The Bird’s path
Selfhood and embodiment in Xu Haiyin’s internal alchemy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22347580 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ilia Mozias (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 461-493 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-02 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Chinese Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2372-9988 • E-ISSN: 2372-9996 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23729988.2026.2661382 |
| OpenAlex | W7164387822 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
This article explores the alchemical teaching of Xu Haiyin 徐海印, a leading master of the Western School of Daoist internal alchemy who characterizes cultivation as the ‘bird’s path,’ a traceless glide through the void. It argues that Xu recasts internal alchemy as a relocation of selfhood and a reconfiguration of embodiment. Practitioners exteriorize breath and awareness, identify with a generative emptiness and discard the ordinary body-image through breaking bodily borders and forgetfulness (an infant-like poise). From this basis an intention-generated body (yisheng shen 意生身) – ‘with image but without substance,’ composed of Former-Heaven qi – arises, apprehensible to meditative vision. Immortality, therefore, is not preservation of flesh but the emergence of a luminous imaginal body from emptiness. Methodologically, Xu privileges spontaneous unification with the Dao over procedural regimens popular among some contemporaries. The study highlights the centrality of body-image and imaginal body (over the physiological body) and advances a metaphysical claim: selfhood holds ontological priority – more fundamental than consciousness or material form – as the axis where human and cosmos converge
Alchemy · Criticism · Ridiculous · Chinese history and philosophy · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Poetry Analysis and Criticism
| Highly cited | No |
|---|