Chapter 18 Ways to keep your mind at ease

What I want to talk about now is only about the method of "keeping the orifice" and "thinking carefully".For those who learn to meditate, the easiest and most common thing to do is to pay attention to "keeping the orifice".Strictly speaking, the focus of "keeping the orifice" is to focus on the physiological method. In other words, when you start to learn meditation or practice the Tao, you should focus on "keeping the orifice" and start from "keeping the orifice"; In principle, first of all, it is recognized that this physical body is the foundation of Tao.Therefore, as long as he grasps this "orifice" and guards through this "orifice", he can attain the Tao.At least, you can live forever.In fact, what is guarded is the "aperture", and what can be guarded is the heart. Its root is based on the function of psychology. Besides, where is the real "aperture"? Who needs to "guard the orifice"? Which one should be guarded? Which one should not be guarded? These are very big and important issues. Some people say: "One can understand a hundred", so they think that as long as you keep the One opening is enough to attain the Tao. However, the human body has "nine openings": seven openings on the face, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and one mouth, and two openings on the bottom for urine and urine. Just imagine, the seven openings on the upper part are all open , but in the end there are still symptoms such as constipation or urination. So, is it true that "one orifice is connected to all orifices"? If it is said: this orifice is not the other, then there are 108 acupoints in the human body, no matter which orifice is guarded, it will They are all inseparable from the acupoints. Just imagine, if a certain acupoint is blocked, other acupoints are still flowing, or when other acupoints are blocked and a certain main acupoint is flowing, why can’t it achieve "one orifice and a hundred apertures"? Suppose : This hole is not the hole of these acupoints, it is a shapeless, phaseless, and non-positioning hole. This is caused by the psychological conception, and it belongs to the scope of "preservation and imagination", rather than a physical hole that can really exist. I have kept it. However, people who generally learn to meditate or practice the Tao, "keep the orifice" at the beginning.Generally speaking, the upper, middle and lower parts related to the central nervous system of the human body are the main orifices, and they are called the upper, middle and lower three dantians.In fact, the name of dantian only became popular in Taoism after the Song and Ming Dynasties. (The truth about the three dantians has been explained in the article "What are the dantians and chakras" in this book, so I won't go into details here.)