The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Classic Chinese Book of Life

Introduction

The Secret of the Golden Flower is a lay manual combining Buddhist and Taoist methods for mental freedom, using the golden flower as a symbol for the awakening of the mind’s original light and hidden potential.

• The golden flower symbolizes the quintessence of Buddhism and Taoism, where gold represents the light of mind itself and the flower represents the blossoming or opening up of that mental light
  • The practice aims to restore the original God-given spirit and become a self-realized human being
  • In Buddhist terms, a realized person is conscious of the original mind in its spontaneous natural state
  • This original spirit is also called the celestial mind or natural mind
  • The method involves getting to the root source of awareness itself
• The golden flower method requires no apparatus, dogma, or special ritual, but is practiced in daily life as a direct way to free the mind from arbitrary limitations imposed by habitual fixation on mental contents
  • The practice is near at hand, being in the mind itself, yet involves no imagery or thought
  • It opens an avenue to an endless source of intuition, creativity, and inspiration
  • Once developed, the power of mental awakening can be renewed and deepened without limit
  • The experience is likened to ’light in the sky, a sky of awareness vaster than images, thoughts, and feelings'
• Richard Wilhelm’s 1929 German translation was the first Western version but was based on a garbled translation of a truncated and corrupted text, leading to dangerous misunderstandings despite C.G. Jung’s influential commentary
  • Jung credited the book with clarifying his work on the unconscious but maintained serious reservations about the practice
  • A critical communication gap occurred in transmission, yet the book became a major influence in Western psychology
  • Gary Baynes hailed it as ’the secret of the power of growth latent in the psyche'
  • Wilhelm’s version contained ‘dangerous and misleading contaminations’
• The golden flower awakening is so fundamental that it brings out inner dimensions in all religions, allowing Taoist organizations to include Confucians, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, and Muslims without requiring them to break from their congregations
  • Wilhelm noted this religious inclusivity in his time
  • The central experience transcends whether one calls it God, the Way, holy spirit, Buddha nature, or real self
  • The Tao Te Ching says ‘Names can be designated, but they are not fixed terms’
  • The pragmatic purpose is to elicit experience, not inculcate doctrines

The Celestial Mind

The celestial mind represents the natural Way without form, associated with essence and primal spirit, accessed through turning the light around to concentrate the perfectly open and aware spirit.

• Naturalness is called the Way, which has no name or form but is just the essence and primal spirit, associated with sky and light through the two eyes
  • Essence and life are invisible, so associated with sky and light
  • Sky and light are invisible, so associated with the two eyes
  • Since ancient times, spiritual immortality teachings were transmitted verbally from individual to individual
  • The tradition passed from Taishang to Donghua through various schools
• The golden flower represents the absolutely unified real energy of celestial immortals, symbolized as ‘one light’ and described as ’the lead in the homeland of water is just one flavor’
  • The whole work uses the method of reversal through turning the light around
  • All beauties of highest heavens and marvels of sublimest realms are within the heart
  • Confucians call it the open center, Buddhists the pedestal of awareness, Taoists the ancestral earth
  • The celestial mind is like a house with light as the master
• Turning the light around for a long time causes the light to crystallize into a natural spiritual body that steadies the spirit above the nine skies, creating what scriptures call ‘silently paying court’ and ‘soaring upward’
  • The light is easily stirred and hard to stabilize
  • When crystallized, it becomes the natural spiritual body
  • This process is referenced in the Mind Seal Scripture
  • The golden flower is the same as the gold pill, with transmutations guided by mind

The Original Spirit and the Conscious Spirit

The original spirit transcends the universe and represents infinite essence, while the conscious spirit is like a violent general that must be controlled through turning the light around to dissolve the lower soul and preserve the higher soul.

• From the universe’s perspective people are like mayflies, but from the Way’s perspective even the universe is evanescent, while only the true essence of original spirit transcends and is infinite
  • Vitality and energy degenerate with the universe, but original spirit remains
  • All universe production derives from this original spirit
  • Learners who preserve original spirit live transcendentally outside yin and yang
  • This is possible only by seeing essence - the original face
• The conscious mind operates like a violent general controlling from a distance until the sword is turned around, requiring steadfast attention to the chamber of origin to create inner governmental order
  • When inner government is orderly, the strong and violent naturally become tame
  • The highest alchemical secrets are water of vitality, fire of spirit, and earth of attention
  • Fire of spirit is function, earth of attention is substance, water of vitality is foundation
  • The chamber of center is the celestial mind
• People create the body through attention, but it contains both higher and lower souls that function differently - the higher soul resides in eyes during day and liver at night, while the lower soul is associated with consciousness and endless transmutation
  • The lower soul functions with consciousness and develops based on it
  • If consciousness is not interrupted, transformation continues endlessly through lifetimes
  • When the higher soul resides in eyes it sees, when in liver it dreams
  • Dreams are the roaming of spirit through nine heavens and nine earths instantly
• Turning the light around serves as a means of refining the higher soul, preserving spirit, controlling the lower soul, and interrupting consciousness to dissolve darkness and restore pure light
  • The ancients’ method of transcending the world was dissolving lower soul dregs to restore pure light
  • This involves dissolving the lower soul and making the higher soul whole
  • There is no exercise to restore the creative, only the secret of turning light around
  • The light itself is the creative; to turn it around is to restore it

Turning the Light Around and Keeping to the Center

The practice of turning the light around began with adept Wenshi and involves reversing the normal outward flow of consciousness to concentrate energy inward, creating the firing process that leads to spiritual transformation.

• The term ’turning the light around’ began with adept Wenshi and represents the method of reversal where all energies of heaven and earth, yin and yang, congeal into what is called refined thought or pure energy
  • When first practiced, there is seemingly nonbeing within being
  • Eventually when work is accomplished, there is seemingly being within nonbeing
  • After a hundred days the light becomes real fire of spirit
  • The light then becomes spontaneous, producing a pearl like an embryo
• Original creation contains positive light as the ruling director, manifested as the sun in the material world and as the eyes in human beings, but spiritual leakage through conformity necessitates the golden flower’s complete reversal method
  • Nothing is worse than running leakage of spirit and consciousness through conformity
  • Turning the light around is not just turning one body’s light but the very energy of Creation
  • It’s not stopping imagination temporarily but truly emptying routine compulsion forever
  • Each breath corresponds to one year of human time and a century in ignorance pathways
• The practice involves universal light that is neither inside nor outside the self - mountains, rivers, sun, moon and earth are all this light, while all intelligence and wisdom operations are also this light
  • The light of heaven and earth fills the universe
  • One individual’s light naturally extends through heavens and covers earth
  • Once you turn the light around, everything in the world is turned around
  • Light rays concentrate upward into the eyes as the great key of the human body
• The essential teaching transmitted through successive sages is not beyond reversed gazing, called ‘reaching toward knowledge’ by Confucians, ‘observing mind’ by Buddhists, and ‘inner observation’ by Taoists
  • The practice goes from shallow to deep, crude to fine, requiring consistency
  • It must reach the point where ‘heaven is open, earth is broad, and all things are just as they are’
  • The words ‘focus on the center’ indicate the mechanism of Creation
  • The center is omnipresent with the whole universe within it

Turning the Light Around and Tuning the Breathing

The doctrine requires single-minded practice without seeking proof, using breath as a device to overcome oblivion and distraction by having mind and breath rest on each other through the lights of ears and eyes.

• Beginners suffer from two main problems - oblivion and distraction - which can be remedied by resting the mind on breath, since breath is one’s own mind and the mind does the breathing
  • Energy is basically an emanation of mind that responds to mental stirring
  • Thoughts are very rapid, with each random thought accompanied by inhalation and exhalation
  • In a single day one breathes countless times with countless random thoughts
  • When luminosity of spirit leaks out completely, one becomes like withered tree or dead ashes
• The method uses two lights - the light of ears (internal sun and moon combining vitalities) and light of eyes (external sun and moon combining lights) - where vitality is congealed and stabilized light from the same source
  • Clarity of hearing and seeing are both one spiritual light
  • When sitting, lower eyelids and establish reference point, then let go
  • Breathing should not be audible - listen to its soundlessness to enter the fine
  • Being patient and lightening up increases subtlety and deepens quietude
• When mind is subtle, breath is subtle; when mind is unified, it moves energy; this interrelation allows stabilization of mind through development of energy as a starting point for preserving pure energy
  • Eventually the subtle will be interrupted and true breathing appears
  • Then the substance of mind becomes perceptible
  • Mind has no place to work on, so focus on energy is used as starting point
  • Movement means pulling strings - another word for control
• The great sages saw mind and energy’s interrelation and created the expedient method illustrated by the hen embracing an egg through mental listening and warm energy conducted inward
  • An alchemical text says ‘The hen embraces the egg, always mentally listening’
  • Warm energy can only warm the shell but she mentally conducts energy inward
  • That ’listening’ is single-minded concentration where mind and energy enter together
  • Even when the hen goes out, the concentration of spirit is never interrupted

Errors in Turning the Light Around

Despite gradual maturation in practice, there are many pitfalls including falling into neutral voidness, deadness, or going along with all conditions, requiring careful distinction between proper alertness and various forms of spiritual stagnation.

• Even though practice gradually matures, there are many pitfalls in front of the cliff of withered trees, making it necessary to elucidate the experiences involved in step-by-step detail
  • This school differs from Chan study in having step-by-step evidences of efficacy
  • First see that you don’t have much on mind to be alive and free
  • Make mood gentle and mind comfortable before entering quietude
  • When quiet, find potential and its opening - don’t sit in neutral voidness
• Practitioners must remain alert and self-possessed while letting go of all objects, but avoid getting enthusiastic about attaining experience, which happens when reality is taken too seriously
  • Don’t fall into elements of body and mind where material and psychological illusions take charge
  • If you fall into deadness in meditation lacking growth and creative energy, you’ve fallen into shadow world
  • Your mood becomes cold, breath sinking, with chilling and withering experiences
  • Continuing this way for long turns you into a blockhead or rockhead
• It will not do to go along with all conditions, because when in quietude various loose ends come for no reason and you cannot turn them away, feeling comfortable going along, this makes the master become the servant
  • If this continues long, you fall into various roads of form and desire realms
  • Once you know this error, you can seek experiential proofs
  • The rhythm of reality is on the brink of existence and nonexistence
  • You can get it by intent that is not willful

Authenticating Experiences of Turning the Light Around

There are many authenticating experiences that require practitioners to will the liberation of all beings, progressing through stages from positive harmony and golden efflorescence to great stabilization and eventual transcendence.

• Authenticating experiences cannot be undergone responsibly by people with small faculties and capacities, requiring practitioners to will the liberation of all beings rather than handle attainment carelessly or arrogantly
  • When there is uninterrupted continuity in quiet, spirit and feelings become joyful and happy
  • This feels like being intoxicated or in a bath
  • This is called positive harmony pervading the body with golden efflorescence suddenly blooming
  • When ‘myriad pipes are all silent’ and ‘bright moon is in mid sky,’ you feel the whole earth as a realm of light
• The first stage corresponds to Visualization Scripture symbols of setting sun (infinite foundation), great body of water (ultimate purity), and trees in rows (the master producing movement through seven openings of the heart)
  • Setting sun stands for foundation in the undifferentiated infinite
  • ‘Higher good is like water,’ representing flawless purity as the ultimate
  • Movement is symbolized by wood, represented by trees in rows
  • Rows are in sevens, standing for light of seven heart openings
• Three specific authenticating experiences include: spirit entering openness where sounds seem distant but clear like valley echoes; light blazing up filling presence; and physical energy becoming silk-like and soaring upward
  • In the first experience, all sounds are heard but you never heard anything yourself
  • The second creates ’empty room producing light’ with inside and outside permeated
  • The third is when energy becomes like silk or jade and soars buoyantly upward
  • This third represents spirit returning to highest heaven, eventually enabling ascension
• Finding unified energy in authenticating experience causes the elixir to immediately crystallize as ‘a grain of reality’ that builds up through time, with each grain having its own power requiring individual fortitude
  • People experience things individually according to their faculties and capacities
  • This is like when people drink water and know for themselves if it’s cool or warm
  • ‘A grain, and then another grain, from vagueness to clarity’ refers to primal grain building through time
  • There is also the total primal grain, which is measureless

The Living Method of Turning the Light Around

The practice continues during normal occupation, using accurate mindfulness to prevent light from being overcome by things, with formless turning of the light repeated throughout daily activities.

• Practitioners need not give up normal occupation while practicing turning the light around, following the principle that ‘when matters come up, one should respond; when things come up, one should discern’
  • If you manage affairs with accurate mindfulness, the light is not overcome by things
  • This allows repeating the formless turning around of light time and again
  • Looking back into the source of mind while doing anything, without sticking to person or self images, is the finest practice
  • This is called ’turning the light around wherever you are’
• Early morning quiet sitting for one or two hours is best, but when engaged in work or dealing with people, using the ’looking back’ technique ensures no interruption to the practice
  • Clear all objects from your mind during morning sitting
  • Use the looking back technique during all activities
  • Practicing this way for two or three months brings results
  • The realized ones in Heaven will surely come to attest to your experience

The Secret of Freedom

True freedom involves acting purposefully without striving, managing the function through the center while the mechanism operates through the two eyes as the handle of stars that controls Creation and yin-yang operations.

• The essence of the great Way is to act purposefully without striving - not clinging to local conventions while avoiding indifferent emptiness or dead voidness
  • Because of nonstriving, one doesn’t cling to forms or images
  • Because of purposeful action, one doesn’t fall into empty void
  • The function is all in the center, the mechanism all in the two eyes
  • The two eyes are the handle of stars managing Creation and operating yin and yang
• The major medicinal ingredient from beginning to end is only the ‘metal in the middle of primary water’ (lead in the region of water), representing a method for beginners to control inside from outside and attain independence
  • Previous talk of turning light around points out beginner’s method
  • This helps middling and lesser people cultivate lower two passes to penetrate the upper pass
  • As the Way becomes clear and mastery matures, Heaven directly divulges the unsurpassed doctrine
  • This doctrine should be kept confidential and worked out
• When entering quietude, first tune body and mind to be free and peaceful, let go of all objects so nothing hangs on mind, allowing the celestial mind to take its rightful place in the center
  • Lower eyelids and gaze inward at the chamber of water
  • Where light reaches, true positive energy comes forth in response
  • Fire is yang outside, yin inside, with one yin ruling and arousing mind according to things
  • When turning light around inward, mind is not aroused by things and negative energy stops
• The practice involves three stages: nurturing the root source (when scattered), settling in original openness (when concentrated), and hibernating in energy’s lair (when stabilized in profound tranquility)
  • These three stages exist in each stage, creating nine stages in one stage
  • During nurturing and initial quieting, all activities are forms of nurturing
  • You don’t change places but places are distinguished therein - the formless opening where all places are one
  • Action influenced by things is human desire; action uninfluenced by things is Heaven’s action

Setting Up the Foundation in a Hundred Days

Setting up the foundation requires a hundred days to develop real light rather than working with mere eye-light, achieving true fire in water through natural sufficiency of vital energy and formation of the spiritual embryo.

• One of the Mind Seal scriptures states ’the returning wind mixes together, the hundred days’ work is effective’ - but practitioners are still working with eye-light, not the true fire of spirit, essence, or wisdom
  • Turning around for a hundred days allows vital energy to naturally become sufficient
  • True yang rises spontaneously with true fire naturally existing in water
  • This leads to natural intercourse and formation of the embryo
  • You enter the heaven of unknowing where the child develops
• A hundred days setting up foundation is not literally a hundred days, just as one day is not one day and one breath does not refer to respiration, since breath is one’s own mind and original spirit
  • Breath is original spirit, original energy, and original vitality
  • Rising, descending, parting, and joining all arise from mind
  • Being and nonbeing, emptiness and fullness are all in thoughts
  • One breath is held for a lifetime, not only a hundred days
• The hundred days is fundamentally about empowerment - gaining power in daytime to use at night, gaining power at night to use in daytime, representing a precious teaching that relates to the human body
  • The sayings of advanced realized ones all relate to the human body
  • The sayings of true teachers all relate to students
  • This is the mystery of mysteries, which is inscrutable
  • When you see essence, you know why students must seek direction from a true teacher

The Light of Essence and the Light of Consciousness

The method distinguishes between the light of essence (spontaneous perception without discrimination) and the light of consciousness (discriminating thought), with the goal being to work with the primary unattributable light rather than conditioned awareness.

• The light in the empty room is not luminous but serves as evidence of beginning efficacy, and if you see it as light and fix attention on it, you fall into ideational consciousness rather than the light of essence
  • When mind forms a thought, this thought is the present mind, which is light and medicine
  • When people perceive things spontaneously without discriminating, this is light of essence
  • It’s like a mirror reflecting without intending to do so
  • When there’s an image in mirror there’s no more mirroring; when there’s consciousness in light, what light is there?
• At first the light of essence turns into thought and becomes consciousness, but when consciousness arises the light is obscured, following the Yellow Emperor’s saying that ‘when sound moves, it produces echoes, not sound’
  • The light has become consciousness rather than there being no light
  • The Heroic March Scripture teaches ’neither in objects nor in consciousness,’ only picking out the organ
  • Objects are external things with no actual connection to us
  • If you pursue objects, you are mistaking things for yourself
• Only the seeing essence cannot be attributed to anything, but even this can have attribution if it involves the revolving flow of consciousness, which Buddhist scripture calls error when using ‘flowing revolving consciousness’
  • Light is attributable to sun and moon, but when seeing their light there’s nothing to attribute it to
  • Sometimes there’s no sun or moon in sky, but there’s never absence of seeing essence that sees them
  • The discrimination based on light and dark still has attribution as internal object
  • Only when the last point is broken through is this the real seeing essence, truly unattributable
• When turning the light around properly, you turn around the primary unattributable light without applying a single conscious thought, using the original essence in sense organs rather than their nature of consciousness
  • What causes flow and revolution is the six sense organs
  • What enables enlightenment is also the six sense organs
  • Deliberate meditation is light of consciousness; letting go makes it light of essence
  • A hair’s breadth difference is as that of a thousand miles, requiring careful discernment

The Intercourse of Water and Fire

Water and fire represent the fundamental dynamics of consciousness - fire being the outward-running senses pursuing experience, while water is the inward-turning awareness gathering consciousness back to the center for true intercourse.

• Whenever you leak vital spirit by being stirred and interacting with beings, that is all fire, while gathering back spirit’s consciousness to quiet it in the center is all water
  • When senses run outward, that is fire; when senses turn around inward, that is water
  • The one yin inside fire concentrates on pursuing sense experience
  • The one yang inside water concentrates on reversing and withdrawing the senses
  • Water and fire are yin and yang, which are essence and life, which are body and mind
• When you withdraw to rest your vital spirit and are not influenced by objects, this creates true intercourse, naturally occurring when sitting in profound silence
  • This withdrawal represents the fundamental practice of the method
  • Body and mind are spirit and energy working in unity
  • True intercourse happens through non-influence by external objects
  • Profound silence provides the natural setting for this process

The Cycle

The complete cycle involves mental attainment rather than energy manipulation, with the mind as pole and energy as revolving stars, leading to natural medicine development and spontaneous spiritual operation.

• For the complete cycle, energy is not the main thing but mental attainment is the sublime secret, with the cycle helping growth through maintenance without minding and execution without deliberate intention
  • Look at the sky changing hourly through 365 days, yet polar star never moves
  • Our mind is like this - mind is the pole, energy the myriad stars revolving around it
  • Energy in limbs and whole body is basically a network, so don’t exert strength fully
  • Refine conscious spirit and remove arbitrary views, then medicine develops
• The medicine is not material but the light of essence - the primal true energy that requires great concentration to see, with no method of culling since those who speak of culling are mistaken
  • When seen for a long time, the light of mind’s basis becomes spontaneous
  • When mind is empty and all indulgence ended, you’re liberated from misery’s ocean
  • If it’s ‘dragon and tiger’ today, ‘water and fire’ tomorrow, they turn into illusions
  • Where water and fire interact in each day and hour, this is a cycle
• The revolving of Heaven never stops, but when unable to stop mind directly, there are times of interaction and non-interaction, requiring joining yin and yang in tranquility for universal harmony
  • If you can join yin and yang in tranquility, the whole earth is positive and harmonious
  • In the right place in your central chamber, all things simultaneously expand to fulfillment
  • This is the ‘bathing’ method spoken of in alchemical classics
  • When meditation becomes spontaneous, you don’t know what fire and water are
• Living midnight is very subtle - if you define it as true midnight that seems like sticking to forms, but without pointing out true midnight, how can living midnight be known?
  • Once you know living midnight, there’s definitely also true midnight
  • When you see it at all times, you finally reach true midnight with clear, light mood
  • Living midnight gradually blooms into ever-greater awareness
  • Just test it when heading for the true, and the true appears while the living becomes sublime

Song to Inspire the World

This poetic chapter presents the complete method through verse, explaining the great Way from the pervasive principle of the center to the final achievement of spiritual transformation and immortal realization.

• The song opens with Buddha and Lao-tzu’s compassionate teachings - Buddha pointing to life and death for a great cause, Lao-tzu lamenting the egotistic self while transmitting open spirit teachings that people didn’t discern
  • The author gives a general explanation of finding the road of truth due to warmth of cinnabar heart
  • The pervasive principle of the center bears universal change
  • The very being of true poise is the mysterious pass
  • If you can stabilize breathing at midnight, noon, and in between, light returns to primal opening
• The unified energy emerges from the river source producing medicine that passes through the screen and transmutes with golden light, while people of the world misconstrue the vitalities water and fire
  • The single disk of the red sun shines with constant brilliance
  • People convey water and fire from heart and genitals, producing separation
  • This creates the question of how the human way can meet the celestial mind
  • If in accord with the celestial, the way is naturally meet
• The practice involves putting down all objects so nothing comes to mind, representing the true infinity of the primal, leading to cosmic silence where signs are gone and conceptual consciousness is forgotten
  • At the pass of essence and life, you forget conceptual consciousness
  • After conceptual consciousness is forgotten, you see basic reality
  • The water-clarifying pearl appears, mysterious and unfathomable
  • The screen of beginningless afflictions is voided all at once
• The culmination involves jade capital sending down nine dragons, walking in the sky to climb heaven’s gateway, controlling wind and lightning while making thunder rumble
  • Freezing spirit and steadying breath are for beginners
  • Retreating to hide in secrecy is eternal calm
  • Two poems used for Zhang Zhennu both contain the great Way
  • After midnight and before noon are not times but water and fire

Questions and Answers Opening up the Mysteries of the Doctrine of the Golden Flower

This section provides practical clarifications through dialogue format, addressing common misconceptions about quietude versus activity, the nature of mind observation, and the relationship between internal and external practice.

• People wrongly suppose attainment is possible in quietude but lost in activity, not realizing that loss through activity occurs because nothing is truly attained through stillness
  • When you keep presence of mind, only then do you have autonomy
  • When you have autonomy, only then can you manage affairs
  • Presence of mind is easily interrupted but becomes unbroken through long practice
  • With continuity, light shines bright and energy becomes full
• Observing mind means observing the purity of mind, which is basically nondual and one vital reality throughout past and future, allowing transcendence to enlightenment stage without leaving sense objects
  • Observation can be deep or shallow, forced or spontaneous
  • There is observation outside sense objects, within sense objects, neither internal nor external, and panoramic
  • When observation is deep and illusion cleared, this is true emptiness
  • Turning light around is done by mind, not eyes - the mind is the eyes
• The light seen before your eyes is ‘rat-light,’ not the light of tiger-eye or dragon-vitality, since the light of mind belongs neither inside nor outside
  • Looking to see it with physical eyes is bedevilment
  • Everyone already has the lamp of mind, but it must be lit to shine for immortality
  • Don’t forget the mind and allow spirit to be obscured
  • If you have no autonomy, vital spirit diffuses
• The great Way requires transforming vitality into energy and refining energy into spirit, keeping the clear and removing the polluted, but external work has no connection to the great Way
  • The minor technique of circulating energy can enhance body and extend life span
  • But supposing the great Way requires physical body work is a tangential teaching
  • True practice first requires vitality transformation, and this vitality is not sexual
  • Few are calm and serious, rare are those sincere and unified

Translator’s Afterword: Modern Applications of the Golden Flower Method

Thomas Cleary explains his personal experience with the golden flower method and explores its potential applications in modern psychotherapy, particularly for understanding mood and personality disorders through the host-guest metaphor.

• Cleary was introduced to the golden flower practice of ’turning the light around’ long before knowing of this book’s existence, finding the method extremely powerful and versatile for mindfulness work
  • He spent years studying its use and looking for tested information about objective application
  • This led to studies of classical sourcebooks in Chinese, Sanskrit, and Japanese
  • He began translating relevant Buddhist and Taoist texts for their psychological insights
  • The practice revealed unsuspected dimensions in literature of other religions
• Wilhelm’s translation was practically dysfunctional due to enough flaws in grammar, terminology, and conceptual structures, while Jung’s psychoanalysis was not actually equivalent to the golden flower practice
  • Wilhelm had no facilities for learning the required languages and symbol systems
  • Jung warned against practice but professed psychoanalysis as Western equivalent
  • Jung’s reasoning about Europeans lacking cultural basis had some truth but wasn’t definitive
  • The problem was in cult behavior, not in the object of practice
• The teaching distinguishes between ‘original spirit’ (formless essence of awareness) and ‘conscious spirit’ (conditioned mind-set), with the goal of refining conscious spirit to reunite with original spirit
  • Intuition belongs to original spirit, intellect to conscious spirit
  • In Chan Buddhism, original spirit is host while conscious spirit is guest
  • Self-delusion occurs when servant takes over from master
  • Self-enlightenment restores master’s autonomy in the center
• The method could illuminate understanding and treatment of mood and personality disorders by providing objective perspective through the ‘four relations between host and guest’ in Chan teaching
  • Guest within guest: ordinary mind going from mood to mood, alienated from the host
  • Host within guest: first stage of turning light around with contact established
  • Guest within host: free access to thoughts without being bound by them
  • Host within host: original spirit itself, the primal source of consciousness