When someone is born in this body, doesn’t life continue until death?
Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them,
we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop.
Working hard until the end of his life,
unable to appreciate any achievement,
worn out and incapable of resting,
isn’t he a pathetic sight?
He may say, ‘I’m still alive,’ but so what?
When the body rots, so does the mind – is this not tragic?
Is this not ridiculous, or is it just me that is ridiculous and everyone else is sane?
If you allow your mind to guide you,
who then can be seen as being without a teacher?
But if you ignore your mind but insist you know right from wrong, you are like the saying,
‘Today I set off for Yueh and arrived yesterday.’
This is to claim that what is not, is;
That what is not, does exist
why, even the holy sage Yu cannot understand this,
let alone poor old me!
I’ve been downloading and reading through the Ancient Taoist book called by the author’s name, Chuang Tzu, sometimes called the ZHUANGZI–Anglicized Chinese words become essentially guesswork. (It’s complicated.) At Harvard, the had us reading the most famous book to Westerners: Lao Tzu’s TAO TE CHING. But Grandmaster Chen Zhonghua, who essentially embodies the tradition of Chen Practical Method Taiji, told me differently.
The TAO TE CHING is “Philosophical Taoism.” Chuang Tzu is Taoism. It is irreverent and funny stories; it is deep and paradoxical Philosophy; it is poetry; AND it is Alchemy.
Westerners do not understand ALCHEMY: ALCHEMY is Spiritual Transformation. We (they) think of Alchemy as “pseudo-science;” a fake prequel to Chemistry. It is not. We (they) think Alchemists tried to manufacture gold cheaply by using furnaces in a lab. They did not. Some believe that Alchemists tried to make the “Elixir of Immortality,” which would grant immortality in the flesh. Maybe.
The traditional academic notion of Taoist Alchemy is that it is folk superstition, degenerated from ideal Philosophical Taoism of TAO TE CHING. We do not agree. Grandmaster Chen, who grew up in Chia and was taught by a genuine Taoist Sage as a child, teaches that the Alchemical Tradition was earlier. That Lao Tzu’s TAO TE CHING is an intellectual abstract of a real, living practice, that goes back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, perhaps wanders down and into the corridors and caverns of prehistory.
We actually do Taoist Internal Alchemy when we do Chen Zhonghua Practical Method Taiji; I do actual Taoist Internal Alchemy when I do Chen Zhonghua Practical Method Taiji. I call it Chen Zhonghua Taiji, because other schools call themselves Taiji but are not the Authentic Tradition, handed down from the very Family and Village that founded Chen Taiji. GM Chen is the 19 Master in an unbroken chain of masters tracing back to Taiji’s origins.
The line I like best is when it goes, “Is this not ridiculous, or is it just me who is ridiculous and everyone else is sane?”
David Fekete 