Text: Zhang Yingxue
Yoga originated in India and is now popular all over the world. In the west, many people only know yoga, but they don't know qigong. This shows that the art of yoga is popular all over the world, but the publicity of Qigong in China is so poor. The training method of yoga is extremely unique, which can not only strengthen the body, but also achieve the highest level of understanding nature and harmony between man and nature through meditation.
What exactly is yoga? Let's look at some information about yoga. Yoga, Sanskrit yoga, means correspondence and integration. What do learners correspond to? Integration with what? Yoga holds that the individual consciousness of learners is connected with the highest ontology of the universe, and the learner's self is integrated with the universe's self, which is the so-called method of harmony between man and nature.
The highest goal and realm of yoga is the unity of individual consciousness and universe ontology. This can only be achieved through meditation, meditation or meditation, and there is no other way. Yoga is a training technique, which makes people get rid of the consciousness of all different phenomena, so as to achieve pure and original consciousness. Its core part is to make people adjust their body posture, breathe and concentrate on a certain point, so as to achieve the purpose of rejecting ego and other thoughts, enter a state of concentration, and thus transcend sensory consciousness and name consciousness and experience the ultimate state of consciousness. The focus of yoga method is to make the trainer concentrate on one place, which is really a wonderful way to purify consciousness. When your consciousness is concentrated in one place, any consciousness and false consciousness related to various objects and relationships will have nothing to rely on and gradually rest in peace. Therefore, there is a proverb in India's famous Yoga Sutra: "Yoga refers to the control of various emotions and tendencies by consciousness." However, many people don't understand this. They mistakenly believe that yoga is only training posture, breathing control, cleaning and purification. In fact, these are only the lowest level, mainly belong to fitness, not the highest goal. The so-called "health yoga" and "beauty yoga" popular in society belong to this level.
Yoga is a very special training method, which is different from general physical exercise and physical fitness, from the exercise of will quality, and from rational analysis, comprehensive thinking and reflection of moral conscience. It is not based on any concept. In fact, it has gone beyond any category of modern western conceptual philosophy. Yoga aims to break all the illusions in our hearts, all the arbitrary distortion and modification of the original ultimate; That is, all illusions come from our senses, emotions, experiences, education, occupation, behavior and so on; Are all ideological constraints imposed on us by the social framework in which we live. Because of these illusions, people are divided, especially a person. He is deeply divided from himself, and he is in constant struggle with himself. Because of this division, individuals will never be free. Ancient Indians believed that only through yoga, rather than thinking, religious worship, and doing good deeds, can illusions be broken. In the eyes of ancient Indians, yoga is the highest method and the highest way to pursue truth, and there is no other way.
Yoga can win the trust of ancient Indians because it is a technology, not a fantasy, which can be practiced, operated and verified repeatedly. In ancient India, yoga was the only way to pursue the highest wisdom, and its authority was beyond doubt. Although there are many schools of yoga, such as Hada Yoga, Monopoly Yoga, Raja Yoga and Junta Yoga, they are all yoga. They all have the same goal. In ancient India, yoga had a unique position.
After discussing yoga, let's take a look at China's Qigong. China did not have the exclusive position of a certain training method in ancient times, although ancient China people paid as much attention to the ultimate truth as ancient Indians. The mainstream of Taoism is the so-called alchemy and breathing; Confucianism emphasizes meditation; Buddhism has many names, such as meditation, incantation, visualization and so on. In modern times, the word qigong unifies the above different views and is a move that conforms to the trend of the times. Qigong is a view adopted by modern people after the unification of ancient psychosomatic exercise methods in China, such as guidance, breathing, alchemy, visualization and meditation. Let's analyze the word "Qigong" first. It is absolutely necessary to do so. Because when people discuss what qigong is, qigong and non-qigong, they ignore the most basic conceptual analysis.
Literally, Qigong is composed of the words "Qi" and "Gong". What is "Qi"? Understanding it as "matter", "spirit", "field" and "energy" can never fully express its true meaning. Qi, vitality, yin and Yang Qi, qi, motivation, solar terms, righteousness, backbone, luck, aura, courage, five elements of qi, anger and so on. From the extremely rich usage of the word "qi", we can see that the word "qi" carries too many meanings of eastern philosophy. Whenever people in ancient China wanted to express a mysterious thought, whether spiritually or materially, they used to use "Qi" as the most handy expression, and "Qi" was actually the closest analogy of "Tao". After understanding that Qi is only the surface and Tao is the purpose, let's take a look at what Tao is and the history of China's philosophy. We can understand that Tao is the ultimate existence and the highest realm of the unity of man and nature. Tao is the acme of our consciousness and pure consciousness. The word "Gong" represents an operability in the structure of the word "Qigong". Explain that qigong is not illusory, nor imaginary, but practical; It shows that people can reach the realm of "Tao" through continuous training.
What is the relationship between qigong and yoga? By analyzing their concepts, we can understand that Qigong is actually yoga, and yoga is also Qigong. Qigong and yoga are actually integrated. In fact, it is two expressions of one thing and the result of the development of one thing under two civilizations. Because for truth, there is only one truth, there is only one door to truth, and there is only one way to truth. Qigong and yoga are the gateway to truth. In yoga, truth is called Brahma, ego, Atama and so on. In the system of Qigong, truth is called "Tao", "sincerity" and so on. The theory of yoga explanation at the beginning of this paper is also applicable to qigong.
If you are not sure about the relationship between qigong and yoga. Then let's look at the training methods of qigong and yoga. Qigong pays attention to "three tones", that is, "regulating the body", "regulating the breath" and "regulating the heart", and excludes other thoughts by adjusting the posture, breathing and consciousness of the body, thus reaching the realm of "Tao". The same is true of yoga training methods. As mentioned above, the core part of yoga training is to make people adjust their body posture, breathe and focus on a certain point, so as to abandon the ego and enter a state of concentration. Yoga and qigong are actually the same thing, and there is no essential difference. There are only some minor differences.
Zhang Yingxue wrote it on the night of February 6th, 2002.