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PREFACE

The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Health, and Long Life is a step-by-step description of a way of Taoist meditation from ancient China. The first proponent of this form of meditation was a woman named Wei Huacun (Wei Hua-ts'un), who lived in the fourth century (d. ca. 330 C.E.). Married, with two sons who were employed at the court in Nanjing (Nan-ching, then called Jinling, "Gold Hill"), she received a Taoist ordination and practiced meditation on or near the sacred Taoist mountain called Mao Shan. Her methods of meditation, which called for the emptying of the mind of all negative judgments and the heart of selfish desires, were the foundation of a special kind of Taoism called the Highest Pure school, founded atop Mao Shan (see map). Inner peace and healing were the results of her meditation. The Huang-t'ing Ching, the Gold Pavilion classic, is the text of the meditation attributed to her. The Chinese title literally means "Yellow Pavilion," if translated in the standard dictionary meaning. The color to be visualized with this meditation in the Taoist tradition is a bright gold-yellow. The proper translation of the term, therefore, is "Gold Pavilion."

This book proposes a way to find inner peace and wholeness in a world with little time for quiet contemplation. I am indebted to many Taoists, laymen and -women as well as ordained priests, who explained so patiently the meaning of the Gold Pavilion classic. I am especially grateful to Zhao Zhendong (Chao Chen-tung), director of the Yuanxuanxue Yuan Taoist complex in Samdiptam, New Territories, Kowloon, who provided the written manuals, i.e., prompt books, used in the annotations of chapter 4. The Taoist master Min Zhiting (Min Chih-t'ing) of White Cloud Temple, Beijing; the late Shi Daochang (Shih Tao-ch'ang) of Mao Shan near Nanjing; and Zhuang Jiaxin (Chuang Chia-hsin) of Xinzhu (Hsinchu), Taiwan, explained their own meditative and ritual use of the Gold Pavilion text. To these and many others, I express my thanks.

Though the text of the Gold Pavilion classic is written in metaphor and symbol, the method of meditation is in fact simple and easy. The quelling first of negative judgment, and then of all judgment (the joining of a verb to a noun) is a meditative prelude to a life of inner peace and well-being. The person who learns to meditate as described in these pages finds peace and long life and brings healing to others.

The Gold Pavilion classic, in the interpretation of traditional Taoist masters, teaches the method of emptying prayer in a manner that even the layperson and nonexpert can follow. The reader is introduced to the meditation in chapters 2 and 3. An interpretation of the Gold Pavilion classic is given in chapter 4.1 compare Tibetan Tannic meditation and other forms of apophatic or emptying prayer with Taoist practices in chapter 5. The total body (i.e., Tantric) style of prayer described here is used today in many parts of Tibet and modern mainland and overseas China.

That is to say, the meditations taught in the Taoist Gold Pavilion classic are similar to a genre of prayer techniques shared by many religious traditions. All of these traditions teach the use of body, mouth, and mind together in union when praying. In Buddhism this kind of total body prayer is called Tantric meditation. It is usually learned orally from a master, rather than from a book. Just as we must learn to swim, drive a car, or fly an airplane by taking lessons and then actually swimming, driving, or flying, SO too Taoist Tantric prayer must be learned by "jumping in" to practice.

Masters of Taoist prayer sometimes do write out the directions for Tantric meditation in an easy-to-follow fashion. The commentary used to translate the Gold Pavilion classic is such a text It helps understand the cryptic text itself. It contains directions for doing Tantric meditation without recourse to a living master. In such a case, the text is the master, whose words of explanation were once written down by an unknown disciple so as not to forget the master's instructions.

The oral directions that the master adds to the text and commentary are in fact descriptions of spiritual forces unleashed or controlled by the person doing the meditations. The illustrations found throughout the book show what these spiritual forces look like in the teachings of Tibetan and Taoist masters. When a text calls for a color, as for instance the blue-green color of new leaves in spring, the master describes what the blue-green spirit of spring looks like. For the Taoist it is in fact the personified spirit of the East, a bearded ancient called Fu Xi (Fu Hsi), patron of the family and the element wood. For the Tantric Buddhist he is Dhrtarastra, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Gabriel; each religious tradition has set images depicted in art and envisioned in contemplative meditation.

Taoist, biblical, and Tantric symbols sometimes juxtapose male and female images, seen embracing in close physical union. The Canticle of Canticles in the Bible, the Tibetan tanka pictures, and some passages of the Gold Pavilion classic are examples of such images. There are at least three possible interpretations of these stunningly graphic symbols. The first is literal (that is, they depict sexual union). The second is figurative: the male represents compassion and the female wisdom (compassion is tempered by wisdom). The third, truly Taoist or Tantric, meaning is that all visions, good or bad, are relative and must be burned away by the fires and washed clean by the waters of Tantric meditation. The Gold Pavilion classic embraces this last interpretation.

In the true Taoist and Tantric traditions, the spiritual forces unleashed by prayer, whether good or bad, must be emptied from the mind and heart before union with the unmoving transcendent "other shore" can be realized. Tantric and Taoist prayer are therefore basically techniques for emptying the mind of images and the heart of desires, preludes to "being one with the Tao," or one with the "other shore" of wisdom. The meditations that bring about this state of emptiness (called kenosis in Western religious traditions) also bring great peace, health, and serenity, preludes to an encounter with the absolute.

The Chinese words used in this book are generally roman-izedfirstin modern pinyin, which is the preferred system of the People's Republic of China, and then using the Wade-Giles system (usually in parentheses). The exceptions to this are the words in chapter 4 and ancient names and titles that are already familiar in their Wade-Giles transliterations (i.e., Chuang-tzu, Tao-te Ching).