psychology

The Gentle and The Firm

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In my readings on Taoism, I recently read through “Immortal Sisters,” one of Thomas Cleary’s early translations, this one of works by female Taoists. It’s a fascinating read of course, and it’s written by a younger, dare I say feistier Cleary with opinions on certain eras of Chinese history that I believe mitigated with time. However I wish to focus on some writings by famed Taoist Immortal Sun Bu-Er and commentary by Chen Yingning (Cleary has a knack for finding and translating not just documents, but often extensive commentary on the same).

The funny thing was the copy I had I’ve had, as of this writing, perhaps two decades or more. I’d forgotten I had it, and as I was working to expand my Taoist readings, I decided it was time. I found much excellent advice, but one piece stood out in particular.

To show how useful this advice was, let me explain the situation where it helped me.

My meditative practice, as I’ve stated before, is based on The Secret of The Golden Flower, where one rests mind on breath while one tunes breath to be slower and even. It’s a simple process, summarizable in, say, a small handbook. However as any practitioner of meditation knows, the actual experience is one that can be discussed endlessly (as many have).

Trying to rest mind on breath and tune that breath isn’t as simple as it may sound, at least for me. One is trying to tune breath, one is trying to rest mind, one is sitting still, one probably has thoughts arising and so on. In my readings of Taoist literature, I’ve found at least a notable part of the obscure symbolism is useful concepts and approaches to help meditation without spelling it out so much your expectations mess you up.

And the writings of Sun Bu-Er provides to have some extremely helpful advice. The specific section is called “Cultivating the Elixir,” and using alchemical symbolism, it states the following:

“Tuning the breath, gather it in the gold crucible.”

“Stabilizing spirit, guard the jade pass.”

Chen Yingning notes in his commentary (which, as per classic Taoism, is far longer than the things he comments on) that this is about the kind of concentration one uses. Breath requires strong concentration, resting the mind requires gentle concentration.

And, suddenly, I understood meditation more.

There I am tuning my breath – slower and more even all the time. That requires firmness, strength. Your whole body is engaged. That strength ensures a refined breath.

There I am resting my mind – and that is best done gently. We all know what it’s like to force our mind to do things – our mind wrestling with our mind is a painful thing. But when I rest my mind on breath, I can make it gentler and gentler.

It’s firm and gentle, mind and breath, yin and yang – pairings are understandably common in Taoist meditation. A little addition to my understanding of meditation thanks to a modern translator and the writers of the past. A little more for my journey down the path.

That’s a funny thing about meditative practices, about spiritual practices in general. You have to do it, you have to get your hands dirty, and you can’t get lost in scripture and notes and endless spinning thoughts. At the same time you have to read and expand your mind, never think you have the answers – or even all the questions.

It requires a kind of curiosity, a willingness to get into the readings – like a meditation. Be open to surprises.

Just like me with a copy of a book I got decades ago.

–Xenofact

The Loop

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I’ve been analyzing desires and obsessions lately as well as how we deal with them. I’m coming to the conclusion that some of the ways we deal with our obsessions end up fueling them. The poison isn’t the medicine, but the poison and medicine feed back into each other.

You think you’ve avoided negative thoughts by shifting to positive ones? Not necessarily.

I started coming to this conclusion two ways.

First, in my energy work, my own Quigong/Circulation methods (you know the ones I discuss carefully since such practices can backfire). Part of that practice is ensuring energies flow smoothly through the body, whether you consider these esoteric energies real or just a metaphor for awareness and relaxation. Such practices make you aware of how your body works, of when you are tense or loose, and how mind and body affection each other.

What I noticed was that, when dealing with stressful situations and ruminations, even when I turned to supposedly pleasant or virtuous thoughts, the tensions remained. In a few cases it would seem even if I’d directed my mind elsewhere, these supposedly more healthy thoughts made it worse. How could I get more tense despite having less negative thoughts?

In terms of Energy Work, it was like I’d have a loop of energy running around in my brain, powering negative thoughts – obsessions, fears, etc. But when I cultivated supposedly positive thoughts, it’d be just another loop. I’d play over something supposedly benevolent over and over, but I was still stuck in a loop.

(This is why, as I have noted, anatomical spiritual models are useful to rethink ourselves).

Secondly, as I noticed these tensions and such, I was analyzing the way my mind worked, supported by my breath meditation. Classic mind-on-breath/breath-on-mind meditations are important, as I’ve held forth on, but one useful side effect is awareness. Now I’m not saying you want to sit down to meditate with that as your goal (in fact, seeking is a barrier to meditation) but hey, enjoy the scenery on the trip

One thing I had noticed in meditation was how loops in my thoughts would work. It was easy to notice a bad habit, but also easy to try to replace it with a good habit. However, when you did that, you’d end up just leaping from habit to habit. Good or bad, obsessions are obsessions and habits can be for good or ill.

I also noticed that I could bounce between one or the other. Either way you got into a habit of looking to have a habit. Trying to get out of a negative obsession with a positive one was still an obsession. In a way you were creating a rut in your mind, and no matter what was in that rut, you would still be in a rut.

No matter the model I used it was pretty apparent – you can get into various negative psychological loops, and you could replace them with positive ones, but were still in a Loop. The two played off of each other.

That was quite a revelation as I had often found ways to cultivate positive habits and they were easy to use to replace negative ones. But the negative ones kept coming back. I had in short, worn a rut in my mind (or my energy channels) that was still there no matter what filled it.

Since that understanding, it’s helped me deal with emotional loops. I can recognize them and I have a metaphor (multiple metaphors) to understand them. I can cultivate habits to step out of the loops and just relax more in general. It’s also a reminder that it’s easy to think you have solved a problem, but are reinforcing part of it.

An emotional loop is a loop no matter how good it feels or what problem you think it solved. I’m also glad to everyone whose work and writing has helped me in meditative practices, they’re why I can see it.

–Xenofact

Cultural Cargo Cults Ethics and Taoism

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I was reading the Tao Te Ching lately, and Chapter 18 struck me. Let me paraphrase (from Red Pine and a few other translations):

When the Great Way is left, kindness and justice arise

When reason arises, we encounter deceit.

When the six relations fail, we encounter obedience and love.

When the country is in chaos, we acknowledge honest officials.

I take this chapter to be one of failure. If people hold to the Tao, the Great Way, that connectedness-of-reality, you can have an orderly life. When you loose it things fall apart – even if we think we’re being virtuous.

The arising of kindness and justice sounds like a good thing. Reason is a good thing, correct? Yet the entire chapter is one of decline, ending with one of my favorite lines, the acknowledgement of honest officials – when shouldn’t they all be honest?

It’s a curious chapter indeed. Some things we’d think of are good are sneered at. When contemplating it, I had a useful insight relevant to political and social conversations of the day.

The way I read the chapter is the sense of the Tao, that unity, leads to harmony. There are kindness and justice, reason, good relations, and so on, but they are part of a “unified” worldview that is both mystical bust also practical. There may be kindness, honesty, and so on, but they are the result of holding to the Tao – not separate and distinct from it. “True” virtuous things, as it were, things that have a foundation.

But when you loose that sense of unity, everything is broken, out, separate, a substitute. That’s when I thought of the term bandied about these days (in 2026) – “Cargo Cults.”

The term “Cargo Cult Fascism” arose to describe certain would-be strongmen of our age who seemed to think that if they acted like fascist leaders, they’d have automatic compliance. The term spread to other areas of political and social discussion, noting just how much of our society was people acting out things but not actually doing them or caring about them or understanding them. Such people and their actions often failed and fell apart – bad but also dysfunctional.

But if you have “bad” Cargo Cults, that also means you can have ones of people trying to be “good.”

Suddenly, I understood this chapter of the Tao Te Ching better (especially considering the times of Taoist-versus-Confucian). It was about fragmented things, divided from a larger reality, imitative but with no foundation. Past a point you’re just going through the motions and not being anything, and not connected to the Way, the foundation of things, the depth of it all. Your kindness, your morality, no matter how hard you try, is going to be a bit hollow, a bit of an act, without that foundation.

I think that’s also why the last line hits me hard. Imagine a society in so much chaos that saying someone is an “honest minister” is a compliment as opposed to indicating that if that’s exceptional your government sucks. Also maybe that person is just a poser anyway.

Regularly reading great spiritual and philosophical works is good not just for your own spiritual “ecosystem” but for reviewing and thinking over modern and past times. This was a useful insight, helping me understand both past writings and our current situations.

(I mean the situations are both terrible but I understand them better)

–Xenofact