Chia - Sealing of the five senses: advanced practices for becoming a Taoist immortal

Acknowledgments

The Universal Tao publications staff involved in the preparation and production of Sealing of the Five Senses: Advanced Practices for Becoming a Taoist Immortal extend our gratitude to the many generations of Taoist masters who have passed on their special lineage, in the form of an unbroken oral transmission, over thousands of years. We thank Taoist Master I Yun (Yi Eng) for his openness in transmitting the formulas of Taoist Inner Alchemy. We also wish to thank the thousands of unknown men and women of the Chinese healing arts who developed many of the methods and ideas presented in this book.

We offer our eternal gratitude and love to our parents and teachers for their many gifts to us. Remembering them brings joy and satisfaction to our continued efforts in presenting the Universal Healing Tao system. As always, their contribution has been crucial in presenting the concepts and techniques of the Universal Healing Tao.

Thanks to Juan Li for the use of his beautiful and visionary paintings, illustrating Taoist esoteric practices.

We thank the many contributors essential to this books final form: The editorial and production staff at Inner Traditions/Destiny Books for their efforts to clarify the text and produce a handsome new edition of the book, Gail Rex for her line edit of the new edition, and Dr. Andrew Jan for his contributions on Kan and Li practice and Taoist Immortality.

We wish to thank the following people for their assistance in producing the earlier editions of this book: Bob Zuraw for sharing his kindness, healing techniques, and Taoist understandings; our senior instructors Juan Li and Renu Li for their insightful contributions over the years to this edition; Colin Drown for his editorial work and writing contributions; Otto Thamboon and Udon Jandee for their artistic contributions to the revised edition of this book; and Charles Morris, without whom the book would not have come to be, for inspiring and supporting all of the UHT books.

A special thanks goes to our Thai production team: Hirunyathorn Punsan, Sopitnapa Promnon, Udon Jandee, and Suthisa Chaisarn.

Putting Sealing of the Five Senses into Practice

The practices described in this book have been used successfully for thousands of years by Taoists trained by personal instruction. Readers should not undertake the practice without receiving personal transmission and training from a certified instructor of the Universal Healing Tao, since certain of these practices, if done improperly, may cause injury or result in health problems. This book is intended to supplement individual training by the Universal Healing Tao and to serve as a reference guide for these practices. Anyone who undertakes these practices on the basis of this book alone does so entirely at his or her own risk.

The meditations, practices, and techniques described herein are not intended to be used as an alternative to or substitute for professional medical treatment and care. If any readers are suffering from illnesses based on mental or emotional disorders, an appropriate professional health care practitioner or therapist should be consulted. Such problems should be corrected before you start training.

Neither the Universal Healing Tao nor its staff and instructors can be responsible for the consequences of any practice or misuse of the information contained in this book. If the reader undertakes any exercise without strictly following the instructions, notes, and warnings, the responsibility must lie solely with the reader.

This book does not attempt to give any medical diagnosis, treatment, prescription, or remedial recommendation in relation to any human disease, ailment, suffering, or physical condition whatsoever.

Preface

Long before White Cloud met Mantak Chia, he wandered the Himalayan Mountains looking for a sage to teach him the high-level practices. He nearly starved to death: there is no food at that altitude in the mountains, only cold air that is ideal for the steaming exercises in the Kan and Li practices.

One day, White Cloud stumbled into a cave where bacteria does not grow and saw a sage in a sitting meditation posture; he was not moving or visibly breathing. White Cloud could not believe his eyes: he prostrated himself, prayed, and showed praise continuously for weeks and months, but nothing happened. The sitting sage did not move. Then finally, the sagewho had been out of his bodyopened his eyes. You will never guess what he did next: after seeing White Cloud he closed his eyes and left again.

White Cloud went crazy and prostrated himself, prayed, and showed praise continuously again. Weeks went by and White Cloud was beside himself with nowhere to go and no funds to get there. After another month or so, the meditative sage opened his eyes again. Seeing White Cloud still there, the sage pitied him and decided to teach him the Inner Alchemy system of practices.

Master Mantak Chia first learned of these advanced Inner Alchemy practices from White Cloud over fifty-five years ago while he was a student in Hong Kong, China. Mantak and his schoolboy friends enjoyed reading kung fu comic books, whose characters they idolized. (Master Chia still reads these comic books today.) Like many Chinese boys, Mantak and his friends wanted to be like their illustrated heroesskilled and powerful.

One day, when the boys were talking about their comic books, they heard about a great Taoist sage who had come down from the Himalayan Mountains in northern China. This sage was forced down from the mountains because of the Cultural Revolution that was happening in China at that time. In an effort to eradicate the old religions, the Chinese army was bombing the areas where Buddhist monasteries and Taoist temples had been built into the mountains for training and higher-level practices. Several thousand monasteries were destroyed and untold numbers of Buddhist monks and Taoist sages were killed during this period.

The Taoist sage White Cloud had been living in one of those Himalayan caves for thirty-three years, but he could no longer maintain his advanced practices because of the bombing around him. He went south to Hong Konga British colony at the timeto resume his practices, and his story eventually reached the ears of the high school boys. Mantak and his friends agreed that they would all go across town on the following Tuesday to meet the Taoist sage and find out if he could teach them kung fu like in their comic books. Tuesday arrived, but the only one who showed up was little Mantak, who decided to knock on the door. When the sage appeared at the door, he looked at young Mantak and said, I am going to teach you the Tao.

During the next four years, for two to three days each week, the Taoist sage taught young Mantak all of the Internal Alchemy formulas that now comprise the Universal Healing Tao system, which Mantak Chia founded forty years later. Luckily for the Universal Healing Tao students, Master Chia was born in the year of the monkey and can copy anything (monkey see, monkey do). With his Chinese Christian background and Western anatomy training, he also has the ability to research and develop new techniques to perfect the formulas; no doubt the Taoist sage somehow knew that when he first saw him.

Finally, at the end of his senior year of high school and before going back to his home in Bangkok, Thailand, Master Chia said goodbye to his Taoist master. His master smiled and told Mantak that one day he would move to the United States and would start teaching the Tao and its Way. He made Mantak promise to teach the Tao first to the Chinese people in the U.S. for three years before he began to teach the Westerners. When Master Chia moved to New York City nearly twenty years later, in 1976, he fulfilled his promise and taught the Chinese in Chinatown for three years, before he began teaching the Westerners and forming the Universal Healing Tao system.