose specific mind control methods, which can stabilize emotions and improve physical health. In the future, there may even be the possibility of immortality.Su Tungpo believed in the immortality of the mind, but what about the immortality of the body?He gradually became interested in the way of longevity.The immortality of body and mind cannot be separated, because the body is just a stinky skin no matter how you look at it. If the mind is carefully cultivated, it will throw off its temporary body and soar into the spiritual world.In addition, physical immortality has at least one feasible goal, which is to prevent aging and prolong life in the first place.

The so-called Longevity Technique includes many important items, goals and principles in yoga, Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese medical traditions.The effect is divided into two aspects of body and mind.Physically, it is to seek health and rosiness, strengthen organization and vitality, and eliminate chronic diseases; spiritually, it is to establish a stable mind and emotion, and relax the power of the spirit.A simple life with the help of some traditional Chinese medicine can rejuvenate the old and enjoy a long life, which is naturally integrated with the Taoist art of immortality.Simply put, this art is called "health preservation" and "alchemy". "Dan" is divided into inner and outer sides; "inner alchemy" is the qi of the dantian that Taoists want to refine, and "outer alchemy" is a kind of elixir sought by Chinese alchemists. If you eat it, you can ascend to heaven, and you may be able to ride a crane to it.The most important element of Waidan is amalgam.In this regard, longevity and alchemy are completely confused.Same with European alchemy.Of course, for philosophers, if people can live long and healthy and have gold to spend, ascension to heaven is the next best thing.What else can man ask of God?

Su Dongpo's younger brother practiced yoga before him. According to Ziyou's records, it started as far back as the second year of Xining (1069).He learned from Daoist Li, who once blew "qi" into the belly of Dongpo's second son and cured him of his illness.Ziyou went to Huaiyang to send his elder brother to Huangzhou, and Dongpo found that his face was rosy, and he had a new look.Ziyou was sickly in childhood, indigestion in summer, cough in autumn, medicine and stones were not effective.Now he said that he breathed deeply according to the yoga practice, concentrated his attention, and his body has recovered.After Dongpo arrived in Huangzhou, in addition to diligently reading Buddhist scriptures, he also recuperated in a Taoist temple for forty-nine days, starting from the winter solstice in the third year of Yuanfeng (1080).We can see from his "Anguo Temple Records" that he practiced meditation in Buddhism.On the other hand, he closed his view of Tianqing, which must be for fasting and deep breathing.Strange to say, although this system was introduced from India by Buddhist monks, it is more developed in Taoism than in Buddhism.At the same time, he wrote to the prefect of Wuchang, asking him for the prescription of cinnabar. In one poem, he also said that he set up a separate room in Lingao Pavilion for the alchemy furnace.

His letter to Wang Gong best expresses all aspects of cultivation: Indian yoga has been absorbed by Chinese Taoists far more than Chinese Buddhists. The reason is very simple.Although Buddhism has Zen, which specializes in meditation, it is a mixture of Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism.But Taoists have a natural background in absorbing yoga.Taoism emphasizes natural contemplation; it simplifies the needs of life to achieve peace of mind, especially the pursuit of eternal life. In Taoism, we find a few words to persuade people to concentrate, meditate, and even "introspect in the heart". These are Hinduism features.Even if we admit that these passages were added by later generations, it will be around the third or fourth century at the latest.

No sect so closely interweaves religious and physical training.Yoga teaches people to achieve religious mystical understanding by controlling the body and mind.This ranges from controlling reflexes and involuntary muscles to unlocking deep spiritual powers.The benefits can be divided into physical and mental aspects. Due to the adoption of certain postures and the control of breathing by meditation, believers reach a spiritual state. First, the perception of everything in the universe gradually disappears, and finally the mind completely loses the sense of subjective and objective opposition and enters a complete vacuum. state, feeling ecstatic bliss.Yoga disciples admit that this blissful vacuum is only temporary.There is no permanence except death; yet this trance-like bliss is too pleasant.They all want to revisit it as many times as possible.Both Indians and Chinese who practice yoga now think that their bodies are healthier than before, their minds are calmer, and their emotions are more balanced.Chinese practitioners sometimes don't know that yoga is called yoga, but use Buddhist and Taoist terms such as "meditation", "introspection", and "meditation". "Peacock posture", "fish posture" and other strange postures that distort the body were naturally rejected by Chinese literati, thinking that it was too hard, and Su Dongpo only used comfortable postures. This can also be regarded as the contribution of the Chinese to yoga.

We are not interested in general yoga techniques, but specifically talk about the yoga training described by Su Dongpo in the sixth year of Yuanfeng (1083).He read a lot of Buddhist and Taoist classics, and often discussed with Taoist monks.Following his younger brother's example, he began to pay more attention to breathing and mind control.He loves the elixir of life, but even if this goal is not achieved, good health and peace of mind are good enough.We must remember that although the Chinese concept of health preservation is the same as that of the West in principle, it is different in practice.The Chinese feel that we shouldn't be playing, chasing, and expending energy.This violates the way of keeping in good health—maintaining energy.Yoga proposes the most acceptable physical and mental maintenance method for Chinese people, because the essence of yoga is rest, planned and conscious rest.It not only teaches people to control breathing on time, adopt a resting posture, but even wants to eliminate the unavoidable spiritual activities that we will inevitably have while sitting on the sofa.The whole effect of yoga, in simple, non-technical terms, is to try to think less, to think less, and finally to think nothing at all.The final realm is of course the most difficult.Focus on one point first - this is hard enough, because the mind will naturally go from one thought to another related thought.However, this is only a low-level stage. It is further to concentrate on one thing to reach aimless contemplation, and finally to reach the state of trance-like happiness.

The characteristic of yoga is to allow the body and mind to rest completely, while controlling breathing and increasing oxygen uptake, the two complement each other.This is the most ideal way. With a relaxed stomach, a completely relaxed posture, and deep breathing, the body will surely get excess oxygen; but there is no need to waste energy.Sports are different.Therefore, it is not inconceivable that the mind can feel the internal functions of the body when the whole family practices at night.For in the last stages the mind leaves the body and becomes a spectator.In the more subtle stages the mind even wants to observe itself for a moment in the gap between thought and thought.In the end, there is no thought in the mind, and the subtle atomic matter can be perceived, and the general concept of individual and self can be eliminated. This stage is analyzed differently by various religions.One way of saying is the unity of the individual soul and the world soul, which is the goal of all practices in Hinduism, but no matter what the religion says, the yoga mentality is similar to sleep and self-suggestion, but the mind is fully aware of its own existence, can control reflection, and practice meditation. The practitioner remembers exactly what happened in this state.

Su Dongpo described his own practice experience, revealing many characteristics of yoga.He controls his breathing, his pulse beats about five times as one cycle, and the ratio of inhalation, stop and exhalation is 1:2:2.The longest time to stop breathing is "close one hundred and twenty times and then open, the lid has been closed for more than twenty breaths", according to the standard of Hinduism, it is about 144 seconds.Like a yogi, he counted his breathing circles, saying that for a while his breath control—the rule of ratio of inhalation to exhalation—was completely automatic.In terms of concentration, he fixes his thoughts on the tip of his nose (nasalana), which must be yoga.He also described a feeling that yoga is famous for, the total rest of the mind combined with the sharpening of inner awareness, he felt the vibration from the spine to the brain, and the growth of hair in the hair follicle all over the body.Finally, he described the state of happiness and the benefits of spiritual balance brought about by this exercise in "Health Preservation".

In terms of spirituality, his practice is also yoga.He wrote a note to his brother describing the goals of orthodox yoga meditation.He believed that the true apprehension of truth, God, or the world-soul was the result of disengagement of sensory perception, a state of not seeing anything but seeing nothing: So far as I know, Su Tungpo brought a purely Chinese quality to yoga.He not only removes big movements such as bending the waist, bending the legs, and bending the neck in yoga, but also adds pure Taoist physiological experience such as swallowing saliva regularly.He wrote a letter to Zhang Fangping, introducing his practice method, the content is as follows:

Swallowing is based on the following physiological inferences, which are closely related to the Taoist cosmology of the five elements.It sounds incredible to us.Believers of this cosmology think it makes sense.In his most incomprehensible prose "Continued Health Theory", Su Dongpo explained the profound theories of the ancients that "dragons come out of fire" and "tigers grow in water".Su Dongpo believes that we consume energy at any time in two ways: one is fire, including all emotional interference such as anger, love, and sorrow; the other is water, including sweat, tears, excrement and so on.According to Taoist cosmology. "Tiger" represents fire, and "dragon" represents water.The heart controls fire, and the kidneys represent water.Su Dongpo said that fire represents righteousness; therefore, when the human mind controls the body, the behavior is naturally upright.On the other hand, if a person's functions are controlled by the kidneys—including the sex organs in Chinese—it is easy to commit immoral behaviors.The kidneys control the body, and we succumb to all animal desires.As a result, the awe-inspiring spirit of "dragon emerges from the water" was completely destroyed.On the other hand, we succumb to the mood swings of anger.We quarrel when we are angry, stomp our feet when we are sad and disappointed, and sing and dance when we are happy.Once the emotion is excited, the physical strength will be burned by the heart fire, "a tiger is born in a fire".According to Su Dongpo, these two acts of destroying energy are "the way of death".We should reverse the normal functions of water and fire by mental strength.Swallowing saliva is trying to push the heart fire to the direction of the kidneys.

In addition to these, Taoists are also constantly pursuing "Wai Dan", also known as "Fang Shi Dan", which is the elixir of life.Chinese Taoist priests, like European alchemists, have two goals in searching for alchemists, one is to turn base metals into gold, and the other is to restore youth.They, like the European alchemists, also worked with amalgam.Mercury has unique properties—it has a metallic luster and a high specific gravity, which is not much different from gold (the atomic weights are 200 and 197 respectively). It is more fluid than ordinary metals, and it is easy to contact and mix with gold, copper, etc. Transformed into gas, powder and liquid - this element naturally attracted the attention of alchemists in both East and West as the most suitable for counterfeiting gold.It is possible that Chinese alchemy in Su Dongpo's time was mostly influenced by Arabs, as well as in Europe.However, as far back as the Han Dynasty, the Chinese had records of successful gold making. I think it must have been refined from gold alloys.In the fourth century A.D., a Taoist priest named Ge Hong mentioned the art of using the properties of gold and mercury to find the formula of immortality.Ge Hong said: "All grasses and trees are burned to ashes, and cinnabar is burned to mercury. Accumulated changes are returned to cinnabar. It is far away from all grasses and trees, so it can make people live longer." He believes that dan is divided into nine grades, according to There are different effects according to the process of alchemy.The best one can make people "become immortal" in three days, and the worst one can take three years.The raw materials for alchemy are cinnabar, alum, realgar (arsenic trisulfide), magnet and Zeng Qing. He Yun, the author of "Chunzhu Jiwen"—whose father had been recommended by Su Dongpo for an official position—dedicated an entire chapter to the story of the elixir of longevity, which was very popular at the time.Some of the names He Yun mentioned were already known to everyone, and some were relatives of the He family. He had seen one or two things with his own eyes.Both this book and "Su Shen Liang Fang" (a medicine book co-authored by Su Dongpo and Shen Kuo) introduce the method of alchemy.Looking at these stories and formulas, we can get the following impressions.First of all, there must be a "pill furnace".Alchemy is then carried out with mercury, sulfur, copper, silver, arsenic, alloys, nitrates or saltpeter.They may also be working on sulfide gold.Both mercury sulfide (cinnabar) and gold sulfide can be used as red pigments, and various amalgams are also taken as medicine.According to incorrect records at the time, it is said that many Taoist priests had a recipe for turning copper into gold.Someone must have created a purple-red gold compound, cast it into various utensils, and made a lot of money.It is also possible that some Taoist priests spread mercury on copper and circulated it to ignorant people as silver.It is very easy for them to fuse gold and mercury.They also mixed thiomercury and "called it gold," or "dead sulfur." There is a story that a monk actually made pure gold and passed the test of a gold merchant in Kyoto.Judging from He Yun's description, I believe that this Taoist priest refined pure gold from a gold mine.The problem is that the Taoist said that the mine is copper, so the legend of turning copper into gold is so eye-catching.He also performed the alchemy process to He Yun's relatives.He said it was a copper mine, and he did not bring pure copper but copper ore because he was afraid of being stolen during the journey.This ore is heated on fire, but it does not melt.Then he threw a small grain of white powder into the pot, and pure gold appeared. The experience of the Taoist priest is as follows: many years ago, he and two friends decided to part ways, and made an appointment to meet in a certain place ten years later.They want to go out to find "Falun Shidan", and tell their friends the secret after meeting.Found a good recipe, the person who is telling the story now has become a Taoist priest, and has not become a wealthy businessman. The following is what happened: It is even more surprising that the sleeve shop Zhongyun Liangjin also.All the ministers and Mou said, "It is often heard that the Luan family's Jin Si in the capital is the best in the world."If there is no doubt about going to the other city, then the secret art of real immortals is also true."After returning to the capital, he went to the capital and went to the market with ten taels.The Luan family took the gold from his family, which was softer and more purple-flame, and returned with a high value. They lived together in the east guest residence of Xiangguo Temple.Fu Xiangqing said: "I have been poor for half my life, and I am lucky to meet this, so I can cultivate the Tao with peace of mind."If you can't get rid of the vulgarity, you can spend your whole life drinking alcohol and eating meat.Today, we should make a total of one hundred and two points. ' Su Dongpo paid special attention to various mercury sulfide agents.He was careful in his experiments because mercury was considered poisonous.Due to the mystery of the secret recipe, no one knows what the mercury potion contains.According to contemporary records, there was a man who kindly wanted to swallow amalgam in front of the emperor, but died of poisoning; maybe he wanted to take calomel, but swallowed mercuric chloride by mistake.In addition, Taoists also experimented with chemicals such as saltpeter and nitrate; they even extracted lime from stalactites to eat; sometimes "caused ulcers".Su Dongpo himself also ate two kinds of fairy food, Poria cocos and flax.Flax is rich in oil, contains a certain amount of protein, and is slightly nutritious, but I believe that these two things are regarded as "immortal food", mainly because Taoists live on the top of the mountain and have nothing else to eat. The more plants grow in remote areas, and The greater the difference between grains, the easier it is to be regarded as food for immortals. Su Dongpo wrote two notes on alchemy, one is called "Yang Dan" and the other is called "Yin Dan".Yindan is extracted from the milk of a mother who gave birth to a son.Put the milk on warm water and heat it slowly with an amalgam pot, and stir it slowly with a spoon of the same material, and finally agglomerate to make pills.Yangdan is made from urea, which is protein in urine.This protein precipitate has been purified again and again, and finally turned into a white and tasteless powder, and then jujube meat is added to make balls, which are taken with wine on an empty stomach. Su Dongpo was still looking for Fang Shidan when he was old, but he always maintained a considerable sense of immortality.All Taoist immortals pass away; at least they always leave a husk behind, although theoretically they can emerge from the sky, and when no one is around, they can ascend to heaven on a crane, or turn into a crane, leaving only irrelevant corpses.This body is like the dry skin of cicadas and snakes. Their wonderful way of death is called "cicada sloughing".But Su Tungpo wanted to see the truly immortal: Apart from looking for Fang Shidan in vain, I think there is not much difference between the health regimen taught by Taoists and the advice of modern doctors.Forget the idea of ​​pursuing eternal life, what remains is the principles of temperance, simplification of life, moderate work, moderate rest, no worries, and avoiding all kinds of emotional interference.In other words, we always fall back on the guidance of common sense.Su Dongpo extracted four rules of life from ancient books to express his common sense view of simplifying life.A Mr. Zhang asked him the secret recipe for longevity, and he wrote: What I like best is Su Tungpo's common-sense view of moderation and simplicity in his letter to his friend Li Chang: Now Li Chang returned to the capital, and even Wang Gong was pardoned and returned to the north.The emperor deeply regretted punishing the opposition.It is also a great irony of fate that Su Dongpo was about to settle down and live in seclusion happily and live a "light and tasteful" life, but he was suddenly transferred from the place where he lived in exile and was involved in political disputes again.The ants walking against the mill thought that the boulder was not moving now.Unexpectedly, the mill turned again.