Dao De Jing Chan Wei Chapter 24
New approach to subscription program
Hello my friends,
today the content for monthly and yearly subscribers is chapter 24 of the Dao De Jing Chan Wei by Huang Yuanji. From 2020 - 2024 a group of us read the entire 81 chapter text and analyzed it together with the Dao De Jing. Today all the chapters after 24 on my computer (I lost some old chapters when my old hard drive died) and I don’t intend to teach the document again, so I’m editing it and offering it as a weekly part of the paid subscription content.
This will be accompanied by free subscription analysis of each chapter to give readers an idea of Huang’s thesis and what he’s talking about.
Since I have tens of thousands of pages of translated documents and since I don’t plan on teaching some of it again, I was thinking we could start publishing here. If you are interested in Daoist internal alchemy documents and you aren’t already subscribed, you should consider it. For $7/month or $70/year you will receive access to documents which have never before been published in English as well as occasional other goodies like document analysis and advice about how to practice Neidan and Qigong.
Anyway, enough advertising, here is my analysis of chapter 24 of Dao De Jing Chan Wei:
Dao De Jing chapter 24 says:
企者不立
“Those who stand on tip toes cannot be set stable.”
跨者不行；
“Those who straddle cannot walk,
自見者不明；
“if see yourself you will not be bright,
自是者不彰；
“if you are for yourself you will not be conspicuous,”
自伐者無功；
“if you cut yourself you will have no skill,”
自矜者不長。
“if you are arrogant you will not be long lasting.”
其在道也，
“This is in the Dao.”
曰：餘食贅行。
“it is said if you take excess action and go forth superfluously,”
(Note:食 shi means to eat, but it also means to act in ancient Chinese, you can read it either way.)
物或惡之，
“things will become disgusting,”
故有道者不處
“Those who have the Dao do not stop in one place.”
I’ve taken a few liberties with the translation to be consistent with Huang’s Neidan thought, but the basic idea is that people who go to excess lose the Dao. Excess hinges on personal identity and desire as a mode of action.
Huang Yuanji, the Neidan scholar, takes this passage to mean that in the cultivation of internal alchemy it is important to remove our corporeal desires and follow a lifestyle of frugality in order to fortify the practice of meditation.
Instead of going forth, beating the drum, taking what one wants, shining before others, and being fully of the self and ego (to use a modern vernacular word to describe going with our own personal motives and self image), we should turn inward, reduce thought to zero, observe the deep darkness, forget personal motives and become absorbed in the hidden Dao.
This absorption in the hidden Dao is not just an inert state, it has big rewards, but it does not follow the model that everyone knows which is “If I work hard and I’m smart, good things will happen,” but instead follows a subtle model which could be phrased as “if I go to the extreme of reduction, phenomena will change their nature.”
The phenomena in this sense are the inner experiences of our bodies and minds and those aspects we reduce are the ones we want to change. If you want to become Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, Daoism is not the philosophy for you, but if you want to repair aspects of your body, mind and spirit which are damaged, then it is one of the best methods you can study.
Huang Yuanji’s Dao cuts away much of the action of other schools of Internal Alchemy and leaves behind a simple method of meditation which grows the Yang Spirit from the Lower Dantian over a long period of time through the modulation of Spirit and Breath Merged as One (神气合一).
The method is very simple, but simple things are subtle and take time to master, as well as requiring dedication to deepening knowledge. This is the essential feature of Huang’s approach to Internal Alchemy, the best approach in my opinion.
Chapter 24 is included below this line in the paid subscription section. If you want to read it and catch up every week as we go through each chapter and aren’t already a subscriber, please sign up. In fact, why not take advantage of the seven day free trial to IS where you can read the subscription only articles and see if you like them before you pay!