Cultivating Dao and Developing Mind is True Self-Cultivation

Genuine self-cultivation can only be achieved after the mind has been developed through discipline. The mind is developed in two ways – by cultivating the permanent states of virtue and selflessness. Cause and effect is entirely dependent upon our own physical actions which produce either blessings or misfortune – but only the realised state of wuwei (non-action) in the mind and body is considered real. Even spirits and ghosts have their method – but their cycle of endless transformation is difficult to discern.

Thomas Parr (1483-1635 CE) – Oldest Man in England! (16.8.2015)

‘At Great Wollaston, just off the road from Shrewsbury to Wales, stands a small thatched cottage, birthplace and home of the oldest Englishman who ever lived.  Thomas Parr was born in 1483.  He lived to see ten monarchs on the throne, from the Plantagenet Edward IV, through all the Tudors to the Stuart Charles I.  He joined the army at 17, returning when he was 35 to run the family farm.  He married for the first time when he was 80, had an affair and an illegitimate child when he was 100 and married again at 122.  When he was 152, the Earl of Arundel took him up to London to meet Charles I, who asked for the secret of his long life.  ‘Moral temperance and a vegetarian diet,’ he replied.  Unfortunately, the foul stench of London polluted his lungs, which had thrived on Shropshire air, and he died in November 1635.  He is buried in Westminster Abbey.’

Master Zhao Bichen (1860-1942) – Daoist Immortal.

‘Once beyond the initial barrier of potentially bewildering terminology, Zhao Bichen’s approach involves the cultivation of awareness throughout the ‘inside’ of the body, together with an actual awareness of qi as it is distributed throughout the system. In this respect, the inside of the body is perceived (through meditation) as a number of cavities, or vacuous spaces. The breathing mechanism maintains the inflating and deflating of these cavities with qi. Awareness becomes so subtle that even the smallest of movements within the body is clearly sensed. The qi passes around the body through the action of the inward breath and the outward breath, travelling with the blood through the arteries and veins.’

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