Tai Chi, Baguazhang and The Golden Elixir: Internal Martial Arts Before the Boxer Uprising

by Scott Park Phillips

The Daoist practice called Sitting-and-Forgetting, Zuowang, is a pre-requisite for learning the Golden Elixir because the elixir spontaneously arises out of it. Zuowang contains the conditions for beginning the elixir and for completing it. Zuowang is also the base or fundamental experience underlying a long list of Daoist practices.[319] There are many different types of meditation. They are not the same, and they are not interchangeable. Sitting and forgetting is a posture. The fruition of holding this posture is a non-conceptual experience of stillness. It is the grandparent of the Zazen practice of the Soto School of Zen Buddhism, which Suzuki Roshi called “Beginners Mind.” By putting this non-conceptual experience into words, I am limiting it, defining it, constraining it, and shaping it. That points away from the experience itself, so I will not try to explain it further. This type of non-conceptual stillness practice is highly accessible. It requires being still, and the Daodejing, with commentary, can be studied and chanted as a guide to experiencing its fruition.

Way back in the Ming Dynasty, the first two years of Chinese medical training included the study of the Golden Elixir.[322]

The Golden Elixir is a re-ordering of perception-action. Perception and action can never be separated. They always exist together. But the way they are ordered can change. The Golden Elixir is a process for leading action with imagination and integrating that experience so that it becomes automatic.

The more still you become, the more obvious it is that stuff is still moving.

In Chinese cosmology jing and qi are normally mixed together because shen is unconsciously moving qi all around, inside and outside the body. In clearer English, the automatic imagination keeps the physical body and what animates it mixed together.

imagination: see in hear in feel in?

When jing and qi have completely separated, the physical body (jing) is pure, quiet, empty—like a puppet.[329]

flesh hanging off the bones

Neigong is a description of a particular golden-elixir fruition—strength which moves in towards the center. That process can also be called purifying jing because once there is no longer any intent in the body there is also no qi mixed with jing, so it is pure. In stillness it is sometimes called congealing jing. It is also called making the immortal embryo because the yolk (jing) is distinct from the white (qi). There are many other ways to describe it, which is part of the reason people get confused.