What is the Centre?
Explaining Post-Heaven & Pre-Heaven Centres
Hello,
The Middle School of Daoist alchemical practice takes the name it does because it is based on cultivation of the centre.
The centre is divided into post-heaven centres and the pre-heaven centre. At the start of practice one guards the post-heaven centre. Guarding means to correctly place and regulate awareness upon a location.
The post-heaven centre is lower dantian for men and tanzhong for women; guarding these locations purifies mind and gathers pre-heaven energies within the body; it is the essential initial mechanism for moving through the alchemical process.
If a practitioner reaches a sufficient level in their practice and demonstrates sufficient qualities of character, they will receive transmission of the pre-heaven centre, which is called the one opening of the mysterious pass (xuanguan yiqiao, 玄關一竅).
As the name suggests, the pre-heaven centre is a pass. You can think of two countries separated by a high mountain range. The one opening of the mysterious pass is the passage that one uses to travel through the mountains, from one country to the other. On either side of the route are precipices, falling into either nihilism or attachment to form.
The country that one is starting from is the post-heaven realm of myriad beings, the country that one enters is the pre-heaven world of unity and emptiness. Both words do not illuminate the reality of it; what lies on the other side of the one opening is a realm with a diverse range of geographies, inhabitants and treasures.
The reason an alchemical practitioner travels into this realm is because, within it, one is able to locate increasingly high level energies, which are required to fuel the higher levels of the alchemical process.
Lineage transmission is required to locate the outer one opening of the mysterious pass (where it begins within the post-heaven realm of myriad beings), how to travel through it correctly, and then how to navigate the landscape encountered within.
Through lesser engagement with this space, health, longevity, and happiness within the world may be found. Through greater engagement with this space, liberation and transcendence emerge.
道炁長存,
Oscar