Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West

Between Mind and Body

Geoffrey Samuel, Jay Johnston, Geoffrey Samuel, Jay Johnston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136766473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhismus

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts.

The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex.

By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy.

Part One

Subtle bodies in China and India

Introduction to Part One

Geoffrey Samuel

As noted in the Introduction above, subtle-body-type concepts can be found all over the world, and developed versions exist in most major world cultures. If the concept of ‘subtle bodies’ has saliency around the world today, however, it is primarily owing to its development in two Asian traditions, the Chinese and Indian, and their offshoots, including Tibetan Buddhism (see Part Two).

Subtle-body concepts and practices can already be identified in China in the second century BCE in manuscripts and images uncovered in the Mawangdui tombs, which present medical and sexual practices aimed at preserving and restoring health (Harper 1987, 1997; Lo 1998). These texts and images already describe structures of channels within the body, and physical exercises aimed at promoting proper flow of substances through the channels.

Early medical and Daoist texts preserved by the literary tradition include material that goes back to the same period, and these texts show that these practices also developed a cosmological and soteriological significance. A central goal was the attainment of immortality through ascetic practices, which were premised on the cultivation and transformation of the subtle substance known as qi. Livia Kohn, who provides an account of these practices in their mature form in Chapter 1, has written a historical anthology of these texts (Kohn 1993) and edited a number of collections dealing with Daoist transformative practices (e.g. Kohn and Sakade 1989; Kohn and Wang 2009).¹

Subtle-body concepts were evidently present in some form in Indian material from the late Vedic period (fourth to first century BCE) but a developed conceptual structure comparable to that found within the Chinese material is first attested in surviving materials from the seventh and eighth centuries onwards, as part of a series of developments within all the main Indian religious traditions (Hindu, Buddhist and Jain) which is now generally termed Tantra (Hartzell 1997; Samuel 2008). Tantric religion was enormously influential, but its authority and legitimacy was often contested within Indian society. Today Hindu Tantra is no longer the mainstream of Indian religion, but it survives in a wide variety of forms, including the practices of various traditions of ascetic renunciates, among lay Tantrics such as the Nāths and Bauls, and hereditary Tantric ritualists who serve as temple priests. Buddhist Tantra (Vajrayāna), while developed to a high level of sophistication by both lay tantric practitioners and the scholars of the great monastic universities of Northeast India, disappeared from the Indian mainland, with the exception of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, but was transmitted to China, Korea, Japan and Tibet.

Part One presents material from China and India, and consists of three chapters. The first, by Livia Kohn, introduces the body of ideas within which the Chinese system of concepts regarding subtle bodies are framed. As Kohn notes, Daoist concepts of the body are located between Daoist cosmology and traditional Chinese medicine. Qi, a central concept within Daoist conceptualizations of the subtle body, occurs from early times both in texts on spiritual and sexual self-cultivation and in medical writings. In the developed structure of ideas presented by Kohn, it is a central term in a complex and fully developed set of ideas regarding the functioning of the body and its relationship to the wider universe. These ideas have remained as important for medical practice as for Daoist traditions of self-cultivation.

Chapter 2, by Geoffrey Samuel, sketches developments in India. Early Indian sources are difficult to date. Terms suggestive of subtle-body concepts can be found in late Vedic texts, including the Upani_·sads. A fully developed set of ideas and practices regarding the subtle body, comparable to that found in China, is not attested until the ‘Tantric’ literature of the eighth and ninth centuries. The associated practices became central to the Indian traditions of asceticism and self-cultivation, and were exported to Southeast and East Asia and to Tibet.

Chapter 3, by Janet Chawla, is included as representative of the important presence of subtle-body-type concepts within vernacular and non-literary contexts. It strongly makes the point that subtle-body-type concepts are not just about intellectual understanding, they are also about doing. The context here is that of childbirth in contemporary India, which is still largely handled by midwives or birth attendants (dais) whose knowledge comes from family or folk tradition rather than biomedical training (cf. Rozario and Samuel 2002). Chawla shows how Indian midwives today employ subtle-body concepts in their work. The example is particularly significant because, as Samuel notes in Chapter 2, subtle-body concepts may well have arisen in India in large part as a way of understanding childbirth and the coming into existence of new human life.

Readers might note that Indian concepts of the subtle body are explored elsewhere in this volume in Chapter 7, which develops a comparison between ideas of physical and spiritual cultivation in India and in ancient Greece.

Note

1 Other useful studies include Schipper 1994 and Mayor and Micozzi 2011. The latter includes a range of studies analysing qi-type processes in scientific terms.

References

Harper, D. (1987) ‘The sexual arts of ancient China as described in a manuscript of the second century B.C.’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47: 539–92.

Harper, D. (1997) Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts. London: Kegan Paul International and New York: Columbia University Press.

Hartzell, J. F. (1997) ‘Tantric Yoga: a study of the Vedic precursors, historical evolution, literatures, cultures, doctrines, and practices of the 11th century Kaśmīri Śaivite and Buddhist unexcelled Tantric Yogas,’ unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University. UMI No. 9723798.

Kohn, L. (1993) The Taoist Experience: An Anthology. Albany: State University of New York Press .

Kohn, L. and Sakade, Y. (eds) (1989) Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Kohn, L. and Wang, R. R. (eds) (2009) Internal Alchemy: Self, Society and the Quest for Immortality. Dunedin, FL: Three Pines Press.

Lo, V. (1998) ‘The Influence of Yangsheng 養生 Culture on Early Chinese Medical Theory,’ unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies .

Mayor, D. F. and Micozzi, M. S. (2011) Energy Medicine East and West: A Natural History of Qi. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.

Rozario, S. and Samuel, G. (eds) (2002) Daughters of Hariti: Childbirth and Female Healers in South and Southeast Asia. London: Routledge.

Samuel, G. (2008) The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schipper, K. (1994) The Taoist Body. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press .

1 The Daoist body of qi

Livia Kohn

The body in Daoism is both a central concept and the main location of cultivation practice. It is located between Daoist cosmology and traditional Chinese medicine, integrating both universal concepts such as dao 道 and the various technical aspects of the energy body to culminate in a complete different complex: the body as the residence of deities and the location of energetic centres of alchemical transformation.

While concepts of Dao go back to before the Common Era to the period commonly known as philosophical Daoism, part of the formative period of Chinese thought, concepts of vital energy and body cosmology (yin-yang, the five phases) were formulated first in the Han dynasty and are documented both in philosophical and medical classics from this period. Both underlying dimensions of Daoist body conceptions have remained relevant throughout the ages to the present day – despite differing interpretations and modifications in various schools and contextual settings.

The formulation of the Daoist body as inhabited by body gods and as the root of cosmic visualization practice occurred in the early centuries of the Common Era, notably around the year 300, at a time when Chinese religion was in great flux and new schools and lineages developed. The school within Daoism that made most ample use of this body vision and became responsible for placing it firmly at the core of Daoist body practice is known as Highest Clarity (Shangqing). It emerged through a series of revelations in the mid-fourth century and remained dominant throughout the medieval period.¹ The understanding of the Daoist body as described below is thus based on classical, early sources and reflects what is still current in the religion today.

Daoist cosmology

The fundamental concept underlying Daoist cosmology is Dao, literally ‘the way’. The term indicates the way things develop naturally, the way nature moves along and living beings grow and decline. The concept of Dao is not limited to Daoism, although the latter takes its name from it. Rather, it is part of the general Chinese understanding of the world, which appears in all different philosophical schools – albeit in slightly varying interpretations. This is why A. C. Graham calls his book on early Chinese philosophy Disputers of the Dao (1989). Dao in this general sense is the one power underlying all. It makes things what they are and causes the world to come into being and decay. It is the fundamental ground of all: the motivation of evolution and the source of universal being.

The Daode jing 道德經 (Book of the Dao and Its Virtue) says, ‘The Dao that can be told is not the eterna...