Taoism · 12th century
Sun Bu'er
Quanzhen School · inner alchemy · Verses on the inner work
A woman master who carried the way down into body and breath. A voice of inner alchemy and quiet simplicity.
The essence of the teaching: Emptiness and non-doing are not passivity, but subtle work. The lotus blooms of itself, but first you must cut away the thornbush that hides it: purify the mind and the body, so that the original spirit may shine forth.
Transmission
Sun Bu'er is one of the few women whose names the line of Taoist alchemy carries. Her path is of the body and exact: breath, stillness, the turning of the light within. The lotus opens of itself, she says, but first cut away the logs and the thornbush around it – clear the ground. Do not drive the thoughts out by force; turn a soft attention upon them, and the very noise of the mind becomes a medicine, not a hindrance. To stop without looking is blindness; to look without stopping is only glitter without depth. Join the two, and in a stillness that is not dead but living, the original spirit crystallizes. This is the immortality – not the endless life of the body, but a return to that which was never born.
The full transmission — for members of the School. Here is its essence and its taste.
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