![\"Shen-Body-wht\"](\"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Shen-Body-wht-768x1024.jpg\")
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The Daoist idea of body is quite different than the common Western notion of a material bag-of-bones inhabited by a singular soul.\u00a0 The character for personal body (shen, \u8eab) indeed shows a pregnant woman and is a homophone for the word spirit, suggesting the notion of the body as an abode for spirit.\u00a0 Daoists however see \u201cbodies\u201d as circuits of energy proceeding through time.\u00a0 In addition to our personal body, Daoists also recognize other bodies within which we live and cultivate \u2013 namely, the familial body, the communal body, and the universal body.\u00a0 As Laozi indicates in Dao De Jing Chapter 54, meditation & qi-cultivation is not just a personal practice.<\/p>\n
Our personal body (\u8eab) comes into being at conception \u2013 it is born, grows, matures, declines, and ultimately dies.\u00a0 We can discuss it in terms of jing, qi, & shen (\u7cbe\u6c23\u795e) \u2013 a bundle of channels condensed into form.\u00a0 We inherit yang channels from our paternal ancestors and yin channels from our maternal ancestors, and they combine together to form a unique person of mixed bloodlines.\u00a0 Our personal channels form a closed-circuit within which is \u201cinside\u201d and without which is \u201coutside\u201d.\u00a0 While this personal body exists in the moment, Daoists also see it as extending through time like a dragon \u2013 the entire story of the body is the body.\u00a0 The unbroken thread of our body extending from conception to death is our personal dragon-body.\u00a0 From this perspective, anything we do remains ever a part of our personal body.\u00a0 Per Laozi, cultivating our personal body \u2013 really staying with our experience \u2013 brings about authenticity (\u771f\u5fb7).<\/p>\n
Our personal body is but one small expression of a larger body called the familial or ancestral body (\u5bb6).\u00a0 Daoists view our familial body as a single body with countless physical expressions and intertwining bloodlines running through time.\u00a0 The body of our bloodline past, present, & future.\u00a0 This body has a certain essence (jing, \u7cbe) shared by blood-relations that governs our personal appearance, capacities, and health.\u00a0 As we become familiar with our own jing, we come to know our ancestors.\u00a0 Normally in the West we identify with our physical body and may share some feeling with parents, siblings, cousins, and a few generations upward, but we often don\u2019t feel much connection to the countless generations that came before.\u00a0 It\u2019s interesting to communicate with people from Asian cultures or Native Americans who feel a much stronger connection to their ancestors.\u00a0 I\u2019ve even spoken to fifth-generation Anglo-American farmers who speak of their family four generations back in the first person.\u00a0 These folks are living more in their ancestral body.\u00a0 From this perspective, we can see why traditional Chinese appear to worship their ancestors \u2013 they are attending to this larger body that serves as the basis of our personal body.\u00a0 Per Laozi, cultivating our familial body brings about plentitude (\u9918\u5fb7).<\/p>\n
Another body is the tribal or communal body.\u00a0 Laozi breaks it down further into village body (\u9109) and national body (\u570b) \u2013 the idea is belonging to communities at varying scales.\u00a0 It could be a club, gang, team, political party, church, or sangha.\u00a0 Daoists don\u2019t always form \u201chorizontal\u201d communities in the sense of Buddhist sanghas or Christian churches but do hold strongly to a \u201cvertical\u201d sense of communal connection between mentors & disciples or lineage ancestors & descendants.\u00a0 We each belong to many communities \u2013 our nation, friends, colleagues, etc. \u2013 so we exist in numerous communal bodies.\u00a0 Members of a communal body share an energetic resonance (qi, \u6c23).\u00a0 Per Laozi, cultivating our communal bodies brings about longevity and abundance (\u9577\u8c50\u5fb7).<\/p>\n
Our universal body (\u5929\u4e0b) is all-inclusive, containing all worlds & creatures past, present, & future.\u00a0 When we cultivate from the perspective of this body, we see beyond our personal considerations and also tend to loosen our family identification and community affiliations. \u00a0This lightens up the passion of the \u201cus & them\u201d mentality often bred by tribalism.\u00a0 This body relates to the spirit (shen, \u795e) that pervades all worlds & creatures.\u00a0 Per Laozi, cultivating our universal body brings about all-pervasiveness (\u666e\u5fb7).<\/p>\n
In the context of meditation & qi-cultivation, our mentors share their views, methods, & qi with us, resulting in a transmission that transforms the vibrations of our personal body, which in turn affects our familial body and other communal bodies.\u00a0 If our familial body is like water (jing\/shui), then our communal body is like wind (qi\/feng) \u2013 the qi-resonance we share with our community.\u00a0 Spiritual traditions tend to be either tribal or universal in nature.\u00a0 Martial and ritual\u00a0traditions in particular tend to be quite tribal.\u00a0 The tribal feeling is the power of the communal body.\u00a0 It gets interesting if we practice with multiple cultivation communities.\u00a0 If we are receiving subtle qi-transmission then the vibrations of the different communities will cross paths with one-another and create a resulting compound.\u00a0 We may find ourselves in conflict, as different communal bodies may be at odds with one another.\u00a0 Daoist magical traditions place great importance on the power of the communal body and sometimes prohibit members from participating in other practicing communities.\u00a0 My most inspiring teachers however had a distaste for tribal identification.<\/p>\n
Certain methods of meditation & qi cultivation draw upon personal, ancestral, or communal energies for support and transformation.\u00a0 Laozi\u2019s wuweidao accepts the presence of these bodies but does not emphasize any of them.\u00a0 Laozi\u2019s method of sitting meditation, which we refer to as Zuowang, means \u201csitting & forgetting\u201d \u2013 we forget our personal, familial, and communal bodies as we dissolve into the universal body.\u00a0 The term Zuowang comes from Zhuangzi, who said: \u201cDropping the body and dismissing concepts, leaving appearance and removing knowledge, merging with the Great Pervasion \u2013 this I call sitting & forgetting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buddhism emphasizes the importance of \u201cleaving family\u201d if we want to attain enlightenment \u2013 this view reflects Shakyamuni Buddha\u2019s original gesture of abandoning his wife & baby in his pursuit of truth.\u00a0 Thus, monks leave their family, cut their hair, avoid having sex, receive a new name, and wear only monk\u2019s clothes.\u00a0 This pointed shift cuts off family influences to cultivate the Buddhist communal body in pursuit of the universal body (Dharmakaya).\u00a0 Although the tradition of leaving family eventually made its way into Daoism, from a Daoist perspective, it is not really possible to cut off our family body \u2013 our ancestors are present in every cell in our body \u2013 so our cultivation is less a matter of transcending our familial body and more a matter of helping our ancestors relax into Dao.<\/p>\n
Thus in Laozi\u2019s practice we let our bodies be what they are.\u00a0 There is no need to emphasize any of them or deny any of them.\u00a0 We don\u2019t need strong tribal affiliations or to be tribeless loners.\u00a0 We don\u2019t need to strongly identify with our family or leave them.\u00a0 We don\u2019t need to develop or avoid personal gongfu skills.\u00a0 When we open up into the universal body, we see the context of self, family, and community.\u00a0 And when it comes time to act, we do so in the appropriate body \u2013 when hungry we eat, at the holidays we return home to family, and we participate as appropriate in our various communities.\u00a0 All within a universal context.<\/p>\n
Most Westerners seem to approach meditation & qi-cultivation only from the perspective of the personal body \u2013 but from Laozi\u2019s perspective, this approach is incomplete.\u00a0 Accomplished Daoists may or may not have remarkable personal attainments \u2013 the image of the Daoist gongfu master is a limited image of Daoist fruition.\u00a0 Swelling our personal gongfu may starve our other bodies \u2013 it alone can be no lasting accomplishment.\u00a0 Fruition in Laozi\u2019s practice means letting all of our bodies proceed as natural expressions of Dao.\u00a0 Our personal body grows, matures, declines, & dies; our ancestors continue through our children until the end of the line; our teachers continue through our students until our tradition fades; our universal body continues rebirthing itself in perpetuity.\u00a0 How do we ensure the full and proper expression of each of these bodies?\u00a0 To do so properly is way too complex \u2013 impossible to do of our own effort.\u00a0 Like producing a child or converting food into conduct.\u00a0 Better to not pro-actively take on the task but rather simply observe as nature continuously informs our next move \u2013 this is Laozi\u2019s wuweidao.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Daoist idea of body is quite different than the common Western notion of a material bag-of-bones inhabited by a singular soul.\u00a0 The character for personal body (shen, \u8eab) indeed shows a pregnant woman and is a homophone for the word spirit, suggesting the notion of the body as an abode for spirit.\u00a0 Daoists however … Continue reading “What is Our Body?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1046,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/1046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}