– Stephen Eskildsen
Wang Zhe, in Chongyang zhenren jinguan yusuo jue, outlines as follows the relationship between body and mind and between physical practices and mental discipline:
Only the Single Numinous [Nature] is Real. The body of flesh made of four elements (earth, water, fire and wind) is provisional. Borrow and refine the provisional to complete what is Real. Move and combine and become one. A lesson says that [the methods that deal with] the ease and comfort of the present body are of the Lesser Vehicle. But all such methods are the roots of the Greater Vehicle. The Dharma mind of the initial ground is the Lesser Vehicle that bears fruit to create the Greater Vehicle. The Lesser Vehicle is the root, and the Greater Vehicle is the stem. A lesson says that the stems and branches rely on each other. The stems rely on the roots and are thus born. Practitioners of nowadays do no understand what the body acquires its Nature and Life from and how it got to be born. A lesson says that everybody is not separate from what is created by the yin and yang. You must rely on your father’s semen and mother’s blood. These two things are the basics of your body. People nowadays who train themselves all do not cherish their father’s semen and mother’s blood. They waste and scatter their real qi and damage their primal yang. Therefore they have aging, the aging have diseases, and within diseases, they have death. For the practitioner to always be pure and still is the fundamental method of the Greater Vehicle. Those who want to practice the Greater Vehicle must begin by seeking and following the Lesser Vehicle.
Wang Zhe thus endorses the simple cultivation of purity and stillness as the only true way toward recovering the Real Nature and gaining eternal life. This is the Greater Vehicle. However, this inner serenity needs to be built upon a foundation of sound physical health. This foundation is built through the more complicated physical practices of the Lesser Vehicle. Wang Zhe sometimes seems harshly critical of the various physical practices, referring to them as ‘small methods of subsidiary schools’ (pangmen xiaofa). The seeming inconsistency occurs because the various discourses of Wang Zhe address different audiences and situations. Some of his followers perhaps tended to content themselves with pursuing the petty details of physical exercises, failing to attain true inner purity and stillness in the process. Others probably suffered health problems that hampered their spiritual progress.
It appears that the Quanzhen School and the larger internal alchemical movement maintained that it was by his or her mastery of the body and its energy that an accomplished internal alchemist could be deemed superior to his or her Buddhist counterpart after his or her liberation from the body. The liberated Radiant Spirit was deemed capable at will of assuming a clearly visible form with solid, corporeal properties. The liberated Buddhist adept, on the other hand, was said to become nothing more than a yin spirit incapable of appearing before mortal eyes or exhibiting corporeal traits. This belief is clearly reflected in a legend about Lu Yan, recorded in Chunyang dijun shenhua miatong ji. There we are told of an alleged occasion where Lu Yan and the spirit of a prominent, deceased Buddhist monk visited a home where a vegetarian feast was being held. Lu Yan was fed immediately by the hosts but had to ask for another serving for the Buddhist spirit, whom the hosts were unable to see. Lu Yan ended up eating both servings himself, since the Buddhist spirit was incapable of eating his.
This concept also is discussed in Dadan zhizhi. In one passage, ‘Qiu Chuji’ alludes to methods of active imagination allegedly used or endorsed by prominent brethren for bringing about the final liberation of the Radiant Spirit from the body:
This method is called ‘refining the body to merge with the Tao, abandoning the shell to ascend to immortality.’ This method has no [specific] time [for carrying it out]. Clearly it has five methods. Master Haichan (Liu Cao) [used the method of] the crane rising to the gate of heaven. Amid stillness (trance), he made his Real Nature – in the manner of a crane rising to the gate of heaven – exit outward. Naturally, he got to have a body outside the body. Patriarch Wang [Zhe], the Twelfth Realized Man of the Western Mountain, said ‘In the manner of a blooming tree, exit amid stillness. In the manner of a blooming tree, gaze back without error. Your Original Nature will have already come out, and naturally, you will divide your form outside your body’. The Yellow Emperor exited in the manner of a fiery dragon.
Amid stillness, he transformed into a fiery dragon and jumped up, and naturally, he had a body outside the body. This is called the ‘pure and clear Dharma body’. The two Realized Men, Zhong Quan, and Lu Yan used the red tower to exit. Amid stillness, they climbed the three-storied red tower stage by stage. After climbing to the top, they leaped and naturally abandoned their shells.
This passage is followed by some commentary (anonymous):
What is described above is ‘the Exercise of Refining the Spirit and Merging with the Tao, Abandoning the Shell, and Ascending to Immortality’, which arrives at self-so-ness. As for Buddhist monks who enter into samadhi and die while seated in meditation, and Taoists who enter into stillness and this send out yin spirits, these [spirits that they let out] are [nothing but] ghosts of pure vacuity and are not pure yang immortals. They are distantly faint with no appearance and in the end have no place to go to. Why do people who study [the way to immortality] make these mistakes’ They especially do not understand that pure yang qi is born after the essence is refined and made into an elixir? After you refine the qi and complete the Spirit, the Realized Numinous Divine Immortal transcends the ordinary and enters into sacredness. You abandon your shell and ascend to immortality, and this is called ‘transcending and escaping’. This is the method of divine immortals that has not changed for a hundred million years!
Shortly later on in the text, ‘Qiu Chuji’ himself says:
Generally speaking, if you have a body, you will have suffering. If you have no home, you will have no attachments. In the past and present [wise men] all say that arduous effort arrives at non-action. How can [one who has arrived at non-action through arduous effort] bear to love his body and not leave it’ Thus he abandons his shell and ascends to immortality by coming out from the top of his head. Refining his Spirit, he transcends ordinariness and becomes an immortal. People of the world do not like to cultivate and refine but only want to abandon their shells and thereby complete the way of immortality. How mistaken they are! With their bodies in a dark room, they sit still, eliminate their thoughts, and forget ideas without allowing outer surroundings to enter and inner surroundings to exit. They are like withered trees, and their hearts are like dead ashes. Their spirit-consciousness protects the One inside, and their minds are not distracted. Amidst their Samadhi, they let out their spirits which are but yin souls. Dark and without appearance, they are not pure yang immortals.
The essential point is that no matter how thoroughly one has mastered mental methods of trance, one can only produce a feeble yin spirit if one has not trained the body and its qi – this in fact is a mistake that Taoists, as well as Buddhists, tend to make. Thus anxious as one may be to leave the body and this dusty world, one must not do so hastily, before both body and mind have been sufficiently trained. The full freedom and power of the immortal Spirit cannot be recovered without the proper care and training of the body.