Chapter 40 Meditation and Spiritual Exercise

Generally, people who learn to meditate can be roughly divided into three categories based on their motivation and psychological awareness: (1) Having religious sentiments. (2) Like to explore the mystery. (3) Seeking longevity and health. From the standpoint of meditation, it is not an exaggeration to say that all religious consciousness, magical concepts, and hopes of immortality can all be included in the category of meditation.But no matter what kind of motivation and psychology it is based on, when you start to learn to meditate, you will always be more or less influenced by Taoist concepts such as immortals and alchemy.The main theory of the so-called Taoist elixir is the idea of ​​rejuvenation such as "the human body originally has medicine and medicine".But this so-called medicine.Medicines that are not specific to medicine.In the theory of the elixir of medicine, the medicine is called "outer golden elixir".The outer golden elixir is an indispensable support for some people, or when the practice of meditation reaches a certain situation.However, in terms of the combination of meditation and immortal alchemy, it pays special attention to the cultivation of "inner alchemy".Talking about internal and external golden elixir, it reminds people of Chinese history, many emperors and celebrities wanted to "take medicine to seek gods, but they were mistaken by medicine" and other consequences of self-deception and death.As for the correct content and definition of "Dan", after searching the "Dan Jing" Taoist scriptures, all of them are at a loss, which only adds to the confusion.We put these near-principle theories aside for the time being, and we will discuss them again when we have time in the future.What I want to talk about now is to discuss the theory of "three refinements" of immortal alchemy after the Ming Dynasty, and its relationship with meditation and Qimai.