The I Ching, Taoism & Tantra (An excerpt from The
Cauldron of Fu-Hsi:
I Ching and Cosmic Mind)
By Kneph
[I Ching] divination is...a
reflection of the eternal or timeless
order in which all potentialities abide.
-F. David Peat,
Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind
I.
Of all available methods of
divination, which pertains to the siddhi of jnana-shakti (omniscience),
Dadaji favored the I Ching, or "Yi oracle," and wrote almost
rhapsodically of its virtues. At first glance, the Yi, being
Chinese, might seem to have little to do with Nath-Siddha magick.
As will be shown, however, the Yi helps the adept "mediate" between
Higher and Lower worlds, being the divinatory method most peculiarly
tuned to the harmonic structure of the universe, as well as the one
most calculated to bring the tantric sadhaka's microcosm into balance
with the Macrocosm. To understand the oracle, one must first be
firmly grounded in the Tao, which contains all potentialities (in a
tantric sense), as the bija (seed) center of Yin is Yang and
vice-versa. Herein are united all potential manifestations of
duality, a holographic world where anything that can or may happen
waits to happen (or not).
I would like to examine in
more detail the points of contact between the Yi, Taoism, and tantric
philosophy in general, and Sahajiyanism in particular. The writings of John
Blofeld, the emiment Orientalist and author of books on both the I
Ching and Taoism, convince me that the Taoist sages and the Sahajiyan
tantrics had a good deal in common, not just a mutual interest in
alchemy. I wonder if it is sheer coincidence that one of the
patriarchs of Taoism, Lao-tze, was a contemporary of Gautama, the
Sakyamuni, or historical, Buddha. (To think that the Tao Te Ching
and Dhammapada were composed at roughly the same time is almost
inconceivable!)
India's equivalent of the
Taoist sages, the Ajavikas, were wandering ascetics. These
included such bizarre (to orthodox Hindu eyes) sects as the Kapalikas,
or Skull-Bearers, and the Kalamukhas (or "Black Faces"), whose magical
practices included something called pautta parihara, or reviving the
dead by transference of the Siddha's prana, or breath-energy, to the
deceased. It was the "antisocial
mysticism" of these Shavitie sages that first attracted the Buddha, but
he, too, must have questioned such practices as the overt phallicism of
the Kalamukhas or the obsession of the Kapalikas with breaking all of
the Brahmanic taboos connected with food and sex.
As it happens, though, the
Taoist-tantric connection is most clearly seen in the practices of the
Kapalikas, which included sexual alchemy -- the preparation of an
elixir of longevity, rasayana, which Dasgupta tells us was brought to
India from China by the semi-legendary "Bhoga." The siddhis of this
Chinese (or Tamil) sage included a method of "keying up" the physical
body and cleaning it of impurities through techniques of
"reverberation" and "projection," thereby halting the aging
process. These are called the "lesser athanasic precepts" of
Lao-tse, the goal of the Tao Teh King being "transfiguration of the
immortalised etherial body into a permanent garment of celestial
virtue," which brings it into harmony with the eternal Tao. (1969.)
Actually, Bhoga may have
been Bogar (or Bhogar), a pre-Christian Tamil who learned his secrets
of sex-magic from the even more legendary Pieng-tsu, himself taught by
the fantastical Five Girls, "fairy guardians of the sexual act (Walker,
1968)." Bhoga was one of two patriarchs of Chinachara, or the
"Chinese Way" of tantrism, the other being Pulipani, who founded the
Rasavada cult, almost exclusively devoted to alchemical praxis.
If this is the case, then the quintessential antinomian tantric
expression, "Yoga through bhoga," becomes a striking example of
sandhya-bhasa (“Twilight,” or esoterical double entendre) and a play on
words worthy of a Kabir, a Lui-pa, or, for that matter, a Chuang-tzu.
Daniélou (1987)
points out that Taoism appears at first to have been based upon the
Hindu ideas of Samkhya (Shaivite ontology) and yoga, the component
"parts" of the Tao, yang and yin, finding a close homology in Shiva and
Shakti, repectively (or, really, Purusha and Prakriti, linga and
yoni). Moreover, prana has a parallel in ch'i, the Taoist vital
energy. And what are all of those references in Taoist alchemical
texts to breathing practices and simultaneous cultivation of the solar
and lunar currents if not parallels to the subtle channels, Pingala and
Ida, in the process of Kundalini arousal in tantric laya-yoga? I
doubt it is far afield to muse on the introduction of the Yi to India
at about the time of Bogar's pilgrimages to China, since the oracle had
been in use there for millenia. In fact, the Yi seems an updated
version of a more ancient bone oracle -- that of the Shang peoples of
the Yellow River, dating to at least 1700 B.C.E. (Peat, 1987).
Divination by I Ching was a common feature of Chinese tantrism.
Sri Mahendranata (“Dadaji”)
said that all of the trigrams of the Yi "are also symbols found in
ancient Hindu philosophy." He learned Yi divination from Crowley,
himself a lifelong student of Taoism and tantra, who claimed a
translation of the Tao Teh King to his credit. Liber AL vel Legis, or
The Book of the Law, the so-called "holy book" received by Crowley from
his Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwaz (or Aiwass) in Cairo, in 1904, is full
of passages that can only be understood with reference to Taoist
philosophy. Just one example -- Book II, verse 48, "Pity not the
fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I
console not: I hate the consoled & the consoler." This is Hadit's
"take" on the nishkama dharma, which means, roughly, self-realization
at all costs, which Crowley took very much to heart.
Much of the Yi's advice
derives from the Taoist conception of non-action, or wu wei, which, in
turn, has its parallel in Buddhism's "expedient means." Wu wei,
far from contemplating laziness or physical inactivity, insists on what
might be called "the path of least resistence," requiring as it does
that one act spontaneously and in conformity with one's nature as it
may be brought into harmony with the Tao. One must, as a
concomitant, refrain from taking any action which is inconsistent with,
or contrary to, one's true nature. With Chuang-tzu, we eschew the
wailing and gnashing of teeth that characterize those who cut against
the grain, taking the bad along with the good; indeed, recognizing the
necessity of the bad in the nature of things. This requires the
cultivation of "the Way" and of "stillness" -- the ability to perceive
nature as it is, without treating facts as problems. The
parallels in both Buddhist and Hindu tantra could not be more
obvious. The Superior Man of the Taoist Yi avoids the dukkha
(“emotional pain”) attached to both attraction and repulsion, shunning
the kleshas (hindrances to liberation) of attachment and revulsion.
Among other things, Lama
Govinda, author of a standard (and exceptional) treatise on Tibetan
Tantric Buddhism, comes closer than anyone I know of to explaining,
after a fashion, how the Yi oracle "works." He says that the Yi's
tacit acknowledgement of the "universality of the human unconscious
mind" brings it into proximity with the Vijnanavadin notion of the
alaya-vijnana -- the universal, or "treasury" subconsciousness, which
is "closed to superficial people and therefore unknown to them," but is
awakened by such introspective techniques as meditation and
contemplation. This level of consciousness manifests in the Yi as
all "the forms and regions of all configurations of heaven and
earth." (1992.)
