365bet娱乐

I have exhausted the ha?ha sources for detail on what the practice of drawing rajas upwards and retaining or protecting it might involve. I turn to adjacent literatures and practice that might provide context to understand the ha?ha sources. Here I have chosen to focus on Chinese Daoism. While geographically and culturally further afield, 苍ü诲补苍, female oriented Daoist inner alchemy, attests a practice of voluntary amenorrhea and describes techniques with which to carry out this practice. However, the problem remains of historical gap as the developed 苍ü诲补苍 materials on amenorrhea are later, from the sixteenth century onwards.

I have collected all the data I am aware of in the ha?ha corpus that concerns the way in which women might perform the technique of drawing rajas upwards and protecting it and the physiological and soteriological implications of the practice. And yet it is still rather difficult to assess what the intended outcome is. Should we understand this practice as a replica of the practice described for men? If so, why does the description differ such as around the transmutation of bindu into 苍ā诲补 for female practitioners. Is the intent to avoid conception and if so how would that work? Non-conception may be an outcome of sex during periods of low fertility but would not be an outcome of drawing semen and menses into the body during fertile periods of the menstrual cycle. Are there other consequences of the practice, such as a delay to the initiation of menstruation, a lengthening of menstrual cycle, or even voluntary amenorrhea, i.e. the cessation of the menstrual cycle and, therefore, infertility? 狈ü诲补苍 offers an intriguing account of intentional halting of menstruation or voluntary amenorrhea which I explore in the interest of shedding further light on the ha?ha materials.

The correlation between ha?ha and 苍ü诲补苍 made here contributes to our understanding of female practitioners of ha?ha yoga adding to broader comparative work—such as by Needham (1983), White (1996), Kohn (2006), Schipper (1993), Samuel (2008), Pregadio (2019, 2020), and more recently Yang (2023) and Steavu (2023)—and I particularly draw on the scholarship of Despeux (2000), Kohn (2006, 2000) and significantly Valussi (2022, 2014, 2008, 2002).^[1]

Needham notes the striking similarity between Chinese inner alchemy and ha?ha yoga (Needham 1983:282-283; Yang 2023:415). Yang argues:

There is undoubtedly a striking resemblance between techniques found in the first extant ha?hayoga texts and those found in earlier Chinese sources, dating from the 3^rd century BCE onwards, relating to yangsheng self-cultivation practices, including breathing exercises, sexual cultivation and daoyin. While these bodily practices were appropriated from the 9th and 10th century CE onwards by neidan practitioners to develop their “alchemical bodies,” similar practices also began to appear in what was to be known as ha?hayoga in India, from the 11^th century onwards. This historical juxtaposition, with neidan preceding ha?hayoga by just a couple of centuries, makes neidan a likely candidate for the conduit of knowledge transfer of bodily practices between China and India. (Yang 2023:433-434)

Despeux actually makes the connection with tantric practitioners retaining their menses as noted above, herself drawing on the work of Darmon. Neither Despeux nor Darmon, however, give any explanation for what this might mean.

Daoist internal alchemy describes a refinement of semen and menstrual blood which provides a parallel, if not a prior model, for the ha?ha yoga sources. Seminal retention and reversing its flow are fundamental practices in traditions of sexual cultivation or ‘bedchamber arts’, described in manuals dating back to the Warring States, Qin and Han dynasties (475 BCE–220 CE) (Yang 2023:420). In contrast to external alchemy or waidan, which is concerned with the compounding of elixirs through the manipulation of natural mineral and metal substances, neidan is concerned with compounding elixir within the practitioner’s body. Neidan, non-gender specific inner alchemy, starts to develop in the Tang dynasty around the late eighth-ninth centuries, and is firmly developed in tenth-century Zhong-Lü sources. Pregadio discerns antecedents as early as the second century CE (Pregadio 2019:3, 61). The term ‘Zhong-Lü’ refers to the cluster of prose texts whose doctrines apply alchemical imagery and language to earlier regimens of corporeal practice especially ‘embryo respiration’ (taixi) and ‘reverting vital essence to repair the brain’ (huanjing bunao) (Pregadio and Lowell 2000:469). Distinct from neidan, 苍ü诲补苍 refers to inner alchemical practices for women and the shift towards 苍ü诲补苍 occurs from the late Ming (1368-1644) and early Qing (1644-1911) dynasties onwards.

According to neidan, the body contains ‘vital substances’, including vital essence (jing), fluids (jinye), subtle energy (qi) and spirit (shen). Vital essence is ‘foundation or core vitality. It is associated with sexual reproduction and specifically with menstrual blood in women and semen in men’ (Komjathy 2013a:133). Alchemical practice produces clear and sweet saliva referred to as the Jade Nectar (yujiang), Spirit Water (shenshui), and Sweet Dew (ganlu), which is swallowed during Daoist alchemical practice. Shen ‘spirit’ is more subtle than qi and associated with divine capacities and consciousness. Inner alchemy, which often involves celibacy, attempts to conserve these aspects of self and prevent their dissipation. The basic stages of alchemical practice are threefold: first the transformation of vital essence into qi, second the transformation of qi into spirit, and third the transformation of spirit into emptiness (Despeux 2000). This involves the formation of an embryo of spirit and after ten months’ gestation giving birth to it through the head. In the first stage, women’s practice differs from that of men. Instead of refining the seminal essence and transforming it into energy, menstrual blood is refined by gradually diminishing the flow and eventually stopping it altogether. This is ‘slaying the red dragon’ (zhan chilong).

This system of vital substances, together with the organ-meridian system which is somewhat parallel to Chinese medicine, constitutes the ‘Daoist alchemical body’. Like ha?ha yoga Daoist internal alchemy is based on a model of micro-macrocosmic homologies. It involves ‘subtle or mystical corporeal locations’ (Komjathy 2007) which include the ‘elixir fields’ (dantian) and Nine Palaces (jiugong).

The practice of stopping menstruation or voluntary amenorrhea, which becomes a signature feature of 苍ü诲补苍, is first attested in 1310 in the Annals of the wondrous communications and divine transformations of the sovereign lord Chunyang: ‘Episode n. 106 tells of a 16 year-old girl who, to escape her parent’s plan to marry her, hides away on a mountain. Here she meets an old man who tells her: ‘I will slay your Red Dragon’ (Valussi 2008:61n4).

In the Chinese sources the correlative term for rajas is xue. Valussi, drawing on Chinese medical literature as I have drawn on ā测耻谤惫别诲补, defines xue as, ‘the blood that circulates in the female body and that, at different times, nourishes the body, transforms into breast-milk or exits the body in the form of menses. Rather than just a fluid, xue is thus a process. It changes shape and degree of purity, it transforms into milk, it is replenished and exhausted’ (Valussi 2008:54). Jing is vital essence, associated with semen and menstrual blood. Huanjing bunao is ‘reverting vital essence to repair the brain’. Zhan chilong, ‘slaying the red or crimson dragon’, is voluntary amenorrhea or the stopping of menstruation. We do not have a ha?ha correlate for zhan chilong as a practice oriented towards women: the gender generic term 惫补箩谤辞濒ī is doing this work (though Mallinson coins the term 谤补箩辞诲丑ā谤补?补 2018:193).

The Daoist materials on voluntary amenorrhea may fill in some details of the sparse ha?ha accounts. In the 苍ü诲补苍 practice of voluntary amenorrhea, ‘slaying the red dragon’, menstrual blood is refined and the flow gradually diminished until it stops altogether. In addition, the breasts shrink and the body becomes androgynous. The ‘slaying of the red dragon’, however, is only the first stage in 苍ü诲补苍. A female practitioner would then follow the same procedures as a man and is expected to attain success more quickly.

The Record of the Auspicious Gathering with Daoists by Quanzhen or Complete Perfection Daoist Qiu Chuji (also known as Qiu Changchun 1148–1227), describes the dissipation of vital essence through the depletion of bodily fluids:

When qi goes through the eyes, it becomes tears, when it goes through the nose, it becomes phlegm, and when it goes past the tongue, it becomes saliva. When it goes outside, it becomes perspiration, when it goes inside, it becomes blood, when it goes through the bones, it becomes marrow, and when it goes through the kidneys, it becomes semen. If your qi is complete, you live. If your qi is lost, you die. If the qi is vigorous, you are youthful, and when the qi declines, you age. Always cause your qi to not scatter. (Xuanfeng qinghui lu 5ab, Eskildsen 2004:690)

To attain the Daoist goal, this ordinary pattern is interrupted, and the transformation process reversed, so that jing, vital essence, once felt is not emitted but moved back up inside the body and returned to qi, more potent now that it has undergone a semi-alchemical transformation (Kohn 2008:244). This technique of ‘reverting vital essence to repair the brain’ (huanjing bunao) is similar in energetic or esoteric analysis to drawing bindu upwards, especially in the description of jing once felt. In the Am?tasiddhi it was as a result of sexual arousal that bindu starts rushing downwards and is then turned upwards. Both systems attest to a general downward dissipation of energy and, perhaps, an increased rapidity of downward loss due to the feeling of desire all set within the body as cosmos. The next chapter discusses arousal in the ha?ha sources.

Neidan, like ha?ha yoga, is oriented to the male practitioner with the conservation of vital essence (jing) defined in relation to seminal emission and a focus on non-dissipation through male celibacy and sexual purity, where women are a source of temptation and dissipation (Komjathy 2014a:194). On the other hand, 苍ü诲补苍 focuses on the central importance of the breasts, heart, blood, and uterus, and on menstruation as the primary form of dissipation of women’s vital essence, jing. In relation to women, the esoteric physiological sites of the uterus and breasts recall the āyurvedic associations of rajas, but perhaps this point is too universal to indicate a correlation between the systems.

The ha?ha sources are almost silent on technique: we read that women can draw rajas upwards through contractions and preserve it. Can the Chinese materials fill this gap? In relation to neidan three methods are set out in the thirteenth century Direct pointers to the great elixir attributed to Qiu Chuji which involves techniques of contracting the body, drawing in the abdomen and coalescing qi to complete the great elixir. A result is the creation of an internal elixir that is like a dragon with a pearl, granting people flight, perpetual life and immortality. There is more here to the technique than offered in the Indian sources and the outcomes are very close to the ha?ha outcomes.

If amenorrhea is to be self-directed, what is the method? In relation to neidan, three methods, which are to be practised together, are set out in Direct Pointers to the Great Elixir. These methods are the Coupling of the Dragon and Tiger, the Firing Time of the Revolving of Heaven, and Flying the Metal Crystals behind the Elbows. These methods involve techniques of contracting the body (reading lianshen for hanshen) and drawing in the abdomen (9b), the coalescence of qi to complete the great elixir (7b) and swallowing the jin fluids (6b). A result is the creation of an internal elixir that is like a dragon with a pearl which grants people flight, perpetual life and immortality (7b) (Komjathy 2013b:120–34). Although it is attributed to Qiu Chuji (1148–1227), the Dadan zhizhi was probably not entirely this author’s work, and was likely compiled at a later date, perhaps in the mid-thirteenth-century. The contemporaneous Chongyang zhenren jinguan yusuo jue also describes, very cryptically, what appears to be a technique for retaining semen, the White Ox, by sending it upwards through the spine to the brain (Eskildsen 2004:82–83).

Techniques of 苍ü诲补苍 may be presaged in the poetry of Sun Buer (1119-1183), the accomplished female Daoist and the only woman of the ‘Seven Perfected’ of Quanzhen or Complete Perfection. Sun Buer’s references to the moon may be nascent ideas of refining menstrual blood. Komjathy notes that the poems may be suggesting that menstruation becomes sublimated into more subtle processes, resulting in complete alchemical transformation (Komjathy 2014b:210-212). To move from Sun Buer to the late imperial 苍ü诲补苍 canon makes a long and rather awkward move in terms of chronology, and the 苍ü诲补苍 sources are later than the ha?ha. However, I make this move to highlight techniques of voluntary amenorrhea. These techniques involve ‘a process of progressive refinement of the female body through meditation, breathing, internal visualisations and massage techniques with the ultimate goal of attaining physical immortality’ (Valussi 2008:46). Sources such as the ‘Illustrations and sayings on the female practice of refining the self and returning to the elixir’ describe ‘gathering’ whereby the practitioner, aware of the sensation of imminent menstruation, performs practices of meditation, visualisation and ‘gathering’.

The practice is halted when the menstrual flow arrives, before being enjoined again. The practice is detailed here:

The commentary says: treatises on female alchemy talk a lot of the female practice, every time they say that, whenever the monthly message arrives, you then have to stop the practice. This description is incorrect. They all err because they have not yet distinguished clearly. In general, as for female practice, what is most important is the qi mechanism. But within it there is a distinction between ren 壬 and gui 癸. If the ren water comes first, and the gui water has not come yet, this then is ‘the message has arrived’ (xin dao ye 信到也). When the message arrives, you know it by yourself. Sometimes the head is dizzy, sometimes the waist hurts; the message has arrived but the tide [the blood itself] has not yet arrived. At this time you ought to perform correctly the ‘invert the light and reverse the gazing’ method (huiguang fanzhao 迴光返照), silently guard the breasts and sea of blood, and use the gathering method, in order to replenish the brain and set the basis. Then, what you have gathered is the ren water, it is not the gui water. As soon as the gui water arrives, you have to stop the practice. You have to wait for 30 hours or two and a half days, when the gui water has extinguished, [then] you [can] still use the gathering method. Gather until what day and then stop? In this respect there are the oral instruction of the heavenly mechanism (tianji 天機). (Illustrations and sayings on the female practice of refining the self and returning to the elixir or Nügong lianji huandan tushuo, 2b, in Valussi 2008:60)

Eskildsen has suggested the process of halting menstruation was so arduous it may have resulted from malnutrition (Eskildsen 2004:74). From a contemporary biomedical perspective amenorrhea can result from restricted diet, strenuous exercise and shock. 狈ü诲补苍 involves calorific restriction, sleep deprivation due to meditation requirements and auto-suggestion. However, in contrast to these ‘natural’ causes, the technique of ‘slaying the red dragon’ is according to the sources self-directed and intentional. The materials distinguish between the disease of a menstrual blockage and the internal refinement of blood so that it does not appear externally as menses or milk. If practitioners are post-menopausal, they must practise to produce a return of menstruation before ‘slaying the red dragon’.

The technique of zhan chilong or ‘slaying the red dragon’ characterizes 苍ü诲补苍. This termination of menstruation is a form of voluntary amenorrhea, alongside which the breasts shrink. The major 苍ü诲补苍 texts describe the resulting ‘female’ body as resembling that of an adolescent boy (Eskildsen 2004:72–74; Komjathy 2014b:205n108). The breasts were noted above as an āyurvedic site important in the collection of rajas during pregnancy and its transformation into milk. Valussi notes: ‘The importance of the breasts as producers of milk and of the yin secretions that become menstrual blood is attested at least since the twelfth century in Chinese physiology’ (2002:252). Another similarity with the āyurvedic 诲丑ā迟耻s is that jing is neither yin nor yang but is the essence that the body takes from food (known in ā测耻谤惫别诲补 as rasa) pending full assimilation (Raz 2009:243).

The Daoist female counterparts to the male ascetic were celibate Quanzhen and Longmen nuns; for them, ‘slaying the red dragon’ (zhan chilong) was the counterpart of ‘subduing the white tiger’ (jiang baihu) and ‘reverting vital essence to repair the brain’ (huanjing bunao). The colours used here correlate with rajas and bindu: the white tiger as jing and the red dragon as woman’s store of original qi (yuanqi) that transforms first into blood and then into menstruation (Valussi 2002:253).

There are clear parallels between Daoist internal alchemy and ha?ha yoga. These concepts appear to develop in China before India, and the Chinese sources seem to articulate a more coherent system. Land and ocean trade routes were certainly operating before the periods in which these systems are articulated in Indian texts (Samuel 2008; White 1996; Yang 2023:414-415). There is also vigorous debate as well as much further work to be done on the transfer of practice between India, China and Tibet. This is not to argue for a wholesale importation of Daoist internal alchemy into India but to indicate some of the striking similarities, especially in relation to conceptions of the yogic, micro-macrocosmic homologizations between the body and cosmos, manipulation of menstrual fluids as vital energies, the techniques of ‘contraction’ with which they are accomplished, and the powers of, inter alia, flight (贬补?丑补辫谤补诲ī辫颈办ā 3.100) which accrue to the successful practitioner.

I place the ha?ha and 苍ü诲补苍 practices alongside one another to highlight the potential similarities in menstrual practice. Daoist sources are in some ways more systematic than the ha?ha ones and the 苍ü诲补苍 literature may explain what is going on in ha?ha yoga. The sources show that female practitioners of ha?ha yoga may have preserved their rajas as part of their practice. While it is not clear that this is the same practice as 苍ü诲补苍’s amenorrhea, the Daoist model frames a reading of the ha?ha sources as 测辞驳颈苍īs practicing voluntary amenorrhea through preserving their rajas. I am drawing out points of intersection on menstrual practice and not offering either a comprehensive comparison of the systems or a decisive statement on the directions of influence. I find the doctrinal similarities helpful for appreciating the possibilities of the practice of drawing rajas upwards but partly due to working with the Chinese materials in translation I have not (yet) found intertextual borrowings. Neidan predates ha?ha yoga, but systematic accounts of voluntary amenorrhea in 苍ü诲补苍 postdate the ha?ha sources, though the first reference to ‘slaying the crimson dragon’ as noted above is 1310.

I suggest that the techniques in the Chinese sources could parallel the ‘drawing upwards and preserving’ of ha?ha yoga. Demonstrating similarities in the practices and suggesting that 苍ü诲补苍 could fill the lacuna in the ha?ha sources is not the same as demonstrating intertextual borrowings, or indeed demonstrating geographic lines along which peoples, practices and texts may have circulated. However, I hope to have demonstrated parallels between neidan, 苍ü诲补苍 and ha?ha yoga on the specific topic of menstrual practice. This helps to shed light on practices for women in the ha?ha corpus. Without this comparative material, i.e. relying only on the ha?ha sources, I believe it would be too speculative to suggest raising rajas could be voluntary amenorrhea. The 苍ü诲补苍 materials provide an example of cultivating menses that could be akin to raising rajas.

Questions remain. Why would woman want to practice voluntary amenorrhea? As well as soteriological objectives there are social implications—contraception and celibacy, androcentrism, and purification—all of which bear back on soteriology.

Thus beheading the Red Dragon, cultivating the menses, transforming blood into qi, the transformation of red into white, the shrinking of the breasts, all mark the first stage of the reversal of natural processes, such as old age, decay, but also fertility for women. As menstruation as well as pregnancy and childbirth are part of the depletion that takes the practitioner away from its final aim, fertility, normally a major asset to be nurtured and controlled, is in fact reversed by the 苍ü诲补苍 practice. This reversal uses the same energies and the same locations of the natural process. As the 狈ü诲补苍 shize says:

This is where creating humans and creating immortals part ways. (Valussi 2008:81)

There are many outstanding questions on the relationship between Indian and Chinese bodily cultivation practice in the premodern period and I hope this comparison is a small contribution to that emerging picture. This comparative work to nuance the ha?ha materials through contemporaneous and antecedent literatures is just a beginning. Directions for future research should include research into Chinese gynaecological materials from the same period as the Indian materials, such as the work of Furth (1999). It is possible that spiritual embryology enters the ha?ha canon through Tibetan materials. Researching the Tibetan materials too is an important direction to take this work, such as the scholarship developed by Gyatso (2015) and Garrett (2008) into for example the Four Treaties. There are fascinating correlations between the ha?ha corpus and the praxis of the Bāuls of Bengal (Hanssen 2006, 2002; Das 1992). However, there are difficulties in comparing ha?ha with Bāul practice due to changes in language and cultural praxis over time and my not reading Bengali or conducting ethnographic research. I have consulted ethnographers who do not attest to a practice of retaining menses by Bāul practitioners alike to the lack of such data on female ha?ha practitioners. Ethnographic work on New Religious Movements demonstrates the continuing desirability of halting menstruation.^[2] Further work in this context remains a desideratum.

Footnotes and references:

[back to top]

[1]:

Valussi provided invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this work and suggested directions for future work, personal communication, 22 May 2022. I am also ever so grateful to Steavu for commenting on a paper in advance of a presentation on this topic at the American Academy of Religions, November 2021.

[2]:

Cf. the account of Aum Shinrikyō former renunciant, Ueda Naoko. As a result of her ‘extreme training’ (kyogen shugyō), involving a variety of practices such as limiting sleep to three hours each night for several weeks and significantly reducing the intake of food, Ueda, ‘developed the ability to manipulate her energy (ki) in order to control her bodily fluids. For example, she became able to stop her menstruation’ (Baffelli 2022:11). ‘According to former members’ accounts, stopping menstruation allowed them to perform austerities easily, but it also eliminated one of the reasons women’s bodies are associated with pollution—menstrual blood’ (Baffelli 2022:30n41).