Taoist Story
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and the Door to All Wonders are about how to cultivate Tao in our life with Te in order to achieve spiritual immortality. By the final stage, one must have attained a clear and unwavering state of spiritual will in order to be successful.
In the original manuscript that I received, a ‘story’ appeared near the beginning of the first chapter in the section entitled Communi-cable Tao. In hindsight, I would now characterize it as a symbolic representation—an allegorical presentation—of a concise sum-mary of the essential concepts (an abstract) of Door to All Won-ders. However, my first few attempts at reading this arcane par-able and other statements and passages in the manuscript left me feeling exasperated and frustrated because there was not suffi-cient supporting information. Consequently, I had to try to guess the meanings intended. As it turns out, Huang told me after I que-ried him, “The story is the result of my twenty-years searching, as we all do in each and every stage of life’s journey. Naming is the power of man, after being capable of ejaculating a spirit inside the
womb.” In this section, we will share some of the interesting back-ground information that he has given me—plus, more snapshots of experience from the lives of both authors. I moved the ‘story’ into this Introduction, at the end of this Taoist Bone section—to be close to the discussion and background related to it.
In our communications, I referred to it as the story of the Just-Born-Baby and Just-Deceased-Old Man. Like myself, many West-ern Taoist practitioners and readers do not have a meaningful sense of the “Chinese experieance’--a different cultural reference and way of thinking. Nor is one likely to be acquainted with other factors in Tao Huang’s personal life experience.
Inventing the Story
In response to my queries, Tao replied, “That parable story, Just-Born-Baby and Just-Deceased-Old Man, is about spiritual will. The related Chinese character would be Taoist Bone. The nature of Taoist Bone is about our inherited gift from God, through the mani-festation of body and mind. The only way to open this bone is the enlightenment upon death. The bone, by the way, contains all the genetic information of the body and mind.
“Therefore, it is this Taoist bone coming again and again in the flesh form, which is announced by the birthing blood and the bat-tling blood. Are we not batbat-tling with each and every breath for this blooded bone—whether our name, a conscious concept, or the cosmic mapping? Therefore, the battle of our life is the battle be-tween blood and bone. We see the woman’s blood either after the moon or after giving birth. Likewise, we see the blood in the man’s battle or in the man’s consciousness—we see the cosmic dance between love and seeing*, between voice and word, and between country and flag.
“It is such: my spirit-channeling story is as strong as a country or lineage, and is as strong as a woman’s identification with her blood. It is to this bloodline that spirit is aligned and God conscious-ness is mapped.
“After spending twenty years of searching the love within my body and the will granted by God—called nature’s supply in Chi-nese or gift from God in English—I cannot find anything that is valuable inside related to a country’s territory or man’s words. God is nameless and Tao is nameless.
“A couple of days ago when I turned on NPR [National Public Radio], a female reporter was speaking on the radio from Chechnya, in western Russia, saying that she could not understand why the majority of women were pregnant there. That phenomenon is how the dead soldiers are being reincarnated into flesh again. That is the bloodline between man’s battleground and women’s body. The blood never gets dried up, but circulates from flesh to flesh, love to love and spirit to spirit.
“What are we doing in Taoist tradition? We carry on the will of blood. It is the same with every career and profession and makes no difference in the matter of race or culture or nation—or even time for that matter. We are the blood flowing animals and we carry the will of the Cross or Tao and Te on our shoulders and through our feet.
“If not because of this blood, where are the passion and fire and stream of flow in life? If not because of the will, what is our connec-tion to the inner and outer world, between ourselves and universe?”
*Editor’s Note: The above word, ‘seeing’— in the context of “in the man’s consciousness, we see the cosmic dance between love and seeing”—carries a significant heightened sense of experience.
In the mental process and experience of people that share a vi-sual-image-based written language system, such as Chinese and Japanese, there is a consciousness phase that is different from sound based writing systems. There is a visual mental process that is a unique pre-verbal stage of consciousness.
James Legge, in his Translator’s Preface (written in 1882) for his translation of I Ching, Book of Changes, elucidates this special quality of ‘seeing’: “The written characters of the Chinese are not representations of words, but symbols of ideas, and the combina-tion of them in composicombina-tion is not a representacombina-tion of what the writer would say, but what he thinks. … When the symbolic characters have brought his mind ‘en rapport’ with that of his author, he is free to render the ideas in his own, or any other speech, in the best manner that he can attain to. … In the study of a Chinese classical book, there is not so much an interpretation of the characters em-ployed by the writer as a participation of his thoughts—there is the seeing of mind to mind.”2
Spiritual Will
“The story of Just-Born-Baby and Just-Deceased-Old-Man is also a reflection of the door—the life connection of birth and death, the consciousness dividing into lineages and races and nations. It is what you will take.
“We must be the slaves of God. To be a slave is to be Job in the Book of Job. We have been enslaved since birth, having work to do and taking pilgrimages. So above, so below; in order to be a mas-ter, first slave. It is all your decision to take your own path, to devote your own love. How to consume your Chi of love is how to be the slave of yourself and of God at the same time. But sadly speaking, we are double slaves—the slave of God and the slave of man. In order to reach a spiritual state, the death of gov-ernment/flesh and the death of religion/soul are a must, called two deaths in Christianity, Crucifixion and Resurrection.
“One more word on slave: It is true that for the entire Taoist path of internal liberation, we are our own boss and slave in the same body and mind. But in order to reach a complete liberation, work must be done, and karma must be dissolved. Otherwise, we would be still controlled by all realms of shadows—the shadows of col-ors, cultures, lineages, nations and races. The word ‘will’ is of spiri-tual will, like a steadfast rock of Peter, continuing the path of Christ love. It is this will that connects and relates all.”
Background of Developing the Will to Live
“I was born at approximately nine p.m. on the third day of October 1962, in the Chinese calendar. It was the 30th day of October on the western calendar. I was the third child of my mother and the fifth son of my father. My father’s first wife left three sons after her death. The period of 1958 to 1960 was an extremely precarious time in the countryside where we lived. Few children were being born at the time. There was so little food that few parents were inclined to have another mouth to feed. In my birth year, however, there was a great leap in the birth rate, as the previous year had been rich in harvest, and China had no debt to pay to Russia.
“At the time, my family in Northwest China was beset by great poverty, as most families were. The climate in our region, which lies in the central part of China in the heart of the central plateau, was quite inhospitable. Because of our difficult situation, severe malnutrition and poor housing, children were very prone to dis-ease.
“I weighed less than four pounds at birth. My father, who was a relatively well-educated person and served as a secretary to the local community, did not wish to see my mother with more bur-dens than she already carried. He suggested she put me inside the “kang” to burn in the fire. My mother told my father, “I cannot do that—the baby is life.” This was how she saved me. She told me this story when I was a teenager, and my first reaction was to feel very indignant toward my dad. My anger lasted no more than a few hours, however, as I came to understand that my father had acted as any poor peasant would have under the circumstances.
“After completing college, I was told by relatives that, out of his dozen grandchildren, my grandfather had loved me the most. When I was one or two years of age, he would hold me as I napped and take me on long walks. After two or three hours of walking, we would arrive home and I would awaken. My brothers and sisters would envy me my good luck as the recipient of this special act of love.
“In honor of my mother, I want to say that she gave me all the love she could, but that did not help to improve my poor physical condition as a child. I felt desperate and helpless. I recall that when I had bouts of diarrhea and fever, she would take a bowl of cold water and stir it up with three pairs of chopsticks. Following this she would swing the chopsticks around my head both clockwise and counterclockwise. After that she would turn toward the East, take the water in her mouth and spit it out on the ground. As she swung the chopsticks before my face, I would become calm and peaceful, and immediately feel the heat from the fever in my body subsiding. I still recall in my body memory that cool flow of water and the loving warmth of my mother.
“In winter, when a severe cold would set in, the atmosphere became very dry. Our hands and feet would wrinkle and blood would seep through the skin. My mother would put a bowl in the center of the room to collect the urine of the night. At dawn, the urine would be boiled and she would massage it into the skin of our hands and feet. It was a very effective remedy. In Chinese medicine, urine – especially a baby’s – is still regarded as a valuable remedy for many ailments, particularly abdominal problems.
“When I return to the body-memory of my childhood and village, a deep sense of helplessness and despair overtakes me. It is not difficult to relive the sensation of pervasive hunger. We were never
certain of our next meal. At times there was no water to drink.
Under these conditions, your body shrinks and dries out. Simulta-neously, there is a deep sense of acceptance, of knowing how nature rules.
“In hindsight, I realize that the lesson was to detach from every-thing, to have no expectations, and to accept what life offered. It helped me set aside personal goals and desires, and to follow the path that was revealed to me. The only permanent feature of life is change; this is the essential meaning of the I Ching. Only by un-derstanding change can one follow it and thereby release any at-tempt to control a situation. Changes in nature are ruthless and merciless. We, the people on the yellow plateau, cannot now—
and could not then—control and manage nature, even though Mao’s slogan, ‘Man must overcome Heaven’ was incessantly and loudly trumpeted into our ears.”
Master Chia’s Life, Different but Parallel
On the point of urine remedies in Chinese medicine, if I may inter-ject, there is a parallel in Master Chia’s life that influenced his early disposition towards a life of healing and of teaching the Tao. He began his life in Bangkok, Thailand, as a healthy baby of Chinese parentage. He was born in dramatic circumstances during World War II when American pilots were bombing Japanese targets in the Bangkok area. His parents, being devout Christians, reasoned that the Americans wouldn’t bomb a Christian church; so they went to their church to ensure a safe and secure delivery of their baby, Mantak.
As a young child, he was a very healthy boy in Bangkok’s Chinatown. Though he was raised in a devout Christian family and was surrounded by the influence of Thailand’s pervasive Buddhist culture, he also thrived in an environment of Chinese Taoist cul-ture. He was a healthy boy, and he was frequently asked to pee in a jar so that neighbors could use it as medicine when they were sick. After awhile, he began to think, “I must be special.” He felt proud that he could help people get well. From these early begin-nings, he cultivated his knowledge of natural ways to live a healthy life and to help others to heal.
While still working successfully as the sales manager for Gestetner Company’s Thailand head office in Bangkok, he opened his Natural Healing Center where he applied his skills for healing.
In the late 70’s, he moved to New York City where he had intended to market a Chi machine (a Chi generator for enhancing the body’s Chi) that he had invented. But, the American public didn’t know about Chi; so, there wasn’t a market for this health aid. However, while plying his healing arts in a health clinic in New York’s Chinatown, he was later ferreted out by eager American students looking for a teacher of Taoist practices. The rest is history.
Quest for the Secret Code
Tao Huang continues, “There were two other books that I borrowed from the college library. One was the I Ching, and the other was The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud (Chinese trans-lation). At the beginning of the Chinese Revolution, the I Ching had been forbidden reading. It was considered by the government to be a reflection of a pernicious feudal culture and a poisonous, conser-vative Confucian heritage. I had an unwavering desire to gain a thorough understanding of the I Ching, which was considered by the people to be one of the great treasures of China. It had always been valued as the foundation of Taoist Cosmology, and as the origin of Chinese traditional wisdom.
“To my disappointment, the study of the I Ching left me feeling very confused. I was unaware at the time that throughout Chinese history, the interpretation of this work had provided an ideological battleground for commentators. It had been the subject of a deep-seated conflict in the vision and worldview of Taoist practitioners and Confucian scholars. The Confucian interpretation focused largely upon linguistic explanation and analytical understanding. The Taoist version centered on practicality, on understanding natural events, and deepening one’s conscious process. I was becoming aware of the fact that the Taoist view of the universe and of nature, as well as of human relations and Chinese science, was at the very root of Chinese civilization. Conversely, Confucian ideology had served, since very early times, as a principal instrument of the feudal order.
“I also realized that as Confucian culture had become domi-nant, the Taoist worldview and its theory on nature-related prac-tices had often been viewed by rulers as dangerous, weird, and obscure, despite its contributions to science, medicine and other areas of Chinese culture. I had been quite unaware of the extent to
which the Taoist worldview had been systematically repressed by the establishment, nationally as well as locally.
“I also began to understand that in the Taoist tradition, the I Ching was considered a sacred book. It was understood to contain a secret code that would awaken human consciousness. It served to reveal one’s true destiny, and provided a key for transforming and enriching the life force we inherited from our ancestors and our parents, as well as the energies of heaven and earth. This view of life as a process of self-transformation—an inner journey—was rooted in the view that human beings are a microcosm that re-flects the energies of the macrocosm. In the Taoist view there is no limit to the self-cultivation of one’s intrinsic creative and spiritual potential.
“The Interpretation of Dreams had been declared taboo during the Cultural Revolution. It was viewed as a perverse product of Capitalism. In traditional Chinese culture, dreams had always been considered vital to predicting future events, collectively and per-sonally. Freud emphasized the significance of dream interpreta-tion as a means to understanding the present in light of the past. In his view, a key role was played by the libido. Obviously, the Chi-nese Communist establishment refused to see that its own taboo on sexuality and puritan attitudes were not so different from those reigning in Europe at Freud’s time, especially in Vienna.
“Initially, I was quite attracted to Freud’s views. They opened for me a whole new world, giving me a sense of freedom in the face of my puritan culture. Yet I also realized that there was a kind of ob-session in Freud’s ideas. When I undertook my undergraduate stud-ies in psychology at Cleveland State University, I grew more and more dissatisfied with his position. I concluded that it reflected a pathological state in the elite of his time, which he then used as the basis for his views on sexuality. In my graduate studies at the Cali-fornia Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, I realized that my major objection to Freud was that his view on sexuality was highly reductive. I cannot deny, though, that his teachings provided income for psychology professors. I became very uncomfortable within the academic environment for that reason.
“My Chi Kung practice and its healing effects contributed to my changed attitude towards Freud. This shift was also dramatically
“My Chi Kung practice and its healing effects contributed to my changed attitude towards Freud. This shift was also dramatically