By now the three old wizards had satisfied themselves that Wang Liping did in fact have the potential, and that the timing was right. As in all things, however, they had to begin from the beginning, bringing the disciple along gradually in order to develop penetrating realization.
The Scripture of Eternal Purity and Calm says,
The Way includes clarity and opacity, movement and stillness. The sky is clear, the earth is opaque; the sky is in motion, the earth is still. The masculine is clear, the feminine is opaque; the masculine is active, the feminine is still. Descending from the root to flow into the branches, these produce myriad beings. Clarity is the source of opacity, movement is the foundation of stillness. If people can be clear and calm, the whole universe will come to them.
The human spirit likes clarity, but the mind disturbs it. The human mind likes calm, but desires pull it. If you can always put your desires aside, your mind will naturally become calm; clarify your mind, and your spirit will naturally become calm.
The difficulty in putting this teaching into practice lies in “setting aside desire, clarifying the mind, and entering into stillness.” This is particularly hard in the present day, when so many material and human resources are devoted to serving an endless procession of desires and ambitions, without ever really satisfying them, and without ever getting an objective understanding of the effects of this whole process on human society and its relationship to Nature.
The first exercise the old masters taught Wang Liping, therefore, was a practice called “repentance.” What this means in the context of Taoism is cleaning the mind, clearing away mundane influences already infecting the consciousness, getting rid of the rubbish.
The way this is done is by temporary isolation and self-examination. The process is subdivided into three parts. First the disciple stays in a dark room for two months with nothing to do. This is supposed to gradually reduce the crudity and wildness in one’s nature. The second stage of practice involves sitting still in a dark room for set periods of time, which are progressively lengthened. In the third stage, the disciple is shifted to an ordinary quiet room and required to sit still for at least four hours at a time.
One morning after breakfast, instead of going to school Wang Liping headed straight for the abode of the three old Taoist masters. By this time, Taoism interested the youth more than school did. He found the old men still engrossed in their morning meditations. In spite of their advanced age, the old wizards had youthful faces and dark hair. Their eyes shone with an uncanny light. Liping sat down to join in their exercise, but the grand master stopped him with a question: “Are you really positive you want to study Taoism with us? Are you sure you won’t change you mind?”
Liping insisted that he was most assuredly determined to proceed. So the grand master continued. “Once you have set your heart on learning the Way,” he said, “you must start from the beginning. Remember that you must not fear hardships. Today we will teach you the first lesson, which involves no explanation of principles, only actual practice. You must do as I say, for if you fail this lesson you needn’t come around looking for us anymore.” The old man was firm. With only this brief introduction, he had the youth follow him to the shed they had cleaned out for this exercise.
Pointing into the dark room, the grand master told Liping, “Go inside and stay quiet. Don’t start whining to get out, because we’re not going to let you out no matter what.” With that, the old wizard pushed the boy inside and locked the door.
Wang Liping had never thought the old man would actually do this. The shed was completely empty and totally dark. He couldn’t see a thing. Figuring the old man was testing his sincerity and would let him out sooner or later, the boy decided to wait it out calmly.
Easier said than done. After a while Liping began pacing around, groping along the walls after crashing into them a few times. Pacing around until he worked up a sweat, he sat down to rest. Then he got up and started pacing around again. As he kept repeating this over and over, his anxiety mounted; the morning seemed like a year.
Suddenly the door opened a crack, and a beam of light blinded the youth inside. He heard an old man calling him to come out, and he emerged, rubbing his eyes. The boy was extremely upset, but he pretended as if nothing had happened.
Wang Jiaoming asked him, “Can you take more, boy?”
Liping thought the teacher was testing him, so even though he’d already had enough, he said, “No problem. This lesson is easy. Did I do all right?” He wanted to get a good mark.
“All right,” replied the old master lightly, “but let’s have lunch.”
Liping had been unbearably nervous all morning and had already had to urinate in the corner of the shed. When he heard the teacher tell him he had done all right, he figured he had passed the test, though not with very good marks.
This lunchtime was not the same as usual. The three old men spoke very little; no one even brought up the question of how Liping had spent the morning. The boy figured they were feigning indifference, so he decided to play along. Gobbling up his food, he waited to see what the next test would be. He did not expect what happened next.
Wang Jiaoming casually said, “Liping, go back to the shed and stay there.” Without even casting a glance at the boy, the old man took him back to the shed and locked him in.
Young Liping had not anticipated this ordeal. He felt he had been tested enough.
Since the old man had given no specific directions as to what he should do, Liping decided to pass the time in sport, shadowboxing in the dark, sitting down to rest when he got tired. Before long, however, the boy realized with growing discomfort that he had not prepared himself properly for this test. The call of nature began to nag him until he thought he would burst. Growing more anxious as the minutes ticked by like hours, eventually Liping wound up pounding and kicking on the door, hollering and screaming for the old men to let him out. Finally he disgraced himself.
As for the three Taoist masters, even while they were occupied with treating the ailments of the local people, nevertheless they focused their inner attention on their young apprentice. By their power of second sight, they were fully aware of his struggle. Lao-tzu said, “Those who conquer themselves are strong.” The old masters were not being cruel; they were doing what was necessary to create a new human being. The I Ching says, “Faithfulness and trustworthiness are means of developing character.”
From that day on, Liping came back every three or four days to practice “repentance” in the shed. Each time, the length of his isolation was increased, from half a day to a day, from a day to a day and a night. After several sessions, he learned to control himself, and his heart and mind became calm and clear. Having achieved this, he began to use his brain to think about questions. His mentors told him that this “structured thought” was an extremely important subject in training the brain.
Lao-tzu said, “Movement overcomes cold, stillness overcomes heat; clear calm is a rectifier of the world.” He also said, “Effect emptiness to the extreme, keep stillness steady; as myriad things act in concert, I thereby observe the return.” The essential point here is in calm stillness; when stillness reaches its climax, it produces motion, whereby you observe the subtle. “Structured thought” means that after body and mind have reached the climax of stillness, the brain conceives a “thing,” be it a scene, a personage, or an event. One must think ahead or in retrospect, causing the thing to develop and evolve until a “result” is