Daoist reflections from Scholar Sage

314 Pages·4.965 MB·English

by  Mitchell, Damo;Mitchell, Paul(Contributor);Faithfull, Lauren(Contributor);Pinker, Donna(Contributor)

DAOIST REFLECTIONS
SCHOLAR SAGE
FROM
by the same author
The Yellow Monkey Emperor’s Classic of Chinese Medicine
Damo Mitchell and Spencer Hill
Artwork by Spencer Hill
ISBN 978 1 84819 286 7
eISBN 978 0 85701 233 3
Daoist Nei Gong for Women
The Art of the Lotus and the Moon
Roni Edlund and Damo Mitchell
Foreword by Sophie Johnson
ISBN 978 1 84819 297 3
eISBN 978 0 85701 247 0
White Moon on the Mountain Peak
The Alchemical Firing Process of Nei Dan
Damo Mitchell
Foreword by Jason Gregory
ISBN 978 1 84819 256 0
eISBN 978 0 85701 203 6
The Four Dragons
Clearing the Meridians and Awakening the Spine in Nei Gong
Damo Mitchell
Foreword by Ole Saether
ISBN 978 1 84819 226 3
eISBN 978 0 85701 173 2
Heavenly Streams
Meridian Theory in Nei Gong
Damo Mitchell
Foreword by Robert Aspell
ISBN 978 1 84819 116 7
eISBN 978 0 85701 092 6
Daoist Nei Gong
The Philosophical Art of Change
Damo Mitchell
Foreword by Cindy Engel
ISBN 978 1 84819 065 8
eISBN 978 0 85701 033 9
DAOIST REFLECTIONS

SCHOLAR SAGE
FROM
Damo Mitchell and his students
LONDON AND PHILADELPHIA
First published in 2017
by Singing Dragon
an imprint of Jessica Kingsley Publishers
73 Collier Street
London N1 9BE, UK
and
400 Market Street, Suite 400
Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA
www.singingdragon.com
Copyright © Damien Mitchell 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form
(including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether
or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the
written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N
8TS. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of
this publication should be addressed to the publisher.
Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in
both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Mitchell, Damo, author.
Title: Daoist reflections from scholar sage / Damo Mitchell and his students.
Description: Philadephia : Singing Dragon, 2016. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017574 | ISBN 9781848193215 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Taoism.
Classification: LCC BL1920 .M58 2016 | DDC 181/.114--dc23 LC record
available at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lccn.loc.
gov_2016017574&d=BQIFAg&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_
CdpgnVfiiMM&r=VCKr2NBFNTs4O_kp07esGY2J-doQEb4zTq5sCaeXa-I&m=z8QI
IloOwbBlulh1MUhNetaYbucQ9kkYxzPUZn7WdQw&s=KdKE9W9N7SiOE3rElu4L
sR-AzUmeW8Ypj_Ugkz9QtE0&e=
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84819 321 5
eISBN 978 0 85701 274 6
CONTENTS
Preface . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1. The Ding and the Lu (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . . . . . . 11
2. Fire, Water, Dragon and Tiger (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . 24
3. Worms (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4. Talismanic Fu (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5. Mastery of Form: Part 1 (The Sit) (Damo Mitchell) . . . . 41
6. Mastery of Form: Part 2 (The Mind) (Damo Mitchell) . . . 47
7. Chinese Fu Dogs (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . .. . . . . . 54
8. Classic of Breath and Qi Consolidation (Damo Mitchell) . 57
9. Ming Men (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
10. Becoming Christ (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
11. Excitement Killer (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
12. The Fa Jin Controversy (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . . .. . 79
13. Qi Gong, Tantra and Ghosts (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . 85
14. Taijiquan and Evolution (Paul Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . 91
15. On Being a Miserable Bastard (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . 103
16. Transcribed Lecture on Alchemy (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . 109
17. Spinal Fires: Part 1 (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . . .. . . . 120
18. Spinal Fires: Part 2 (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . . .. . . . 131
19. Daoism and Politics (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . . 140
20. Martial Arts – Realm of the Insecure (Damo Mitchell) . . . 147
21. The Pineal Gland and Daoism (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . 151
22. Sung and Energetic Relaxation (Damo Mitchell). . . . . . 156
23. Food Energetics (Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
24. On Meditation and Freedom (Lauren Faithfull) . . . . . . 184
25. The Hun and Symbolism (Donna Pinker) . . . . . . . . . 191
26. The Real Purpose of Training (Tino Faithfull). . . . . . . 197
27. Nature’s Medicine (Seb Smith). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
28. The Five Spirits of Daoism (Roni Edlund) . . . . . . . . . 213
29. Tantric Daoism and Internal Development (Linda Hallett) 219
30. Transcript of a Class on the Kidneys: Part 1
(Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
31. Transcript of a Class on the Kidneys: Part 2
(Damo Mitchell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
32. What’s Going On? (Ellie Talbot) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
33. The Practice of Commitment (Kulsoom Shah) . . . . . . . 250
34. Knee Pain in the Internal Arts (Richard Agnew) . . . . . . 254
35. Yang Sheng Fa: Part 1 (Rob Aspell) . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
36. Yang Sheng Fa: Part 2 (Rob Aspell) . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
37. Alchemy for Men: Part 1 (Tino Faithfull) . . . . . . . . . 276
38. Alchemy for Men: Part 2 (Tino Faithfull) . . . . . . . . . 285
Glossary of Pinyin Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
About the Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
PREFACE
An important aspect of any traditional study is exploration of the
underlying theory. For many practitioners of Daoism this can
seem like a strange statement; this is because it is generally seen as a
purely ‘doing’ tradition. Whilst it is true that all aspects of the practice
must be directly experienced, this should always be supported by the
foundation of our cognitive understanding. In this way our intellectual
mind and our body-consciousness can come together to lead us along
the path of Daoism. This was the original reason why I began to write.
In the beginning I was simply writing for myself, a way of
structuring my thoughts. As I wrote it helped me to crystallise my
understanding of Daoism. This continued for some time until I
naturally moved into writing more publicly. Initially this writing was
in the form of several books, but alongside this the idea for the Scholar
Sage online magazine was born. This was a platform for me to write
about various aspects of Daoism; sometimes technical aspects and
sometimes purely theoretical. As much as anything it was a way for me
to continue writing without being caught up in lengthy explorations
of a single topic as is generally the case when you are writing a book.
With the Scholar Sage project I could jump about from subject to
subject as well as ‘fill in the blanks’ with regards to small pieces of
information that just had no obvious place within a larger text.
The website quickly proved popular and started to grow. On top
of this it started to attract more writers from within the school and
I was pleasantly surprised by two things: first, there were a number
of people willing and able to write for the public and, second, they
really knew their subject! I would like to be able to take credit for
their knowledge due to me being their primary teacher, but actually I
am pretty sure that they are so knowledgeable about the internal arts
because they are highly motivated people who train diligently and
then support this practice with theoretical study.
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8 DAOIST REFLECTIONS FROM SCHOLAR SAGE
The site continues to grow and now includes a video section as well.
It is exciting to see the positive feedback we get from readers who are
happy to have a free source of information. Compared with many other
Eastern traditions, Daoism is still relatively hard to find many writings
on beyond almost incomprehensible translations of classics, which
are only really for those deep in the more advanced aspects of the
tradition.
The only real negative feedback we have received with regards
to Scholar Sage is that many people do not like reading articles on
the screen of their computer. Time and again people have asked us to
produce a hard copy of the articles that they can hold in their hands,
and so here it is: the Scholar Sage book!
What I have done is go through the site and select the most
popular articles from the last couple of years and put them into this
book. The majority of the articles are by me, but there are also articles
written by other teachers in our school as well as senior students. It
is always an amazing thing to sit and read articles by other teachers
and students in the school. The level of effort and passion they have
put into their practice shines out from their writings, as does the skill
level they demonstrate in their chosen arts. I wish I could have selected
more articles from the site as many of them were excellent, but if I
did this the book would end up the size of a phone directory! Instead
I selected some of my favourite articles as well as those I feel give a
good spread of information on the topic of Daoism. Thank you so
much to the other writers in the school who were happy to have their
work contributed to this book.
Please note that the nature of the book means there is a variety of
articles covering different subjects. I primarily tried to select articles
on Nei Gong and alchemy, since this is what most people will have
encountered in my previous writings, but there are also a couple of
articles on martial arts and some relevant to Chinese medicine as well.
In order to try and smooth out any continuity issues in the book I
have gone back and re-edited the articles somewhat. This has been to
minimise any repeated information in the book. As I edited the articles
I also found that I felt the need to add sections to them, so you will
also notice that several of the articles are longer and more in depth
than the version you may have read online at the Scholar Sage website.
On top of this there are a few articles in here that never appeared
on the site.