This book was originally published in 1982 as a two-part essay in Zhongguo daojiao (Chinese Taoism), the official journal of the China Taoist Association . In slightly revised forms, it was republished in 1990 as a lengthy appendix to an annotated edition of the Wuzhen pian (Awakening to Reality), entitled Wuzhen pian qianjie (A simple explanation of the Wuzhen pian ); and again in 1990 in the author’s collected writings, entitled Neidan yangsheng gongfa zhiyao (Foundations of the practices of Internal Alchemy and Nourishing Life), with several later reprints.
The author, Wang Mu 王沐 (1908–92), received the Longmen ordination in his youth. He taught Internal Alchemy (Neidan) and was held in high regard by both practitioners and Taoist scholars. He served as a board member of the China Taoist Association and was for some time in charge of its research activities. He is known outside China mainly for the above-mentioned edition of the Wuzhen pian , the text at the basis of the outline of Internal Alchemy that he provides in the present book.
As all readers will notice, Wang Mu writes from the viewpoint of his tradition. He accepts virtually all traditional details concerning such issues as doctrine, lineage, and textual authorship or date. In many cases, he essentially rephrases statements found in the original texts into present-day language. His procedure is also analogous to the one seen in the textual sources of Neidan, which repeatedly quote passages of earlier writings taking them as positive and definitive evidence of the validity of their own assertions. The recurrent articulation of certain basic concepts is another feature shared with the original Neidan texts.
Except for the introduction and the short conclusion, Wang Mu’s work is arranged according to the stages of the alchemical practice: a preliminary phase followed by three main stages. For each stage, the focus of Wang Mu’s discourse, which makes his work extremely valuable, is the discussion of the main relevant terms and concepts, including such essential notions as Essence, Breath, and Spirit; the “fire times” (huohou ); and the Embryo. With regard to this point, an additional trait that his discussion shares with the alchemical texts is the progressively shorter space devoted to each stage. As Li Daochun (ca. 1290) wrote in one of his works, when the alchemical practice comes to the third and last stage, “no words apply.”
As a writer, Wang Mu makes very few concessions to his reader, and none specifically to his Western reader: his work is written for, and addressed to, a Chinese audience. Although he provides an accessible overview of Internal Alchemy, mainly focused on its practices, he does not intend in the first place to popularize, but to transmit. This feature has been preserved in the present English translation: with the exception of a few footnotes that attempt to clarify certain points probably taken for granted by a Chinese reader, but possibly equivocal for a Western reader, the translation attempts to reproduce as closely as possible the author’s own writing style and way of reasoning. References to sources, which Wang Mu as a rule does not provide, have been supplied for all quotations that have been identified.
One final point that requires consideration in reading Wang Mu’s work is directly related to its date of publication. In the People’s Republic of China, during the 1980s, Taoism had just begun to recover from the trials endured in the previous decades, making good use of a limited easing of controls by the central government. Several works published in those years present Neidan as a form of Qigong, in an effort to circumvent restraints on what was still official labeled as a “feudal superstition.” This may explain Wang Mu’s frequent stress on the merits of Neidan in relation to medicine and healing, his repeated references to the “scientific” evidence of its benefits, and the value he accords to the practitioner’s “active” attitude, suggesting that the Neidan practice does not necessarily imply a lack of involvement in society. Certain terms and notions occasionally used in the book—e.g., “materialism” and “subjective idealism”—are best seen as the price to pay in order to be entitled to write on more significant subjects.
Fabrizio Pregadio
February 2011