Here's the Yoga Meditation Method for Quickly Opening Up Your Sushumna Central Qi Channel
By : Michael Jordan B
If we analyze the various esoteric exercises and teachings of Esoteric Buddhism, Vajrayana, and Tibetan Buddhism with its Generation and Completion Stage yogas, all these various practices can essentially be classified into two stages.
First, there are the yogic exercises for getting the chi to enter into the central channel, which is also known as the sushumna or middle mai. Next, there is a second stage consisting of cultivation exercises, or yogas, that are performed once the energies have been withdrawn from other areas and concentrated in this channel.
Thus, the first requirement of the Tantras is to get the chi to enter into the central channel, but to do so, you must first prepositionally cultivate the chi and mai otherwise it will not be possible. That is why you have the preliminary generation stage practices on the tantric paths. If the mai are not already cleansed of obstructions to some degree, this latter step is an impossibility, just as it is impossible to cultivate chi if you let your jing leak away.
Through the eyes of other cultivation schools, we might say that the tantric purification process is one of purifying the wind and water elements of the body, for this is akin to cultivating the chi and mai. To do this, you have to cultivate merit, virtue, discipline (not losing the jing semenal essence) and engage in devoted meditation of some sort. You can ingest special medicines to help speed this process a little, as is done in the wai-dan practices of Taoism, but science will never discover or invent a substance that will refine the chi or open the mai. The process of cultivation will always require the discipline of emptiness meditation.
Of course, after the chi and mai have been cultivated to a sufficient extent, one's kundalini will be activated, meaning that the state of hsi will appear if one is sufficiently successful. Kundalini activation, we already know, is akin to cultivating the fire element of the body, or having the shakti become activated so as to initiate one on the path.
In fact, this is the real fire empowerment spoken of in esoteric circles.
However, this still only constitutes a minor step in cultivation since it still only encompasses the first prayoga stage of heat, or warming. Nevertheless, if at this point--where your real chi circulation becomes initiated through embryo breathing--you can forget your body and mind, then you can begin to attain the various ranks of samadhi. By gaining proficiency in the samadhi, you can then scale the ranks of cultivation attainment, break through the confining nature of the skandhas, and ultimately attain enlightenment.
There is no great mystery to the process of cultivation, for it is as simple as this. All along the way you will encounter various mental experiences and physical changes called kung-fu, such as the progressive purification of your body, the generation of a nonobstructive thought-born body (called the illusory in the Tibet school), an experiencing of the emptiness nature of awareness, and so on. All these things, however, are just the extraneous scenery along the way to the goal rather than the destination itself. In fact, experiencing the clear light through prajna wisdom is only the stage of "seeing the path," and after that there is still a long way of cultivation to go.
Once you realize the clear light of awareness--or empty clarity of awareness--because you have trained at purifying the mind through mastering various samadhi and cultivating your prajna wisdom, then you can finally understand what all the masters and spiritual schools have been talking about all along. Then and only then can you really understand how to cultivate practice correctly after you reach this stage of seeing the Tao and recognizing the mind's true essence, so this is the point after which you can really start cultivating realization.
If you are successful on that road of True Cultivation Practice, then you will end up with the true attainment of Buddhahood. But the entire process requires merit, discipline, and the hard diligent work of ceaselessly cultivating practice, which means purifying the body and mind while forgetting the body and mind. Hence, spiritual cultivation follows the principle of detachment from form the entire way, and we can also call this the cultivation of emptiness.
The Esoteric school, on the other hand, takes one tiny footnote out of this larger process--the fact that you can attain samadhi when the chi starts to enter the central channel--and constructs a big edifice out of it. Then it starts to add all sorts of special stages that typically confuse practitioners and serve as objects of attachment. It is not necessary to know any of this information as to the overall process of attainment, but that is how this particular school is structured.
The Esoteric school is constantly focusing on this micro level of analysis and asking, "What exercises do you perform to achieve this particular level of attainment? What happens next?" Without relying solely on prajna wisdom, it tries to specify everything down to the tiniest detail so that you have an encyclopedic catalog of what to do in such-and-such a situation. And, it tries to bring results into the causes of the path, rather than have the causes naturally produce results in the forward direction, as they should. In a way, its practices are like a set of parents that put too much pressure on their child by hurrying him along too much.
What is the problem in all of this?
You cannot say that this esoteric material is wrong, but that esoteric practitioners become too attached to form. And once you become attached to form, your cultivation method is all wrong.
Why does the Esoteric school focus on the existence aspect of Tao? The answer is because it is based on the Consciousness-Only school. The Consciousness-Only or Mind-Only school always talks of consciousness, which the Esoteric school takes as "existence." However, in actuality the Consciousness-Only school is actually only talking of emptiness.
The Hinayana school says all existence is impermanent, so conventional existence is only a "false existence." The Mahayana, however, calls it "miraculous existence," even though it is empty, because it stresses compassionate activity in this realm to help all sentient beings. So the Esoteric school just turns cultivation matters around and focuses on attainment from the aspect of miraculous existence.
If we turn to the Flower Ornament Sutra, we would find that this, too, introduces some of the existence teachings found within Esoteric Buddhism. Of course these teachings are not the esotericism that the Japanese and Tibetans talk about, for Buddha taught the Flower Ornament teachings when he was in the heavens of the Realm of Form, and his audience was all the high level Bodhisattvas. Yet in that sutra, Buddha makes the point that everything--all phenomena--are generated from the capacity of the original nature: all form comes from emptiness, so it is no different than emptiness.
In Mahayana Buddhism you try to see emptiness, and from there you can accept the realm of false existence with its compassionate call for activity to relieve the suffering of sentient beings. But this existence realm is empty, as we know, and from that aspect there is no such thing as a sentient being. Yet from the aspect of conventional existence, there is still need to act, and so the activity should be as virtuous, compassionate and helpful as possible. This is what requires skillful means.
The Lotus Sutra has a phrase: "All Three Realms are due to mind, all the infinite methods are consciousness." Hence, this is how we have the name of the Consciousness-Only school, which is the basis of the Tibetan school of Esoteric Buddhism. We have the self-nature, or fundamental nature, and we have form and appearance both born of this fundamental, empty self-nature.
Hence, in the esoteric schools, or even in Orthodox Buddhism, we can say that there are thousands of special consciousness meditations available for cultivation, such as the Six Yogas of Naropa. Most cultivation methods concentrate on emptiness, but a large number of the Esoteric methods use form as an entry vehicle for realizing emptiness. Unfortunately, this emphasis on realizing emptiness is what the form-school practitioners most often forget after they enter into the Esoteric school.
On the one hand you can be broad in scope and say that the purpose of all these techniques is to help you attain samadhi, and ultimately the Tao. On the other hand, you can be more specific and say their primary purpose is aimed at getting the chi to enter, abide and "dissolve" within the central channel. Why should the chi enter into the central channel if spirituality is essentially just a mind-only path? Because if it enters the central channel, then you can quickly transform your physical body of form, clarify consciousness, and more readily attain the Tao.
Regardless as to how you describe matters, you cannot attain this achievement unless you have already cultivated the chi and mai. If you have already accomplished this preliminary stage of attainment--meaning the yoga of marks, the generation stage yogas or the Mahayana stage of preparatory practices--the esoteric schools tell you to use special visualization, mantra, mudra and breathing practices for forcing the chi into the central channels, once they have been sufficiently prepared.
The cultivation methods employed in the world may vary considerably from school to school, but we must always remember that the ultimate target of all these methods is the same. As a single example, the various esoteric schools like to practice vajra chanting (where you do not move your lips or teeth) to get rid of all the miscellaneous thoughts of the sixth consciousness.
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