Ling Yuan

You will find that all the things included here are not new as we’ve discussed them from various angles, but before we were all swimming in the pool, now it’s time to jump into the ocean.

  • A Ming Yuan practice is built upon a relaxed, calm, natural, integrated, unified, and harmonious state.

Be patient – make an effort to build your state incrementally

  • Make your heart, consciousness, and Shen and all your life activities areas to work on. It’s time to start! If you are still “getting ready”, how much longer will you prepare? A year? A decade? A lifetime? The sooner you start, the sooner you will reap the benefit of the practice. The only way to get closer to your goal is to begin now. 
  • Initiate and maintain ‘Complete Jue’. Do your best to have full Jue Cha engaged at all times.
  • It’s a special state of observation/witnessing of everything that is going on in life. You need to be aware that this is not observation in the usual sense. It is not the same as simply observing yourself in the normal subject-object way. We are not reflecting and examining ourselves with our usual consciousness. 
  • Jue Cha should be exercised in every activity of life. The practice needs to be done when you are awake. When it’s time to sleep, sleep. As your practice of Jue Cha progresses, it may filter into the sleep state but this is effortless.  When Jue Cha happens during sleep, it will happen naturally. 
  • Jue Cha should be exercised everywhere, at all times, under all circumstances. Jue Cha should be exercised when you’re working, talking, doing housework, cooking, listening, when you’re drinking, yawning, when you’re taking notes, etc. This includes when you’re thinking! That’s an important time to exercise Jue Cha. When you’re having an argument, Jue Cha will take on new meaning. When you’re fighting with someone, your patterns can be really active and they can work in a strong and fast way, with your brain operating in high gear. If you can exercise Jue Cha at this time, you will be able to see a lot. You can see how your heart and Shen are affecting each other, which is very interesting.
  • You may wonder if observing this phenomenon will make you feel discouraged or upset, but you won’t feel that way - and most likely you will feel the opposite. When you are truly in a state of Jue Cha, you are seeing what is really happening, and you will feel clarity, joy, and strength. 
  • Jue Cha should be exercised with the 5 essential qualities of the heart. They need to be cultivated so they are constantly present. In the beginning, you can work on one quality at a time.  
  • Do your best to exercise Jue Cha in a peaceful, gentle, soft, and harmonious way. The relationship to everything being observed is equal and friendly. 
  • Keep Jue Cha simple, focused, pure, and independent. When you exercise Jue Cha you are simply an observer who is witnessing what is happening – there is no dualistic relationship wherein you are trying to control, change, suppress, or otherwise influence anything. 
  • Do your best to avoid getting disturbed when exercising Jue Cha. The “I” that is identified with the false self appropriates all thoughts and actions. It owns them. This is a very strong habit that we are usually not aware of. When we get disturbed, Jue Cha easily disappears and the “I” immediately pops up. This pull from the “I” easily breaks the Jue Cha state and imposes its own dominance. Long periods of time can elapse when Jue Cha is forgotten about. This is something you need to pay attention to and keep working on. 
  • Do your best to keep your old thinking, ideas, or patterns from interfering with or controlling the natural flow of Jue Cha. No matter how good you think your thought or idea is, refrain from using it to problem solve or manage your Jue Cha. 
  • Do your best to maintain full openness, acceptance, and non-attachment towards whatever unfolds when exercising Jue Cha. We are used to negotiating to maintain control over what happens. We resist situations that we can’t control.  Can attaining realization and wisdom happen when ‘you’ remain in control? Experiences will be brand new. Can you only allow things to happen that you are familiar with? Controlling how things should go is a pattern.  Practice Jue Cha with no expectation, no desire to make things go a certain way, no refusal or rejection, no doubt. 
  • Do your best to keep vigilant, using a ‘red flag’ when you are in danger of losing Jue Cha. It’s less of a problem to activate Jue Cha than it is to maintain it for a long period of time. Vigilance is for watching Jue Cha. You draw the line yourself. It is interesting because we are using Jue Cha to observe ourselves and vigilance is used to observe Jue Cha – one observer behind another.