Pictured: Zuo Wang, or Sitting in Forgetting is a Classic meditation of Daoism originating in Zhuangzi and being popularized by Shang Qing patriarch Sima Qianzheng, also known as Tian Yinzi (The Heavenly Hermit Master). This week in Seven Short Lessons on Internal Alchemy we will look into how to combine the techniques of the past two lessons with Sitting in Forgetting. This will give us a good basic primer of how to focus and quiet the mind before we start our real work next week in lesson four when we will learn how to place the mind in the Cavity of Qi. These lessons are for subscriber’s so make sure you join Immortality Study. For the price of a trip to starbucks every month you can get direct instruction on Internal Alchemy practice, theory and philosophy that is hard to come by anywhere else.
Welcome to week 3, the text for this week is below and the audio recording is at the bottom of the page, so feel free to scroll down and listen to it before coming back to read the text.
3: Master Heavenly Hermit: Sitting in Forgetting:
坐忘者，因存想而得也，因存想而忘也。
Sitting in forgetting is practiced after containing the imagination is achieved,
it is the practice of forgetting containing the imagination.
行道而不見其行，非坐之義乎？
Those who practice the Dao do not see its movement, is this the meaning of sitting?
有見而不行其見，非忘之義乎？何謂不行？
Seeing the nature of the unmoving, is this not the meaning of forgetting? How is it that one does not move?