Fostering your Inborn Nature and Securing your Life

Taken from the book : The Secret of Everlasting Life by Richard Bertschinger

Beginning in this chapter, and through to chapter 11, Wei Boyang describes the primary importance of fostering our natural endowment of life. These five chapters form the ‘core’ of Wei’s writings. To guard our vitality or seed within enables us to generate an energy without. Whilst considering the ultimate origins of human life, the idea of alchemy is first broached and its material ingredients outlines – you need water, fire and gold. In vivid imagery the creation of an Elixir is depicted as the generation of a foetus within the whom.

If you would foster your inborn nature,
Lengthen your years and turn back time,
Consider the final outcome of all things,
And ponder that which comes before –
Man is endowed with a solid body
Which fundamentally is pure and empty :
The original vital seed showers out as a cloud,
Depending on an energy to surround it at the beginning.
As the Yin and Yang become the measure
They come to rest as souls, the Hun and the Po.

The Yang spirit of the sun is the Hun,
The Yin spirit of the moon is the Po;
The Hun and Po join together
And link in accord to set up home.

Our inborn nature acts as host within,
Sets up its position as the citadel,
Our feelings are in command outside,
Ranging unbroken as the city wall.
The city and its wall once complete
All people and things are secure.

This section examines our inborn nature (xing) and our life (ming). Our solid body is, in reality, purely empty; our structure is mostly space. Our inborn nature acts as a spirit within, our gift from the heavenly inner world; our material energy is as a substance outside, our place in the physical outer world. As our inner energy is built up strongly so our place in he world is secure.

The ultimate principle in the development of an inner Elixir involves the same stages as the outer extension of our physical life. The original vital seed is Yang in nature but the original energy is Yin, so as Yin and Yang join they complete a man. In the postnatal outer world there are the Hun- and Po-souls, also shown as Kan and Li. The Hun is the Yang, the trigram Li and the sun; the Po is the Yin, the trigram Kan and the moon. At all times during our life these two interrelate and involve each other, they can never be set apart.

The Hun acts as the spirit of our inborn nature, as a ruler setting up his palace within; the Po acts as our life and our feelings, as a minister setting a guard on the city wall to protect us outside. As they go about their duty, Kan and Li intertwine, laying the foundation for the inner Elixir.

Master Shangyang comments : This chapter describes the importance of fostering our inborn nature endowment – that we may then cultivate an active life.

What is meant by our inborn nature? It is something belonging to Qian. If man can foster this, then the Qian-Yang will not waste away. With his vital seed guarded within and an energy generated outside, he will be able to smelt an Elixir and enter into the holy life.

The people of this world do not understand that their inborn nature (xing) and life (ming) are one, so what is it they work with? Hey either guess that their inborn nature involves some kind of clever state of knowledge or awareness, or else take their nature to be the dull and stupid, fleshy mass which makes up the heart.

Some acknowledge their ‘thinking’ and ‘mental processes’ to be their nature; some point to the ‘ungraspable’ as their nature, or to sitting ‘dull and vacant’; or else they take the ‘here and now’ as their life.

But how can they understand something so vague and unclear to be their life? How can they understand a profession which includes so many births and changes to be anything to do with life? They are only wildly guessing and getting involved in dreams and fantasies. How can this ever be a way into the holy life?

The Yin-Shadow scripture says: The heavenly nature is born in man. The heart is the crux. The true-hearted person discovers it and works away solidly at it. The small person discovers it and fritters away his life.

Confucius said : Work tirelessly at principle, wholly acting according to your inborn nature. Thus you arrive at life’s destiny.

Mensius said : Protect the heart and foster the inborn nature. Then you wait for heaven’s life-mandate to arrive.

Whether we live a long life or die an early death, it is all the same. We develop ourselves and await our destiny. By this means we secure our life. The path of the sages which was transmitted to Mensius is absolutely clear.

The Yi Jung (Shuogua, Eighth Wing) says : In ancient times when the sages created the Book of Change, they intended that it should in principle conform with our inborn nature and life. Therefore they drew up the Dao or heaven, and called it Yin and Yang’ they drew up the Dao of earth and called it the firm and yielding; and they drew up the Dao of mankind and called it human-heartedness and righteousness.

Now our honoured Immortal speaks about developing our inborn nature, not about developing our life. How can we enter into the holy way of life? To develop a life we must first develop an inborn nature. From this position we can then enter into cultivating a particular path of development.

The received opinion is that the Buddhist cultivate their ‘nature’; and the Daoists cultivate their ‘lives’. But how can there be two separate paths in this world? In no way can this be comparable to Mensius’s idea of ‘protecting the heart and fostering the inborn nature’, and the path of ‘developing the self’ and ‘securing our life’.

In general if you wish to secure your life you should primarily foster your inborn nature. If you are not aware of your inborn nature, how can you understand your life?

Thus the Unvarying Mean (a Consucian text) says ‘our inborn nature is the life-mandate of heaven’, and ‘to follow to the end this inborn nature is what is meant by the Dao’. For this reason the sages would never allow duplicity. This is implied when the text says, ‘If you would foster your inborn nature, lengthen your years and turn back time…’

He continues : Just hold fast loyally to the mean within. This is to ‘foster your inborn nature’. Man and woman mingle their seed, and a myriad creatures are born and transformed. This is what is known as ‘securing your life’. To accumulate vital seed and build up energy. This is to ‘foster your inborn nature’. Flowing through the Wu-soil and on to the Ji-soil. This is to ‘secure your life’.

He continues: You should think, ‘Where is it that my body and self come from?” The reply may be ‘It is the inner energy of Yin and Yang, from my mother and father, who gave me life.’ So then it is the inner energy of Yin and Yang which can lengthen your years and actually form you into an Immortal or a Buddha.

Therefore the inner development of the supreme Elixir begins with the body first receiving its motivating energy. It receives it in one mass – without there being any distinctions – except those that exist between going along with or turning against (ni) the flow.

He continues : o go along with the flow of this energy is to produce living creatures, such as man himself; to turn against it is to produce an Elixir and to enter into the holy life. This is what is meant by ‘his original vital seed showers out as a cloud, depending on an energy to surround it at the beginning’.

He concludes : The Hun and Po ‘link together in setting up home.’ So then both Yin and Yang are joined and relate to each other. Our inborn nature acts the host by solidifying our vitality within, setting up its position ‘as a city wall’.

What is this ‘wall’? It is as a wrapping to a flower. Where is this ‘city’? It is the space in which the alchemy can take place.

Then in this moment, we are one,
In close contact with Qian and Jun.
Qian moves out directly,
The energy spreads out and the seed flows through,
Kun is settled in and contracted,
The place for lodging the furnace.
“Firmness is applied and then withdrawn,
Softness transformed through stimulation,
The nine is restored, the seven recycled,
The eight returned, the six remains.’
The boy goes white, the girl turns red!
The gold and the fire seize one another.
Then water is used to settle the flame,
That the ‘cycling five’ may begin.

Here we enter into the prenatal inner world: the postnatal turns back to the prenatal. The ‘four images’ and ‘five elements’ are jumbled up all together as one energy, until they form in an Elixir.