and is seen as an accurate portrayal of the way nature “works.”
Although many schools and lineages people the history of Daoism, and many great teachers were themselves students of even greater ones, it is also true that many highly respected masters received their education in a fashion recognizable to followers of other faiths. As the God of the Old Testament is said to have transmitted the Ten Commandments to Moses or the Archangel Gabriel planted in Muhammad the seeds of the Quran, ascended masters in the Daoist tradition, essentially gods, sometimes contacted individuals they deemed worthy of profound lessons. Such deities include Lord Lao himself (a deified version of the author of the Daodejing) and the so-called Eight Immortals, some of whom were purely fictional characters while others were mythical versions of actual historical personages.
We cannot share the exact experience of receiving such transmissions, for we cannot even get inside the heads of people right next to us, never mind people long dead. What we do know, though, is that colorful adventures, verbal instructions, visions, and more were grist for the mystical mill. Such mystical experiences have been linked to extended and rigorous meditation sessions, sometimes in groups in a sylvan setting, sometimes alone in a cave in the dark for weeks or even months on end. Although few Daoist teachers these days speak much about it, some early Daoist shamans may also have used consciousness-altering drugs, either marijuana or frank hallucinogens, as part of their consciousness-raising rituals.
Though present in the mystical traditions of other religions as well, exploring the types and nature of consciousness is a quintessentially Daoist pursuit. Indeed, Zhuangzi, one of the most famous and most beloved of all Daoist sages—and China’s first novelist, too—wonders aloud, in a famous passage in his eponymous work, whether he is a man dreaming he is a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he is a man. The fact that he chose a butterfly for this inquiry, as opposed to a prince or warrior or king, in turn reveals just how important the natural world is to Daoists, and just how strong the continuous link is between all living things.
The information transmitted during these trances sometimes pertained to the circulation of energy in the body, sometimes to the nature of reality, and often to achieving immortality, still a major goal of religious Daoist practice. Once a religious figure received this information, he or she was likely to share the new information with their flock. This sharing involved sermons and so-called spirit-writing (fuji or fuluan in Mandarin Chinese). Spirit-writing is deeply ingrained in Daoist tradition and is a major source of classical Daoist wisdom to this day. In some writings, the author holds a question or goal in mind and seeks an answer or guidance. In other writings, the author empties his or her mind and waits for the deity’s input. Both methods are legitimate, and each has their potential pleasures and pitfalls, benefits and limitations.
In keeping with the spirit-writing tradition, which has greatly inspired me over the decades of my Daoist career, I offer this book. Rather than receiving transmissions from Lord Lao or any of the classical Eight Immortals, I am taught by immortal turtles. Sometimes I ask them questions and sometimes they tell me what’s on their minds. When the first of these chelonian masters appeared to me, I could only feel a great sense of “rightness” to the experience, for shelled reptiles had been with me all my life. I felt, and still feel, no more deserving of these marvelous transmissions than, I suppose, any historic Daoist sage did when confronted by a luminous teacher offering blessings. All the same, I drank the wisdom like a fine wine and am hopeful—in part because of the content and in part because of the context—that sharing this material will benefit the world.
Did I choose turtles or did they choose me? Did I self-generate these conversations, or was I literally visited by Daoist immortals in turtle guise? I leave that up to the reader to decide. I don’t suppose the literal truth of such journeys or visitations is of any more importance than the historicity of our ancient religious leaders, even though some fundamentalists get all excited about that question. To me it is, and has always been, the message, the lesson, that counts.
I stand in meditation as I always do, in a cosmopolitan park, in the shade, near a lake, motionless as a tree, my feet shoulder-width apart, my eyes closed, my hands folded over my navel. Usually in these sessions, which I have been doing for decades, I exist in both interior and exterior worlds, my thoughts bouncing between the two. The frequency of that bouncing is not particularly related to the success of my meditation, for the idea of forcing my mind to do anything is antithetical to my tradition. I might, therefore, feel the ache in my thigh muscles from standing so long while hearing the zing of bicycle tires on the path nearby. I might feel a chill on the back of my neck because the wind has picked up while at the same time hearing the multilingual chatter of nearby park-goers. I might get a whiff of beer and notice a heavy, gauzy feeling in my palms. I might feel a drop in barometric pressure as a storm approaches while noting that my respiration has dropped to a mere two breaths per minute.
This time, I experience something new. It is a form of noticing, that’s true, but it’s noticing an absence rather than a presence. Rather than something changing, shifting, or appearing, I notice that I suddenly don’t hear anything at all. It’s as if I’ve got water in my ears, but I haven’t been swimming. It’s as if the familiar buzz of an air-conditioner or refrigerator has suddenly abated, as if during a power failure, say, leaving me with a sudden awareness of silence. It’s as if I’ve entered a sensory deprivation tank, but I have not; I’m still here, standing in the park. The silence is disorienting. Heavy. Unnerving. It makes me realize just how much I depend upon binaural hearing to locate my place in the world, to substantiate my presence in space. Honestly, it’s a bit nauseating.
To reassure myself, I open my eyes. My intention is to reground myself, to remind myself where I am, and then to close them again and resume my meditation. Instead, when I loose my lids, I find myself in a field of frosted light. There is no park. There is no lake. There are no tourists, pastoralists, or revelers. All is quiet and glowing. I blink and try again. Still nothing. I wipe my eyes. I can feel the pressure of my fingers on my lids and see the darkening my proximal flesh causes, but as soon as I stop rubbing and open my eyes again, I’m back in the silent, frosted world.
I feel a bit of panic coming on. I wonder if I’m having a stroke. I inhale deeply through my nose, hoping to pick up a whiff of something familiar or at least orienting. That’s when I realize that my sense of smell, too, has fled, or at least is offering no hint that I am any longer in my familiar park. It’s not that I smell nothing, but rather that I smell something vaguely familiar yet most definitely not the smell of my meditation park. Sighing, breathing, trying to steady myself, I focus on the pressure of the ground underfoot. There’s always feedback to be found there, even if it’s my toes being squeezed too tightly by my shoes. Usually, in this favorite spot of mine, a couple of tree roots make themselves known to me even though they are well underground. How do I usually know they’re there? Maybe it’s some energetic effusion. Maybe it’s that my weight compacts the overlying soil just enough for my sensitive monk’s feet to feel them. In any case, this time they are not there. In fact, the ground underneath feels slippery, hard, unyielding.
In fact, it feels wet. I open my eyes again, look down, and see that I’m standing in water up to the level of my calves. My monk’s slippers, along with my white leggings and the bottom hem of black robes, are wet. Not knowing what else to do, I start to walk. That in itself is a first. I’ve meditated in the rain before, accepted being a bit sodden rather than break my mental momentum, but actually moving while in a meditative trance has only happened when I was doing tai chi, and in that case, I was very much in the waking world. After a few steps, I discover I’m headed up some kind of rise. I proceed using a martial arts technique called inch-stepping, in which I lift the front foot and slide forward, propelled
