The guide to engaging and directing the three primordial forces of Earth, Heaven, and Higher Self to achieve enlightenment and immortality
- Explains how to circulate the life force, or chi, by balancing yang (male) and yin (female) currents of bioenergy
- Includes an overview of the complete Taoist body/mind/spirit system along with newly refined methods of activating the life force
- The sequel to the classic "Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao"
In 1983, Mantak Chia introduced the "Microcosmic Orbit" to the West. Prior to that time, most of the Eastern energy practices transmitted to the West were incomplete, dealing only with the ascending yang/masculine channel, which shoots life-force energy up the spine. The Microcosmic Orbit showed practitioners how to establish the descending yin/feminine channel of the life-force energy loop. Within Taoist systems, cultivating feminine energy has always been seen as the key to gaining balance and wholeness.
"Healing Light of the Tao" presents the more advanced methods of chi cultivation in the Microcosmic Orbit, offering a full understanding of Taoist spiritual theory through its comprehensive overview of the complete Taoist body/mind/spirit system. The book also includes more advanced meditation methods for absorbing the higher frequencies of Earth Force, Cosmic Force, and Universal Force (Heavenly chi) into the basic orbit. It establishes a spiritual science that not only emphasizes practical benefits to health, sexual vitality, and emotional balance, but also shows how changes made in the energy body can lead to physical rejuvenation that the Taoists called immortality.

Shinto is an ancient faith of forests and snow capped mountains. It sees the divine in rocks and streams communing with spirit worlds through bamboo twigs and the evergreen sakaki tree. Yet it is also the manicured suburban garden and the blades of grass between cracks in city paving stones. Structured around ritual cleansing Shinto contains no concept of sin. It reveres ancestors but thinks little about the afterlife, asking us to live in and improve the present. Central to Shinto is Kannagara or the intuitive acceptance of the divine power contained in all living things. Dai Shizen (Great Nature) is the life force with which we ally ourselves through spiritual practice and living simply. This is not asceticism but an affirmation of all aspects of life. Musubi (organic growth) provides a model for reconciling ancient intuition with modern science and modern society with primal human needs. Shinto is an unbroken indigenous path that now reaches beyond its native Japan. It has special relevance to us as we seek a more balanced and fulfilled way of life.

The most common Buddhist practice in Asia is bowing, yet Buddhist and Christian Responses to the Kowtow Problem is the first study of Buddhist obeisance in China. In Confucian ritual, everyone is supposed to kowtow, or bow, to the Chinese emperor. But Buddhists claimed exemption from bowing to any layperson, even to their own parents or the emperor. This tension erupted in an imperial debate in 662. This study first asks how and why Buddhists should bow (to the Buddha, and to monks), and then explores the arguments over their refusing to bow to the emperor. These arguments take us into the core ideas of Buddhism and imperial power: How can one achieve nirvana by bowing? What is a Buddha image? Who is it that bows? Is there any ritual that can exempt a subject of the emperor? What are the limits of the state's power over human bodies? Centuries later, Christians had a new set of problems with bowing in China, to the emperor and to "idols." Buddhist and Christian Responses to the Kowtow problem compares these cases of refusing to bow, discusses modern theories of obeisance, and finally moves to examine some contemporary analogies such as refusing to salute the American flag. Contributing greatly to the study of the body and power, ritual, religion and material culture, this volume is of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, Buddhism, Chinese history and material culture.