Internal Alchemy for Everyone by Chungtao Ho

Author:Chungtao Ho [Ho, Chungtao]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: Three Pines Press
Published: 2018-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

Traditionally, Chinese men were the pillars their families, guaranteeing social status, financial support, and official relations for everyone: parents, wives, children, plus servants, often even including also aunts, uncles, and cousins. As a result, historical sources of internal alchemy suggest that adepts should engage in the practice only after they have fulfilled their household responsibilities, that is, after their parents have passed on and their children have reached maturity. This would make the average adept somewhere between forty-five and sixty-five years old, an age that I think is very appropriate. Once making the decision to move out to practice full-time, then, one should set up proper arrangements for all family affairs.

​Both Daoism, especially Complete Perfection, and Buddhism offer monastic institutions, where recluses live the simplest of life with just the bare necessities and no wealth or obligations. They even beg for their daily food, thus realizing the ideal of emptiness on both the mental and material planes. This is extremely helpful, since the mind cannot concentrate on spiritual practice as long as it needs to deal with material goods, even more so if the latter are rich and varied, engaging the five senses.

​In internal alchemy, unless they join a monastery, adepts have to rely on their own wealth to support their practice while completing the process, however, this wealth must not become a preoccupation or central concern. One must have enough, invested well enough, to provide for one’s needs during and also after completing the practice, without letting it interfere with the process. Thus Chen Zhixu states in his Jindan dayao,

Having wealth is a great help in setting up the cauldron and attaining Dao. Someone undertaking the great quest of cultivation must obtain enough wealth so he can purchase the ingredients. Once he has the necessary ingredients, he can concoct the elixir. After completing the elixir, he should take his remaining wealth and give it all away: in this way, he is different from ordinary people.[79]

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