drawbacks. If the practice of "turning the light around" is carried on only
in specific
settings or postures, it may be impossible to integrate it fully with
everyday life, leading to a kind of split in the personality.
2. This passage makes it clear that the "light" of essence has nothing to do
with visionary experiences.Jingce, a well-known Chan meditation manual
dating from about a century before the Golden Flower text, says, "If you see
lights, flowers, or other extraordinary forms, and take this for sanctity, using
these unusual phenomena to dazzle people, thinking you have attained great
enlightenment, you do not realize that you are thoroughly ill. This is not
Chan."
3. The mirror being "occupied" by an image represents the attention being
occupied by the contents of consciousness and thus losing sight of the
essence of consciousness. This is also a good description of what happened
to Jung when he tried to meditate and became mired in images arising from
his subconscious.
4. The Yellow Emperor (Huang Di) is one of the major figures of antiquity
associated both with Taoism and with the founding of proto-Chinese
culture. The "echoes" here symbolize the thoughts or contents of
consciousness; to say they are "not sound" means that thoughts are not
themselves the essence of consciousness, even though they arise from the
movement of consciousness.
