Daoist Meditation for Beginners: a Historical Overview chapter 7

In this week we will learn early Daoist Meditation methods including:

• Sima Chengzhen's Heavenly Hermit (apophatic meditation/sitting in forgetting),
• Ding Guan (stable observation/Daoist awareness meditation),
• Tai Xi (Embryonic Breathing/internal breathing methods),

This class shows how Daoist methods moved away from external practices such as Dao Yin and Tu Na and gradually toward the internal meditation techniques that went on to set the foundations for internal alchemy in later generations.

This class is especially useful to help understand the Tang Dynasty ecology of Daoist meditation and includes complete translations of the Ding Guan Jing and Tai Xi Jing as well as a partial translation of the Heavenly Hermit by Sima Chengzhen.