We are all familiar with the idea of food fasting. But what is the fasting of the mind and why is it relevant in today’s world? And how do we actually conduct the fasting? Sifu Lindsey Wei of Oregon presented this vital and profound idea and a fasting method in the recent 2022 Qigong Global Summit.
The fasting of the mind or Xin Zhai is an ancient philosophy as well as a practice to cultivate the virtue in oneself. Xin in Chinese means the heart as well as the mind; Zhai means the fasting. Xin Zhai was advocated by Sage Zhuang Zi or Zhuang Zhou (approximately 369-286 BCE), who is recognized as two most important philosophers in Daoism or Taoism along with Lao Zi. Zhuang Zi is also a book name authored by the philosopher. It consists all of his important thoughts told in fables. His stories are full of imagination and overpowering thoughts. He made up characters’ names just to encapsulate the ideas and he also “borrowed” famous persons’ names to add sarcasm or grab attention. In one famous tale, sage Confucius (551-479 BCE) gave his disciple Yan Hui an advice, the later was going to persuade a brutal warlord how to rule the country so his people could live peacefully and happily. It would be a very dangerous effort. Confucius urged Yan Hui to fast his mind or practice Xin Zhai first by freeing the mind of thoughts and letting go of the ego to reach the state of the mind of emptiness. Only when the mind is empty and quiet, people are able to absorb the real knowledge, see things in clarity, and the true wisdom will emerge.
However quieting the mind and letting go thoughts is easily said than done when we are living in a highly connected era. People including myself constantly check on our cellphone and computer for email messages, texts, news, and social media postings by family, friends, co-workers, interest groups or even people we don’t particularly like. We are forever multi-tasking and our attention switches in and out at nano second. Ironically, with more ways to connect and communicate, often times we don’t hear what other people say and we lose contact with loved ones and even connection to our true self. I once saw a sign in a restaurant saying “The longest distance between two people sitting at the same dinner table is when both are looking at their cellphones.” Our senses are overloaded and our anxiety level has risen accordingly. In the past two years, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, offices become virtual, so do schools. We attend wedding ceremonies and funeral services on Zoom or Webex. People spend more time on screens of smart phones, tablet computers, PCs, video games and TVs. More screen time means more sedentary lifestyle and less physical activities. There are reports of more cases of obesity, depression, insomnia, suicides, and substance abuse. Due to the virtual world that we are living in with less physical exercises and true human interaction, people feel restless. It is really the time to fast the mind.
Sifu Lindsey Wei is masterful in the healing aspect as well as the martial aspect of the Wudang internal Kung Fu, Tai Chi, and Qigong. As a 24th Generation Chun Yang Sect of Wudang Daoism and 31st Generation Wudang Long Men Dragon Gate, she was a senior instructor at the Five Immortals Temple in China and is the founder of the Wudang White Horse Academy. She has authored “The Valley Spirit – A Female Story of Daoist Cultivation“, which wrote about her discovery of the hidden knowledge of Daoism, truth, and herself and “Path of the Spiritual Warrior”, which is the true story of a spiritual warrior Kru Pedro Solana.
According to Sifu Wei, calming down the mind or fasting from thinking is the core of the Daoist practice. People can do either meditation or Qigong to quiet the mind. There are countless ways or forms to meditate or practice Qigong because there are many sects and schools in the Daoist system. She has focused mainly on Yang Sheng Gong (life nurturing), Da Gong (Grand Technique, similar to patting massage and hard style Qigong), Eight Healing Qigong, and Five Animal Qigong (Dragon, Tiger, Snake, Crane, and Turtle). During the Qigong Global Summit, she shared the Dragon Qigong. In Chinese, there is a saying Xiang Long Fu Hu, which means subduing the dragon and taming the tiger. In Daoist practice, dragon is the symbol of the spirit and tiger is the body. The Dragon Qigong is very suitable to fast the mind. You can watch for free Lindsey’ presentation during the Summit and learn the Dragon Qigong by clicking the link here.
Sifu Lindsey cautions us that if our mind still produces thoughts, it will not work regardless how much Qigong people are practicing each day. If the mind is active, then we can’t get down to the roots of our true wisdom. Our body is an ecology and it is contaminated. Lindsey thinks that we are addicted to the virtual world and heavily influenced by it. The society removes us from the natural landscaping and put us in the man-made structure and we lose touch with the nature and our own soul. Without regular mind-fasting, it is hard to restore the ecology within.
Last year, the State of Oregon suffered from several large fires and Bootleg Fire was one of them. The Bootleg Fire broke out on July 6 in the Fremont-Winema National Forest and was not under control until Mid-August. The Wudang White Horse Academy had a nomadic training camp there and was burned down. In the attached video, you can see Lindsey and her students practice on the burnt site with ashes after the fire. There was a sense of loss and emotion but I clear see the tranquility within and the determination and wisdom to restore the ecology. Sifu Wei also wrote a powerful poem:
Witness the Wild Spirit After Death Still Alive
There was the erasure of an entire landscape
that I had loved,
the incineration of a forest,
the drying up of rivers and the loss of wildlife.
It was a micro-apocalypse, big enough to stop me in my tracks,
catapult me into a new path of planting seed.
Awaken me to my own participation in the fast moving train of society, self
promotionalism,
virtual addiction,
greed, discontent and competition.
Meanwhile the Earth is forgotten.
As we sit distracted,
staring into the rat race,
the soils of the great nothing turn to sand
outside of our city walls for no one to see.
The silver lining?
Witness the wild spirit after death
still alive.
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It is difficult to disagree with either the old idea that emptying the mind leads to pure consciousness or the new thinking about the negative impact of virtual life lived through screen time. But the word “ecology” refers to relationships between organisms and their environment. There is no such thing as “contaminated ecology” and ecology cannot be destroyed or restored. It has been popular for over 50 years to equate “man-made” with unnatural. We would be better served by accepting the “natural” place of humans in the environment and spending much more time and money to study ecology for the purpose of identifying specific losses of equilibria so as to facilitate prediction of consequences. If fasting one’s mind helps this effort, great. But I suggest that very mind-FULL focus is more important.
Thank you for this thoughtful article. I had a chance recently to visit the Abbey of Gethsemani where Thomas Merton was a monk and is buried. I found a quotation of his that seems to relate to Shifu Wei’s article: “We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios.” FYI, Thomas Merton’s book, The Way of Chuang Tzu, is a delightful read.
A very interesting article. Something I never would have thought of. Thank you for taking the time to write and explain this. I always like your details.