Mantak Chia - Taoist Shaman: Practices from the Wheel of Life

Acknowledgments

The Universal Tao Publications staff involved in the preparation and production of Taoist Shaman 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 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 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 Tao System. For their gifts, we offer our eternal gratitude and love. As always, their contribution has been crucial in presenting the concepts and techniques of the Universal Tao.

For their efforts to clarify the text and produce this handsome new edition of the book, we thank the editorial and production staff at Inner Traditions/Destiny Books. We also thank Nancy Yeilding for her line edit of the new edition.

We wish to thank the following people for their assistance in producing the original edition of this book: Vinod Solluna for his editorial work, Hirunyathorn Punsan for his graphic design work, Anamarta for photography, Juan Li for his color illustrations, and Kris Deva North for the shamanic diagrams.

A special thanks goes to our Thai production team: Raruen Keawapadung, computer graphics, and Saniem Chaisarn, production designer.

Kris Deva North wishes to thank his shamanic teachers, the Wakamba, especially Mwala Ibuti and Nethenge Ngube, Wakan of the Banjalong, Kumbahadur Gurung, Rowan Saille, Samara Hawthorn; Wa-Na-Ne-Che of the Lakota; Howard Wills; Rene Navarro for the original reading list.

To Alexander West for Amazonian insights; Matt Lewis and adepts of the London Universal Healing Tao Center for allowing themselves to be guinea pigs in testing arcane techniques of Taoist ecstasy; the Grimstone Community 1999 to 2007 for their annual tolerance of the Din of Death.

To Guillaume Bouteloup for permission to excerpt his thesis Uses of the I Ching; John Mark Eggerton for permission to use Calling the Directions; Dr. Sandra Goodman of Positive Health magazine for permission to excerpt Calabash of Light; Esther Jantzen for her notes on Howard Wills; Vinod Solluna for his contribution on the Western Dragon Tradition; and Anamarta for her love, support, patience, and inspiration.

Putting Taoist Shamanic Techniques 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 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 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 or substitute for professional medical treatment and care. Any reader suffering from illnesses based on psychological or emotional disorders should consult an appropriate professional health care practitioner or therapist. Such problems should be corrected before you start training.

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.

The Universal Tao cannot be responsible for the consequences of any practice or misuse of the information 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.

Taoist Shamanic Traditionfrom Mystery to History

When human beings first stood upon the land and looked about the horizon they saw in the distance around them the edge of a mystic circle where Heaven above touched Earth below. Moving about within that circle, they noticed certain constants:

• Wherever each moved, his or her place was always at the center, between Heaven and Earth.
• For each one it was the same, and so for each one different.
• The sun always rose from one point in that circle and set in another, and then Heaven darkened until lit by stars, or an inconstant moon.
• Whereas the sun moved across Heaven by day, by night Heaven moved around one star, which remained fixed and constant.
• For each one it was the same, and so the same for all, wherever humans moved on Earth.

Thus the ancient humans discovered that each of one of us is the center of our own universe, while Heaven has its own center. They observed the power of Heaven, seeing that the fire of Heaven warms and illuminates Earth, that water falls from Heaven to Earth, lightning splits Heaven and strikes Earth while Heaven rumbles, and wind rushes between Heaven and Earth. Heaven commands Earth. Thus whoever has Heavens mandate rules Earth.

The shaman kings began as leaders talking to Heaven. One story says that a group of Aryans shipwrecked on the China shore thousands of years ago did not die, nor have children; they became known as the Shining Ones. They taught shamanic practices, including the protective circle, calling the elements, ecstatic journeying and flight, power animals, and tutelary deities or guides.

From Yu, the legendary son of the bearshape-shifter, sky-dancer, and traveler in the underworldright down through the Western Chou Dynasty (1122770 BCE), shamans continued to follow the bear, wearing bearskin robes in ceremony. Their power dwindled in succeeding years; by the end of the Eastern Chou (221 BCE), when warring states were unified under the Chin, many shamanic traditions had been absorbed into schools of Taoism (fig. 1.1). When the Chin dynasty embraced Confucianism over Taoism, shamanism went underground.

Shamanic influence was restored at court under the Western Han (206 BCE8 CE) as religious and magical Taoism, especially of the Fang Shih, who developed Inner Alchemy and Feng Shui. The next dynasty, however, the Eastern Han (25220 CE), saw the last of the court shamans replaced by scholars and civil servants. The simple philosophy, or Tao Chia, expounded by Lao-tzu in the Tao Te Ching around 600 BCE had become Tao Chiao, religious dogma, by second century of the first millennium. The Do-It-Yourself principles of Taoism were competing with Confucianisms reassuringly strict codes of behavior for all situations. But in villages of the countryside, the old ways and their practitioners still held sway, evolving Taoism as a folk religion of mystery and secrecy, with rites, rituals, and initiations. Families and priests, sources of the great schools of Taoism with their ideological and geographical differences, practiced shamanic Taoism as local cults.

Chang Tao-ling (34156 CE), a Fang Shih, traveled in western China (now Sichuan/Yunnan), a remote part of the kingdom where shamanism was still widely practiced. Influenced by Tibetan Tantric practices, Chang founded the school Seven Bushels of Rice, which evolved into the Celestial Masters. In the following centuries their fortunes rose and fell with changing dynasties and conflicts between Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist doctrines.