Paths Walked
In very ancient times what is known today as India was culturally split into two halves, the North and South. The South was populated by the Dravidians and Mon-Khmer. The North – old time Grecian Bactria – was populated by a different set of people. The “Southerners” had their own folk or indigenous Sasanas which in those days was something animistic and nature based. Later their Sasanas developed into something called “Shaivism” which the Dravidians practiced, and “Shaktism,” which the Mon-Khmer practiced. The “Northerners” practiced their own “religion” which came to be known as the “Vedic” Tradition. Since earliest times the Vedic northerners disliked the ways and practices of the non-Vedic southerners. The Northerners – from their Vedic perspective – would often call the ways of the southerners heterodox, “evil,” and grotesque. Eventually this would give rise to the philosophical notion of a “right handed path,” and a “left handed path.”
But this notion of a left and right path is not actually unique to Brahminical India. The same basic idea developed independently all the way in China during ancient times. I actually know very little about the Indian notion. But because I have over 100 books on the Chinese version of “left” and “right” path, I can say I know “more” about the Chinese version of left and right handed paths than the Indian version. I also practice the Chinese version; both right and left; in an “amateur” way to supplement my meditative stuff.
As a note, in this entire essay, I’ll be using a more “Eastern” Understanding of “right hand path,” and “left hand path.” Which understanding is or course my own personal grasp of such terms. I understand that there are various different interpretations of these terms according to several different schools of thought in the West. So don’t get asshurt if it sounds like I’m not paying the ‘right’ respects to the left hand path you may be associated with. The ‘left hand path’ as various ONA associates describe is something I actually like and agree with which with it’s focus on Pathei-Mathos, may be more in Harmony to the essence of this essay in the end. These are just words written.
Chinese Taoism
You cannot talk about China without speaking of their indigenous folkish way we in the West call “Taoism.” Except in the West when we say and speak of “Taoism” we only have 30% or a third of the whole folk tradition. This is because in Chinese folk culture, “Taoism” has Three Forms. Each Form really has nothing to do with the other, but are culturally inter-related as a folk Triad.
So the first species of “Taoism” is what we are all familiar with in the West which is called “Philosophical Taoism.” This is the stuff based on Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Q’ing and so on. It’s appealing to hippies. It’s a groovy and psychedelic way of seeing the world. You read the little book and if you agree or even understand the mystical gibberish it expounds you call yourself a “Taoist.”
The second species of “Taoism” is called “Religious Taoism.” In China this second type has no real name or -ism. It’s just their [our] folk culture which has been institutionalized into a coherent body of rites, ceremonies, animistic beliefs, and sectarian observances. This second class of “Taoism” cannot be divorced from the folk culture of its people, because its so intertwined that the two are the same fabric. I guess similar to how Jews are both a group of people and a belief system. This class of “Taoism” is not written in books or bibles. You have to learn the ins and outs from your people and elders.
“Religious Taoism” in China has its own temples and pantheon of folk gods, deities, and spirits. If you have ever physically been to China or Taiwan or Singapore, you will know exactly what I am trying to refer to. It’s the folk cultural “religion” you see all these Chinese people doing. You see them going to temples, burning incense to statues of a handful of gods, offering fruits and ducks and fake money to the ancestors. Shrines are often kept in natural places for the nature spirits, etc. The philosophical ramblings of Lao Tzu plays a minor role here. It is the core or base foundation upon which their religious worldviews are based on. In the knowing that all of nature – which includes us humans – are a part of a Whole Flowing. A Flowing which we must strive to be in Harmony with. And so part of the folk culture of living “religious Taoism” is to strive to somehow live in tune with our natural environment.
From this notion of harmony with the environment and the flow of Chi – life force – you get crazy ideas like Feng Shui. The Feng Shui stuff for some reason made into the West and in places like Orange County is pretty in vogue with the yuppy gentry. Although the feng shui sold and popularized in the West is a Westernized form of it tailored for its market. If you think feng shui – as a Westerner – is crazy, then the real folk tradition of ‘feng shui’ is plain psychotic.
My family is half Chinese. We come from Hokkien and Teochew stalk. My aunt-mom; when she’s telling me stories about her grandfathers; calls them “Ong Ya,” which is how my grandmother calls them sometimes. Ong Ya is actually a Khmerized rendition of a Vietnamese word. I don’t know how it’s spelled. That’s just my phonetic spelling. I also don’t know what the word really means in Vietnamese. But my family seems to use the word Ong Ya to make fun of old men with those really long Chinese goatees. When they see White guys with a goatee, they’ll say: “Look, he looks like an Ong Ya.”
But the Chinese people that made my family came from China a long time ago to Southeast Asia, so after so many generations everybody lost ability to speak Hokkien, but the folk culture is still there. So my family doesn’t know it’s called “feng shui” [they don't call it anything] but they still practice it as a left over element of their folk culture. Which I think is actually really crazy.
For instance my family put me to work or to help out at our family businesses since I was little. One of my chores I did was sweep the shop up in the morning. So I’d take a broom and sweep the junk outside the door. And my aunts would yell and me and tell me saying: “No, no, no! Sweep it back in quick! Wrong way. In the morning you sweep from the door inside. Only at night you sweep from the inside out the door. Sweeping in from the door in the morning brings good fortune for the business. More money. Sweeping out the door in the morning means you’re pushing the money away.” I’d try to argue some “Western sense” into them by telling them that it’s just trash and dust? But they insist on keeping to their old ways.
In a “real” folk Chinese business your aunts and uncles will make you even go out to the parking lot to put a stick of burning incense in the grass or somewhere each morning when the business opens as a way of paying your respects to the “spirits” that guards and lives in the area. This way they don’t disturb your business with bad luck and will instead help your business be prosperous. After you give the stick of incense to the parking lot spirits, you go inside and change the water cup in front of the Fat Buddha to give him fresh water. Then you give him new fruits and cookies [he likes food, can you tell]. Burn your incense, and pray to him to bless your shop. Then there is an extra thing you can do, which the old people like your grandpas and grannies do, which is scatter uncooked rice in the parking lot just in front of the shop. You’ll hear them either talking or praying to the pigeons up on the telephone wire to come and eat the rice in large groups so the customers can also come in large groups.
This isn’t just a “Chinese” thing. You see it done all over the place in Little Saigon here in Orange County. You can tell which shops are run by Vietnamese mixed with Chinese ancestors by the Fat Buddha with the literal piles of food in front of him, the pigeons crowded around the front of the shops, and the many red sticks planted in the ground somewhere. The red sticks are the bottom part of incense sticks that don’t burn. In our folk tradition [Chinese] it’s bad luck to remove those sticks and throw them away. So what happens is that at temples, shrines, and sidewalks in certain places you have a collection of all these red sticks. The Fat Buddha – we call him Preah Ganjai – in the folk cultural religious “Taoism” is an actual deity of that folk tradition. Before he was made a Buddhist Bodhisattva, he and his friend Kuan Yin were indigenous folk “Taoist” deities, and they still are.
In Khmer we call Kuan Yin “Preah Niang Gung See Im” which is the best phonetic rendition I can do. Preah Niang means something like Venerable Lady, or Goddess, and ‘Gung See Im’ or just ‘Gung Im’ is her name. I don’t know how she is venerated in some sects of Mahayana Buddhism, but in the folk culture of “religious Taoism” Gung Im is a sexist deity. It is considered very bad luck for a man to venerate or wear a jade image of Gung Im. She doesn’t like guys. You will never see a Chinese man wear an image of Gung Im, unless they are gay or something. It’s like the same cultural effect as when you walk down a street and you see a White guy wearing pink dangling earrings and bracelets. You can wear those things, but you look like a fag.
In the folk cultural form of “religious Taoism” Gung Im is not for business. She’s some sort of “protectress” of women who keeps you safe, finds you a good mate, helps you be more “fertile” for child baring stuff, helps you have a happy family, protects your children, and helps girls be smart. Or not smart, but more clever than men, so they can’t trick you or take advantage of you. And your elders will say she picks you, not you pick her. When I was in high school I had a weird dream that I was hiking in a forest with lots of trees and Gung Im came out from behind a big tree holding a gold necklace in her hand. I recognized her in the dream as Gung Im, so I knelt and clasped my hands three times at her feet for her. In the dream she spoke Khmer to me telling me that she wanted to give me the necklace. In the dream she requested that I put it on in front of her and to never take it off, and as long as I wear it she’ll watch over me and keep me safe.
While I was putting the necklace on, she knelt by me, looked at me and then told me not to trust men, and told me that I don’t need them [men] for anything, that “girl people” must learn to take care of one another. I woke up and told my aunt-mom who told my grandmother, and the same day they took me to China Town so I can look for a gold necklace that looked like the one Gung Im gave to me. I had the weird dream before I learned from my elders that Gung Im was “sexist” or preferred to work with girls. So ever sense then my grandmother told me to pay homage to her regularly because she “picked me” in a dream. So I have a statuette of her next to my Buddha. In front of her is a silver bowl with water you. You pray to her with a flower and offer the flower to her by placing it into the water. Then you burn your incense for her and spray her statue with perfume. She does pick men sometimes.
Another “folk Taoist” thing is that when you buy or build a house you want to get one with the front door facing the west. I once asked my grandmother why the direction of the door is important. She said a house with the door facing west gives the house and family a cool and calm atmosphere where everybody gets along. A house with the front door facing east is not liked in Chinese culture because it’s believed the house is a misfortune to the family, because the heat of the sun causes a lot of heat and friction in the household. Then the folk stuff also dictates how you arrange your furniture too. You should never have sofas and couches with their back to the front door. This is bad luck for the house and family. It’s said that such and arrangement makes people not like your family. You face your couches and sofas so that when you sit you face the door. Essentially, it’s more inviting that way and the flow of life force hits your face or something. You also should keep vases and things with water near the door. Nobody really knows why. We just do it. We have vases of flowers with water in it, and potted plants which we water around the front part of the house.
Then there is this really weird folk “religious Taosit” thing that is just simply strange and embarrassing. My aunt-mom said she had to do it and that her Chinese elders told her to do it, so I had to do it myself when I was 6 or 7. The folk tradition is that when you are a child and you have a bed wetting problem like me and my aunt-mom did your Chinese elders tells you to go and pray to the spirit that lives in the kitchen stove each night before going to bed and ask it to help you stop peeing in your bed. You actually stand in front of your stove and clasp your hands and pray to it. I really don’t know how a spirit that lives in a kitchen stove has to do with wetting your bed, but apparently it does to Chinese people. It worked though. I have all these cousins who had the same problem and they all also prayed to the stove deity for help. All of a sudden “Taoism” doesn’t sound so cool any more does it?
Left & Right
Then there is the third species of “Taoism,” which is not so well known of in the West, although many of its elements have found its way into the West. The third type of “Taoism” is called “Practical Taoism.” It is neither philosophical or folk religious. It is based on doing and performing certain acts. Most of the books on “Taoism” I have are about this third type exclusively.
This third class of “Taoism” began with Taoist sages, shamans, or hermit who lived on the tops of mountains. Two mountains are famous and well known in this class of “Taoism.” There is Green Mountain of the Immortals, and Wu Dang of the Masters. Wu Dang means Black Mountain, and lends its name to a very well known rap group known as the Wu Tang Clan. You’ll often hear folklore about the “Immortals of Green Mountain,” or the “Masters of Wu Dang.”
In very ancient times folk Taoist shamans removed themselves from society and went to live up in mountains to figure out how to become immortal beings. This is also essentially based on a Taoist way of understanding the universe. Everything is a part of Tao: the Way the “World” flows as one Whole. Therefore if the Tao is eternal, and everything is part of the Tao, then people can embark on a quest to Realize their eternal nature, which is called Immortality.
How the ancient sages did this eventually was split into two methods of attainment: Right Handed practice aka Single Body practice aka Mono Cultivation; & Left Hand practice aka Double Body practice aka Dual Cultivation.
The basic process of achieving Immortality was described by these sages as being “alchemical.” They even used alchemical language by using words for metal and smelting processes to conceal their secrets from the uninitiated. The methods of Immortality back then were a heavily guarded secret veiled in alchemical gibberish and flowery Chinese pictorial symbolism. For instance you’ll hear talk of a “Jade Palace,” a “Jade Stalk,” a “Moon Flower,” the “Midnight Cave,” “Dragon Pearls/Balls,” alchemical stuff like “Sulfur,” “Salt,” and “Mercury,” processes like “Igniting the Salt in the Stove,” “Vapourining” or “Refining” “Salt” into “Sulfur,” turning sulfur into “Mercury,” making the Mercury into “Dragon Pearls,” feeding the “Priceless Pearls” to the “Lotus of a Thousand Petals,” and so on. With these secrets as a background, many of the old Chinese kung fu movies will make more sense. They weren’t just fighting just to fight. They were fighting to steal or protect secret manuscripts that deciphered this veiled language, so their rich benefactor can obtain the secrets of the “Immortal Ambrosia,” to live forever. If you become familiar with the veiled alchemical language of this type of Taoism, and then go reread things like the Emerald Tablets of Hermes or the alchemical works of Paracelsus, things will make a little more sense. Gold is the supreme metal and is Incorruptible. It represents the supreme attainment which is the Incorruptible state of Prenatal Nature, Original Nature, Eternal Nature, or Immortality.
But that notion of Eternal Nature split into two factions. One faction sought to achieve a state of spiritual immortality where they became one with Wu Wei. The other faction sought to attain physical immortality to lord over people as gods. So the former uses what they call ‘right handed’ practice and the latter used what they called ‘left handed’ practice.
The generic term for “the Practice” in this class of Taoism is “Taoist Yoga,” or its Westernized diluted name: Chi Gung. This is were we get things like Iron Shirt chi gung, Diamond Body chi gung, Rainbow Body chi gung, Embryonic body chi gung, Cosmic Orbit, Microcosmic Orbit, Entering the Jade Palace, and so on.
The Shoalin Monks are a good and easy example of right handed Taoist Yoga, or Single Body practice. The end goal is a spiritual immortality, the tool to attain that goal is the Body. The monk uses his own body and learns the secret or esoteric method of mono cultivation where he learns to generate Salt [jing chi], vapourizes it into Sulfur [chi], rises it and purifies it into Mercury [shen chi], from which the Pearl of Great Price is born which is also known as “Dragon Balls,” or “Dragon Pearls.” Have you ever gone to an authentic Chinese restaurant where in the front of the doorway are two lion like animals with their paw on a ball? The creature is or was a [lionine]“dragon” and the ball it guards is the Pearl of Great Price; which in the Western schools may be equated with the Philosopher’s Stone.
The end goal is distant. There are immediate uses of Chi. Like Iron Shirt chi gung. Basically Iron Shirt is when you learn to breathe in chi from the environment with your body. You purify the chi and pack it into your muscles. This way you don’t get hurt when people punch or kick you. There is also Bone Marrow chi gung, which is the same concept, but you pack your refined chi into your bones so as to make them less prone to breakage in fights.
I actually practice the very basic method of chi breathing uses in both of those things. You first learn to “breathe” with our fingers. Basically when you inhale you look at your finger tips and as you inhale visualize air or stuff being sucked into your finger tips. When you exhale you pack the stuff somewhere. If you do this many times, you end up feeling a cool sensation at your finger tips every time you inhale. This method is also called “chi absorption” which has its left hand counterpart. But in the right handed practice you learn to absorb Earth Chi through your feet, Nature Chi thru your hands, and Cosmic Chi via the crown of your head. Then you mix and store all that in “the Stove.” The Stove or “Clay Pot,” or “Crucible,” is a “point” called a Dan Dien roughly two inches below your belly button, and two inches deep. Dan Diens are like nodes in your body made up of your chi meridians and chi network in your body. They are roughly similar to the Indic concept of “chakra,” but not the same thing.
Because of how the right handed method is used by groups like the Shaolin monks, Taoist Yoga of this type is also called “Internal Martial Arts.” This internal martial arts was jealously guarded by schools of martial arts. There was an old unwritten law which say you are never to teach an outsider the esoteric parts of martial arts. This commonly caused Chinese people to be very reluctant in teaching Westerners any kind of martial arts. If they were taught it, only the outer Forms – the moves – were given to them. Form without Essence is Empty. You can use it to fight, but your missing half of the Whole thing. If you want to know what the other half can do, all you need to do is youtube Shaolin monks performing their stuff. One style I know which teaches both the Internal and External stuff in the West is Southern Style Tong Long [praying mantis].
The left handed method to me is more fascinating and interesting. The Goal is literal physical immortality or at least to live a really long life. The tool to attain this goal is your body, but also the bodies of others. Double Body practice or dual cultivation means it involves sex. This method was said to have been taught to the Yellow Emperor by the Dragon Lady, or Dragon Empress. Basically the Yellow Emperor desired to be immortal so he can rule over his realm like a god over men. So the Dragon Empress taught him how to use and absorb chi from his harem of 10,000 concubines. One interesting note with this left handed method is that the sages say that girls over 19 years of age have lost their potent chi, rendering sex with them to be useless in the quest for physical immortality. Another thing to note is that to make chi or refined chi, you need two types of jing chi: Yin Chi the negative charge and Yang Chi the positive charge. When the two charges are mixed together in the Stove they inflame or vapourize each other becoming refined chi. Girls are vessels of yin chi. This means if the Yellow Emperor had a thousand girl concubines and absorbed all of their yin chi, he had better have the equal amount of yang chi or it’s all useless. Boys are vessels of yang chi.
In this method of cultivation, there are many weird and strange ways of cultivating chi from other people. One strange way was to boil the urine of girls until it became salt crystals, and you eat the crystals. But not too much because the crystals have female hormones. Instead you give those crystals to young boys which over time makes them very feminine. Since they were boys with yang chi, and feminized with yin chi, such types of vessels were good for collective both chi you need.
One method of collecting chi in this left handed method is also chi breathing, but with a certain body part. The technique has several “colorful” names such as “Crow’s Beak,” “Crow Pecking,” and so on. Basically you learn to breath with our penis to absorb the chi of the other person. Left handed practice is more easier for girls according to the Dragon Empress, because during sex a girl does not lose anything, whereas a man loses his “stuff.” The Empress goes to say that for a man to be equal to a woman in sexual cultivation, he must learn to retain his semen and not ejaculate, because shen chi is made from alchemically refined semen [or the female equivalent: Moon Flower]. She also says that in such methods of cultivation of chi, if the man does not know what he is doing and the girl knows how to breathe in chi with her cervix, the man becomes the victim. So according to the Empress, in the left handed way of attaining chi, girls are by default superior to men. This must be the case by Nature’s decree because the girl is the one that creates new human beings in her womb. She needs the extra chi saved in her Stove to make the new person. But sexual cultivation is not the only method of collecting your chi.
You also learn to chi breathe with your eyes and hands. The goal is to get to the point where you can point your dragon and tiger points at people, breath in, and literally suck the life force out of them, dropping them dead. You can find your dragon and tiger points on your palm by bending your ring finger to touch your palm, where they touch is roughly the places where your dragon and tiger points are. These points are like channels that can open and close to either release of absorb chi. These points and your pupils are the 4 supreme points were the most chi can be evacuated [projected] or absorbed. In the right handed method in martial arts you would learn to project chi out of your dragon and tiger points and use that part of your palm to strike your opponent instead of a weak fist.
I once read accounts when I was researching on African folk traditions of Juju priests. Juju I suppose is a word meant to speak of folk traditions similar to Voodoo and so forth. I can’t remember what part of Africa the account was from. But the people say that their “Juju” shamans can stare a lion down and make birds fall out of the sky dead by staring at them. In the left handed method, you learn to project your chi out of your eyes to take control of people or you suck people’s chi with your eyes. In the right handed method you incorporate eye chi projection into your martial arts by projecting your chi into your opponent’s head causing them to become confused, dizzy, or to even black out from absorbing their chi.
In the right handed method, you have to find alternative sources of yin and yang chi. Moon light is a source of yin chi. Sun light is a source of yang chi. You learn something called body breathing or skin breathing which is when you are able to breathe in and absorb chi from the environment, moon light or sun light with the entire surface of your skin. This method of skin breathing is also used in special dual cultivation pairs where the pair is of the same gender. Two gay boys going at it doesn’t do anything because they are both yang charged. It’s like rubbing two positive poles of a car battery together. To supplement or balance their overload of yang chi they have to regularly skin breath Moon Light and eat things with yin chi. Then the same goes with a sapphic pair who both have yin chi. They would have to supplement or balance that double dose of yin chi with regular skin breathing of solar light and eating things with lots of yang chi in it, such as onions and red meat. A sapphic pair also does not need sperm to make their Dragon Pearl, although sperm would make it more potent. Instead a sapphic pair can substitute the base alchemical yang salt with something called Moon Flower, which is said to blossom only in the Midnight Cave. The Midnight Cave is just your muff. Moon Flower is a term used to call a post sexual type of vaginal discharge which is milkier and whiter and thicker than the normal clear lubricant. This Moon Flower is said to be more charged with chi and is a prized element in Taoist Alchemy.
The methods for immortality diverges then in practice at the top level. Top level meaning in alchemy you work from the BASE metal/level UP to Gold. Alchemical Salt or jing chi is a base metal which correlates with the region of the body Taoist Alchemists call the Dark Northern Sea. The Dark Northern Sea oddly is the region of your body where your genitalia, perineum, anus, and tip of the tail bone are found. In Taoist Yoga the tip of the tail bone is called the “Pump” or the “Water Wheel.” It’s where the base alchemical salt is ignited with air [deep breathing] and “pumped” up the spine towards the Jade Palace, which is your Hypothalamus in your brain. The head region of the body is sometimes called the Southern Sky, or the Heaven. The Dark Sea is sometimes called Earth. The spine is called the Back Meridian. From the Jade Palace the chi is brought down the Front Meridian. The tip of your tongue has to touch the roof of your mouth to connect the Back and Front meridians into a Circuit. The chi is brought back the Earth or Northern Dark Sea. This full circuit is called a Microcosmic Orbit. The Orbit is also referred to as the the Union or Unification of Heaven and Earth. This Union of heaven and earth is sometimes depicted as a dragon biting it’s own tail. The dragon’s head being Heaven or the Jade Palace, the tail being Earth or the Dark Sea. The Orbit is the most essential process of Immortality. All your chi pearls, balls, whatever must do this orbit over and over. This generates something called Shen or Shen chi which is the refined chi from which the coveted Gold grows from. Shen means “spirit” roughly.
This is where the two paths drastically diverges. The right hand path uses shen chi as the base of a practice sometimes translated as Embryonic Body chi gung. The basic concept is that humans and life is not inherently immortal. Meaning that when you die, your chi or life force dissipates back into the universal sea of chi it came from. In the same way where an ice burg can be said to be physically distinct from its oceanic matrix, but when it melts, it becomes ocean again. Spiritual immortality is needed to become one with the Wu Wei because such stuff takes a long time. So the awareness of mind of the sage must be housed in an immortal “spirit” body. Which is where the embryonic body chi gung comes in. The shen chi is gradually packed and condensed into a form that looks like a body. This “embryo” is kept inside the Stove to “gestate.” Over the natural life time of the sage this body is nurtured with shen chi. Once the embryo body is fully formed it is called a “Rainbow Body.” Then when the sage dies he/she places his awareness inside this “Rainbow body” and continues the work of becoming Wu Wei consciously in higher realms of existence.
The left hand path; seeking physical immortality; uses shen chi in a different way. Inside the Jade Palace is something called the Lotus of a Thousand Petals. This Lotus is said to be unopened and in its seeded state. The shen chi is the only water this unopened lotus feeds off of. Anatomically this Lotus of a Thousand Petals is your Pineal Gland, which is also called the Third Eye. It technically is anatomically an primitive eye; or rather, an Optical Organ. I dare you to find a real text book from a good college library on anatomy. A good one and research on the Pineal Gland. You will discover that this gland bizarrely has a working Optical Lens, a [vestigial] Retina where one is suppose to be, and its own Optical Nerve. The only thing is that it is shrunken and has over the process of evolution taken on a new function. It’s actually not odd to have a “third eye,” if you know what you are looking at. This third eye in our brains is just a vestige of something we had back when we [as in us creatures] were reptiles. I can’t remember the technical name for it, but if you have ever had a pet lizard and you look at the top of their head you will see what looks like a small crystal made of a tiny bead of Jade. You can clearly see this on Horny Toads, which actually looks like jade. This tiny jade dot is actually a primitive optical organ used by the lizard to detect shadows and movements above it [birds and stuff]. When I was little I used needles to poke this jade dot out of horny toads to see what it did or didn’t do to them since I was wondering why or what it was there for.
In the left hand practice the shen chi is used to feed this Lotus to open it. That Lotus has something precious called Ambrosia or the Elixir of Immortality. This Ambrosia is the “Nectar” of this Lotus, which drips when it is fully opened. Opening this Lotus takes a life time to achieve, if ever. Lots of shen chi is needed. The opening of the Lotus initiates changes in your cranial structure which are signs that you are getting close. One sign or side effect is called “Returning to your Prenatal State.” This is when the various cranial plates that make up your skull loosens again. Again as in, if you know babies, you know that the plates in their skull are not fully bonded together yet. Another sign is that your skull becomes soft again like that of a baby’s. This happens because the Lotus can’t actually open [grow] inside such a rigid skull. There is just no room for something the size of a pea to grow into something the size of a quarter or ping pong ball without smooshing other parts of the brain and killing you or damaging your very important frontal lobes.
When the Lotus opens it is said to drip a thick, sweet substance down through two holes in the roof of your mouth. If you stick your tongue to the roof of your mouth back a little just below your sinus cavity, you’ll feel two very strange “things” on either side. They feel like small star shaped things or crisscrosses, as if two holes had been closed up, but not closed up all the way. That’s where the Ambrosia drips into your mouth from. You swallow this Ambrosia which is said to slowly make changes into your organs, flesh, bones, and cells, over time. But this Lotus needs a steady supply of shen chi, or everything closes back up.
It sounds unbelievable to think that a person can be physically immortal. And it probably is not possible. But if you study right, you’ll figure out that there are documented cases of Chinese sages or men who lived incredibly long lives. One such case I read about was documented by the various Chinese governments that come and gone. It was about a man who claimed to be 200 years old during the 1700′s. At first the Emperor of the China back then took interest in this man’s outrageous claims because he too wanted to live forever. When that dynasty ended and the 1800′s came, this guy was documented by officials and locals who said this guy still claimed to be very old, except now he claimed to be a whole 300 years old. When the 1800′s ended and the 1900′s came, government official took an interest in this guy whom locals claimed was now claiming to be 400 years old. The officials didn’t like such liars fooling locals I guess. But checking records on this guy, they found out that he had a 400 year old criminal record of telling his tall tales to unfortunate gullible peasants. He finally died in the early 1900′s of really old age.
I read this other account of a oddly very old man. This account comes from England of all places. I can’t remember the fine details, but I think it took place around the 1600′s when the King of England of that era had heard from a village of peasants that such village had a local celebrity whom they claimed was at least 200 years old. The old man in question was so old, he forgot how old he was. Said he stopped counting after a hundred something. The King, after hearing this, thought he’d go and pay the old man a visit to see if it was real. At the village the King asked the old man many questions about events and records to try and verify his age. After the King was convinced himself that the old man must be at least 200 years old just like the villagers said, the King asked the old man what his secret was. What was he doing that made him live for so long? The old man replies back something like: “Oh, you know, I eat potatoes and roots. We’re poor here. I’ve been eating the same potatoes and roots for as long as I can remember. No meat since I can’t afford none. Keep myself busy working on the farm like always. Nothing special, just roots and daily work.” Thinking that the old peasant was hiding something, the King invited the old man to his castle to have a feast and festive drink with him and his royal entourage to coerce the old man into giving up his secret. The old man was very happy to be invited to the castle to eat with his King so he went to the feast. After feasting and partying with the King, the old man died the next day.
Anyways. With the Chinese way of using and phrasing terms like “right hand” and “left hand” we have something extra to use to gain a better point of understanding of what those terms may have also allegorically meant in Brahminical society. In our modern era its easy to tell the difference between what is sometimes called “right handed tantrika,” and what is sometimes referred to as “left handed tantrika.”
Right hand tantra is the more spiritual side, which uses your single body as the tool of the attainment. This would be when you sit and meditate on your 7 chakra. Chant mantras, and contort your body into odd positions: the more contorted and ridiculous, the better the yogic attainment I hear. This right handed stuff usually is Vedic scriptures friendly. The left handed stuff is the more Vedically unfriendly version. You have the symbolical Five M’s, where you’re blasphemously eating meat [fish], having sex [maituna], and so on. Certain schools or sects of vamachara go further and incorporate blood, etc.
In ancient times when Brahmanism was huge in India, the Northerners were the more “orthodox” type to stick religiously to their Vedas. It was the Southerners with their non-Vedic primal Shaivism [Sasana Kumara] and Sasana Shakta that were “heterodox” in practice. In this context, “right hand” is what is friendly with Vedic tradition, and left hand is what is not acceptable to Vedic tradition.
The right handed world view was that the world was an illusion to be transcended. The earth is bad and being human is a curse due to karmic retribution. We must forget about the physical illusory world and strive for spiritual attainments. Such spiritual endeavours are thus – of course – expounded in the Vedas. Therefore you need Vedic gurus, Brahmins, their services, prayers, teachings, kiss their ass, go to their temples, be subservient to them.
Whereas the left hand path had developed into the polar opposite. The spiritual was illusory, the physical is sacred, there is nothing wrong with the earth or being human. We are here for the experience from which we learn. Nothing is forbidden, since your primal deities themselves represents the very aspects of life and nature that man made religions condemn.
The Samma
So this was the worldview atmosphere or philosophical background the Buddha came into during the era he was said to have existed. People had philosophically developed two very different and extreme views they allegorically termed “right” and “left.” Each term is then further defined and refined according to each sect and subculture.
What the Buddha learned to figure out on his own was that these extreme poles were very myopic methods of understanding the world. Let’s say we had a construction site around which was a tall wooden fence. On the far right of the fence is a peek hole and on the far left is a peek hole. The people on the left side looking at the construction site says to the people on the far right: “When we look into our hole, we see a fully constructed temple. It’s beautiful. Therefore the entire universe and everything that could possibly exist since the beginning of eternity “non sequiturially” must be – no, has to be! – just like how we see things through our peek hole.” Then the people on the right side says to the people on the far left: “No, you’re all wrong. We see a big hole in the ground thru our peek hole. Therefore the entire universe and everything that could possibly exist since eternity “non sequiturially” must be – no, definitely is without a doubt – just like how we see things through our peek hole, an illusion, a pot hole.”
The Buddha asks you that if you are into this business of Understanding reality as it is, are either of those peek holes giving you the whole matter of reality? No, they are not. You cannot assume to understand reality from one single perspective. You must not only consider the other polar opposite of your perspective, but also every peek hole in between. Then you put that all together as a patch work to try and figure out the bigger picture.
In a sense this is how our court system works. You have a Prosecutor who has the perspective where the Accused is rightly accused and he or she tries to get the jury to SEE things from his perspective. Then you have the Lawyer of the Accused who is paid to understand his client to be innocent or wrongly accused, and he tries to get the jury to SEE the case from his perspective. The Judge in this case is the Buddha, or a level minded Buddhist. The Judge is indifferent to how the Prosecutor and Lawyer sees things. His job is to keep things in order and he considers both sides at the same time so that he can patch together a bigger picture that may be more accurate, so that he can make his sentence in the end. The key concept here to keep in mind is that our Judge does not personally get Attached or clingy to either side’s presentation of events. Otherwise he’d be biased. Unfortunately for the court system based on the judgment of the jury, you have half brained retards who are not as level headed as they should be. In real cases law becomes a stupid game of trying to convince and manipulate the audience/jury to see events as they happened according to how you retell or recreate such events. But a proper Judge him or herself does not get personally or emotionally or mentally involved in either points of view as the Prosecutor and Lawyer may do. The Judge is able to consider points made from both sides objectively so as to gain a clearer understanding of what may have happened so he can theoretically in the end give a proper just sentence.
This way of being able to be Indifferent to either side, unattached to either side, but able to objectively consider points made by each and all sides the Buddha referred to as the “Middle Path.” Here the term “middle” does not suggest a negotiation has taken place just to be on the safe neutral middle. We know this is not the case because of the word the Buddha used half of the time to mean what is translated into English as “Middle” way: Samma.
Samma in English is mistranslated by well meaning people as “right” or “correct.” The 8 fold path of the Ariyamagga [Arya Marga] is wrongly translated as “Right seeing,” “Right action,” “Correct effort,” and so on. In English when we say something is right or correct we immediately infer or suggest that a something else is wrong and incorrect. This makes no sense according to the very meaning of the term Ariyamagga. Ariya means Noble and Magga is the Pali of Marga meaning Way/Path. Ariyamagga is the Way ABOVE being attached to either extremes of “right” or “wrong.” So that you can see things more clearer: from a “Noble” or “Honorable,” of “Civilized” perspective.
Samma in the Pali means Complete, Whole, All Things Considers, Everything Together. But the Buddha used that word to mean “middle path,” as in reality is not just a right and a left, it is right left and Everything in between. Allegorically when the Buddha says he takes the “Middle Path” which he is saying in common metaphorical Pali is: “If you take the left road, and the other fella takes the right road, I’m gunna take everything you don’t consider in between and I’m gunna consider both of your perspective too!”
If you hear your old people tell you stories out of the Tipitaka or have read a few, you’ll see that the Buddha uses this Samma – “Wholistic” – approach in his own form of dialectics or debates. In many cases when the Buddha teaches, it takes three classes of people: 1) the presenter of an idea, 2) the Buddha as antagonist, and 3) the individual the Buddha is actually trying to teach.
So for example if say a Brahmin goes off and tells a crowd of people: “The world is fake and the spiritual realm of the devas is real.” The Buddha comes along with a friend of his he wishes to teach and says: “If you believe that, then I say the world is real and the spiritual realm is fake. What do you say about that?” Then the two of them have their usual back and forth. What the Buddha did was give his friend an other point of view or landmark so that his friend by himself can figure out his way around this terrain. Now the friend has two landmarks to gauge his position. He thinks to himself: “Well, there is the Brahmin’s point of view way over there, and then the Buddha’s point of view way on the other side? Can both be right? Is there a middle? Are both part of a bigger whole? If there are two perspectives, can there be more?” Because with Theravada, what does Sambuddhi mean? Self-Understanding, or the process or method of coming to an Understanding of things by one’s own self and efforts. Look closely in this example and you’ll see that the Buddha’s stated argument was an upaya and not a doctrine for his friend to believe and accept. It was just stated to give relative perspective so the friend can learn to come to an understanding on his own terms. You do not enlighten yourself by accepting the statements of other people/buddha. It’s defeats the whole purpose as to why the prefix Self/Sam is affixed to Buddhi [understanding] in the first place.
It’s almost like the case of when your in a plane over an ocean and a blue sky. In such a condition you may develop vertigo where you have a hard time gauging your speed, direction, etc. It’s not until a Second object of some kind comes into your field of reference that you can pull yourself out of your vertigo and gauge your speed and direction Relative to that second object. The same with the Buddha’s way of teaching with his Samma or wholistic method. With only one loud mouth yapping to a crowd that reality is fake and the spiritual is real, after a while you develop a psychological vertigo where you believe what you hear simply because you have no other perspective to work with. Lie to a people often enough and they will believe it, so someone said once in German.
If you’ve ever been in one of those relationships where your stupid controlling boyfriend talks down to you and is emotionally or verbally abusive and tells you over and over again that he’s the only one who will deal with your shit, that you’re a horrible bitch, that he’s the best you will ever find, etc, you will begin to accept and believe it if you hear it often enough. It’s not until one of your girl friends or another guy comes along who presents a different perspective that you – by your own self effort – come to realize that you have other options. That there are better guys – or girls – out there. Then with that realization, you can Free yourself from your bondage to an abusive relationship. Which you are actually bonded to by your/our own ignorance or lack of relative perspective. But the important thing to keep in mind is that only when you have a number of relative perspectives, do you come to your own inner Realization. This in no way implies that what your girl friend may have said, or what the other guy may have told you is “true.” They were just there to help you out of that vertigo, so you can Realize the infinite number of options you actually have.
Reality according to the Buddha, may not be entirely spiritual. But at the same time it might not be entirely physical. The landmarks have only been presented so that you can gauge your location, relative to those landmarks such that you yourself can eventually come to your own Understandings of what reality may be. Reality is neither Vedically orthodox or Vedically heterodox. It is neither Biblical or Unbiblical. It is neither right or left. These are just land marks. You find your own way with them. Buddhism is neither right handed or left handed. It is the Ariya Magga, the Noble or Path Above those relative points. But Above not meaning “better than.” meaning you are indifferent to either extremes and can see them objectively and consider them, along with every other point of view. There is a bigger picture, than a reality that comes into existence from a mere extreme view or single view.
It is not accurate to say that all humans are heterosexual. Neither is it accurate to say that all humans are homosexual. But then neither is it accurate to say that all humans are bisexual in nature. It may be that each of the three perspectives presented are only points of what may be the whole spectrum of the possibilities of human sexual expression?
In the same way it is not accurate to say that reality is spiritual. Or that it is material exclusively. Neither is it accurate to say that some middle ground in between where reality can be both spiritual and material and everyone is right and belief is reality. It may be that each of these perspectives presented may be only points of a spectrum of the infinite possibilities of the phenomena of reality and the infinite potential expression of “prima materia.” It is not accurate to say that a God exists or that a god does not exist. Neither to say that the universe is pantheistically God. Or that Mind is God. It may be that each perspective feebly points to mere possibilities – or not – of a something that is beyond those points. With something like the God example, this is just something that we will never know, because we are all fallible humans existing inside a cosmos we can barely gain an understanding of.
Closing Remarks
This was a quick essay to clarify a few things. Based on the possible question: is Buddhism “compatible” with a right hand or left hand path/way? No. Is a Judge “compatible” with the prosecutor or lawyer’s POV? He should NOT be “compatible” with either or something went wrong with his education as a judge. He is Above the two perspectives. In a position where that he is able to Consider both cases, both points of view, both presentations, as well as other possible scenarios, in order so that he may eventually come to his own Understanding of what may have happened so that he can make an objective sentence. Same goes with the different interpretations of left and right according to the various schools of thought. Spiritual mental juggling or physical doing? Staying in the limits of religious law or societal order or transgressing such things? Samma means Totality and everything considered. Ariyamagga means the Path Above or the Noble High Ground. Sambuddhi means your own Self derived Understandings from that high ground and the vantage point it offers.
Way back in ancient proto-Buddhism times the many various primordial schools or sects of what would become Buddhism got into fights over the subject of learning from books and sages and thus sticking within the limits of what such sages may have prescribed. And learning from one’s own experiences and thus nullifying the actual need for sages and what is written. The latter schools eventually developed into a school called the Vibhajjavadins unofficially. This school branched out to later become what is known as Theravada, whose foundation of praxis is the single word or concept: Vibhajjavada. Which roughly means to come to an understanding of things based on direct experience. Vibhajja may be roughly understood as Direct Experience, and Vada roughly means an Oral or Verbal Teaching.
The idea of Gnosis from Direct Experience puts the myopic right and left hand paths in their proper place: as options available for for you to directly experience to learn from, if you are crazy enough to walk either paths. It is not the the walking of the whatever path that is important in Vibhajjavada, but the end Understanding gained that is to be judged as having or not having value. If you kill someone and later in life you end up Realizing [buddhi] that your actions have caused suffering in other people’s lives, you may have reaped a valuable lesson meaningful only to yourself. It may be that you are the type to need to learn things the hard way though? Most people understand that randomly killing people may hurt the families of the victims if they have the empathy to realize such things. At the same time we each know what we would do to protect our own children we bare into the world from all and any harm.
It is not the act or process that is important in Buddhism which makes such a big ass deal about causation [kamma]. It is the Vipaka of such acts, that each act bares in the end for you that is judged. Therefore both the right and left handed paths are insignificant in the sense that the walking or adherence to such paths is inconsequential. Because it is ultimately the End Fruit we taste from the waking of such or any paths in life that is to be judged as being kamma kosal [constructive work] or kamma akosal [nonconstructive work]. How you build a building [methodology/kamma] is not as important as how the actual freaking building will end up looking like [Vipaka]. Is the Vipaka the desired end causal objective? Is it something that you can live with? Was it constructive and beneficial to you personally and your people around you? Some right hand path experiences such as the blind following of a guru or priest may not bare the fruit you desire to causally experience years from now. Some so called left handed activities such as a king amassing an army to slaughter enemies may myopically look “bad” but may causally in time be constructive in that it keeps his people safe from tyranny or enslavement or abuse. Or the left hand path pursuit of sleeping around with dirty Thai hookers. Is it Buddhist? Is it good or bad? It’s none of those things. If you do it and get AIDS, you learn from your stupid experience: Vibhajjavada. After you learn not to promiscuously sleep with dirty Thai hookers, then maybe you can orally teach others [vada] your wisdom gained from your experiences.
What does Theravada mean etymologically? Thera in Pali means your Elders, and Vada means an Oral Lesson. Theravada essentially means the Aural Wisdom or practical lessons we get from our elders who have walk their paths before us. It implies that the Words born from direct experience of those who have cultivated such experiences Trumps the written letter. No poetry, or scripture, or myth, or mythos of gods, or idealistic shenanigans, or abstract teachings of shoulds and shouldnots out weighs the Substance of the words of those who have directly experienced something in the end.
If you read in a text book that instructs when you stick a piece of zinc into a test tube filled with hydrochloric acid with a cork plugging the top and a little tube leading from the cork to a balloon will cause hydrogen gas to inflate the balloon which will cause something interesting to happen if you pop it; you can be superficial and stick to the letter. But I may come along and say to you: “I did that before and I popped the balloon in front of my face, and the hydrogen and oxygen exploded in a flame and burned my eye lashes and eyes brows, so you may not want to get too close to that balloon.” That’s a practical oral lesson I gave to you born from something I directly experienced and became the wiser from, You can say: “So what, the text book doesn’t explicitly say it will burn anything.” You can chose to reject my oral lessons and stick to the book. Then learn from your own experiences.
So at least with the more conservative schools of Theravada that I associate with, Buddhism does not arbitrarily divide things into a left path and a right path. It separates things into a path of having come to our Understandings of things from Direct Experience, and the other path of thinking we know things from what we have read, what we believe, and what we are attached and lost in. It does not matter of you walk an arbitrary right hand path or left hand path. If you walk that path because you believe it is the “right” or correct path to walk because of your own personal beliefs or personal opinions about such matters, then you are not walking that Noble path of experience and Knowing from experience.
The path of walking based on opinions and belief is fast where one can go off into all sorts of fantastical directions of becoming gods, becoming super duper demons to war against some god, becoming supermen, super smart in an instant, etc. The path of learning from direct experience is slow and often times painful. You don’t Know and Understand how painful it is to be cheated on until you have invested months and years emotionally into a relationship. You will never know what one goes through in the event of losing a loved one, a family member, a friend, a wife, a husband, a child, until it happens to you. This path of direct experience has very little or nothing to do with the juggling of opinions, lofty ideations, and belief. You can’t believe into existence the pain and anguish and hell of being a mother whose child has died. You can make silly opinions about the abstractions of such matters, but your opinions are empty, and so are your beliefs about such abstractions.
You don’t “believe” in anything in Buddhism [Theravada at least]. Compassion is not a belief or opinion, it’s something you must do for your family, which is hard and takes a life time. Compassion is the caring for your young ones and your elders until they die. Complete Seeing [samma dhiti] is not a belief you agree with, it is a something you either apply in your life or not. I cannot really consider anything on the level of reality – as opposed to abstractions, unless I directly experience it. If I have never experience a ghost, it does not mean I reject the idea or believe that they are fake. It just means I have no direct experience to make a worthy opinion of ghosts. If I have experienced a ghost it does not mean I believe in them or anything. It means that I now have something weird to consider to come to an Understanding of.
As a physicist you don’t “believe” in atoms or not believe in them. It’s not a matter of belief. You either experience them or not in some way. You either work with their equations or not. If you have via instruments experienced them, you don’t believe in them. They are just things to now consider the Nature of, to gain a better Understanding of, so you can perhaps figure out if you can apply your knowledge of them in some constructive manner [applied physics]. This has nothing to do with belief. You do, experience, learn from your experience, and gain your Understandings. You don’t believe in the scientific method, you do it, experiment with it, learn from your experience, and gain and Understanding of a part of reality. You don’t believe in the “4 Noble Truth,” or the 8 fold path. You apply it, learn from your experiences, and gain your own Understanding of the Nature of Life and Causality from it, or not.
I use my conservative Theravada to try to explain things about the ONA. Pretty much because all I know is Theravada Buddhism which I have the inner confidence to talk about. You work with what you got. It’s my own Understandings of certain parts of the ONA. Such as the concept of Pathei-Mathos. There may be people in ONA world out there who might want to gain their own better apprehension of this. So what I do is present it from how I Understand the term. How I understand it comes from my mind, life, and cultural experiences, so it’s going to be peppered with Buddhism.
The whole point in me taking the time to try and explain things to ONA initiates abroad is because the more a Drecc or Niner is able to gain other perspectives of the ONA, the more better each ONA person can better gain their own understandings of the ONA. This is important because the better an ONA associate understand the ONA, the more they can help evolve it and make new forms for it, etc. This in turn is important because the more better forms the Kollective issues and engineers, the more 3.0 Product we have to compete with. Nobody has to accept my Buddhist spewage as infallible utterances. Just like nobody needs to – or can – take my family experiences I often share as some religious teachings and truths to quote and bible thump, cut and paste someplace to sound cool or something.
There is a reason why I don’t write essays in a format where I am just issuing out memes and stuff, and why I chose instead to use a more conversational style of writing where I just share my family stuff, cultural perspectives, etc. It’s so that you can’t take everything I say as some religious ONA fact or truth or even pretend to be me by cutting and pasting what ramblings I write. You read it, gain a different perspective, perhaps get inspired in some way. Then leave and go do your own thing. Make your own forms and vehicles and tweak ONA in your own unique ways. There is no point in having a network of some Kollective, if we are all parroting or agreeing, or following one person. Why bother? Just let the one person make the ONA then. Fuck creativity right? But really. If you understand what a Peer Group is or what a Collective of Peers is, and what Open Source actually means, then you’ll know that what I write is only and ever presented to peers/equals for review and consideration. I am inspired and influenced by many ONA people, and I hope that flow of inspiration is open and mutual or reciprocal among peers. It is in the network or collective process of each inspiring each that new forms and new ideas are actually inspired into existence. Which, if you are in the business of helping evolve the ONA, might be useful.
I can make stuff up and talk bullshit by pretending to have some sort of grasp of Hinduism, or some other thing to try and explain ONA, but I’d be full of shit. At least with with what I know of my own Buddhism, I know what little I know and understand is grounded in something real. Grounded in a living culture, in a real group of people, in a real family, in real life experiences, in real oral teachings of old ones. At least, when I talk about Buddhism to try to explain how I understand the ONA, I am confident in knowing that at least I am not full of shit or just pretending or wishfully thinking to know stuff. Plus I also use my Understandings of Buddhism to explain the ONA as a little bitty Move towards a 5-10 year Objective. Which is to transplant a Form of the ONA into an Asian market. All of this writing, like I said elsewhere is just R&D. I am basically testing out what memes to work with and what memes to phase out. The basic current challenge is: how do I explain using the Asian/Buddhist lexicon and paradigmatic structure I have to explain the ONA. Once I get a feel of that I try to explain the ONA verbally to Asians I know in the real world around me like my cousins, in such a way that they eventually adopt those ONA memes and become ONA.
So don’t mind me/us. We’re just working. Writing out essays for the public to read just gives us several needed things such as feedback, feedback loops, critical remarks, etc, from real live people. This way we have issues to consider. I like to get critical remarks from random people. And depending on the person, I sometimes give what they say consideration. But when I do things, it is towards a fixed end Objective. I need to make my Moves to take me always one step closer to that end Directive. Sometimes people who have critical remarks don’t know the 10 year direction I am taking things. I appreciate their opinions. But, if you ask me, I don’t give two rats asses what a Westerner thinks about the ONA. I don’t even care of every person alive on Earth right now hates the ONA.
I’ll openly say on the record right now that my desire is to relocate the ONA into the bigger Asian market for its future and that the unborn minds of the successive future generations to come are my Target Audience. I have dropped hints at the long term goal I am playing with satanism at large and with Western Culture aeonically by lately writing about Culture Struggle and Cultural Liquidation. I dropped the hint that an incoherent culture such as the state the subculture of Satanism is in has no chance against a coherent and organized culture like the ONA and its memes in Time. I’ve dropped the hint that Cultural Liquidation occurs in the young minds and minds of the unborn to come. It’s not your minds I am after in the West. I want to infect your unborn. I want to chip away at this secular consumerist faux culture you call “Western” culture, or “American culture,” by any means I have at my disposal. Anything, to replace your dishonorable way with something more Numinous and Honorable in Time & Causation. But such a long term goal takes time and small Moves. Time long enough for all of you – and I – to die and take your lofty opinions with you. The ONA is a flute the Kollective is working on crafting and refining. There will come a time when you will pay the Pied Pier his due. Long from now. It pleases me greatly to see these mundane Satanists use ONA memes to understand and talk their Satanism. It really does. Little steps.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
122 yfayen
