《淮南鴻烈解》Vol. 18

Huainan Honglie Jie, Volume 17 (Vernacular Interpretation)

The meaning of thick concealment (houyan) is that a person wraps and covers themselves layer upon layer.

Outwardly they display all kinds of rong (appearance, posture), while inwardly they are blocked and obstructed (ao, meaning the mind is twisted and stagnant, separated from true intent). The contrived appearance above and the true state below do not match; one can neither seek from others the essence of “wordlessness” nor conceal that slightest subtle true intent.

If a person keeps taking the path of “adding thickness and concealment,” above and below will be reversed, inside and outside thrown into confusion: refining cinnabar into lead and jade into gold (a metaphor for refining what is originally clear and pure into the turbid and vulgar), holding primordial Qi (yuanqi) stifled in the belly, yet believing that one day and one night is a single breath of ten thousand years—the direction is completely reversed.

The sage (shengren) does the opposite: storing the principle in the heart, cultivating the formless within the formed, refining and transforming the ten thousand kinds within no-thing—not wrapping more and more thickly, but returning to original nature.

As for a person’s life: during ten months in the mother’s womb, primordial Qi transforms into bones and flesh, and perception gradually becomes complete. This is called “accomplished by one breath of Qi,” before it has divided into the two Qi of Yin-Yang.

Between heaven and earth, originally there is only one Qi; divided, it is Yin and Yang; joined, it is again one Qi. That state of undivided, unjoined wholeness is called Hundun (primordial chaos)—the wholeness before the fetal origin is split open.

To attain Hundun is to have no death and no birth, no going out and no entering—this is called attaining the sacred embryo (shengtai). Attaining the sacred embryo is the realm in which the sage dwells.

The sage has no thoughts or worries, forgets body and life, returns into the void, and becomes one with the void; this is called Xu (emptiness). Not coming or going, returning to the very beginning; not seeing the mundane affairs of the human world—this is called returning to the beginning (guichu).

When a person is first born, the two Qi of Yin-Yang are originally the zangfu organs (the internal viscera) and the palaces and chambers (the inner bodily dwellings in cultivation contexts such as the Dantian and Huangting); the one-inch void between the Crimson Palace (Chigong) and Huangting is where ancestral Qi (zuqi, the pre-heavenly one Qi) resides.

If ancestral Qi scatters, the person dies; if one refines it so that ancestral Qi does not scatter, the person does not die. When the non-scattering Qi gathers in one place, it is the sacred embryo; when the sacred embryo is accomplished, one is a sage.

The sage has no thoughts or worries, forgets body and life, joins with the void, and is Xu; not coming or going, returning to the very beginning, is returning to the beginning (guichu)—echoing the above and pointing out that the key to cultivation is: do not add further “thick concealment”; rather, guard ancestral Qi and the sacred embryo, return to emptiness and return to the beginning.