Neijing tu 內經圖

Title

Chart of the Inner Landscape. Also known as Neijing tu 內經圖 or Chart of the Inner Warp.

Author

Anonymous.

Date

Late nineteenth century (at least in its present form).

Description

This image refers to the “natural model” of the body, i.e., to the theme of the body as landscape. Like other Taoist representations of the body, it should be observed from the bottom up: its three main parts follow the stages of alchemical practice, which are based on the lower, central, and upper Cinnabar Fields, respectively.

Bottom

In the lower part of the picture, a girl and a boy who represent Yin and Yang are working on a waterwheel placed at the bottom of the spine. By inverting the flow of the “essence” (jing), depicted as the watercourse along the spine, they avoid that it flows downwards and is wasted. Water, i.e., the essence, thus inverts its course and is heated by a fiery furnace placed near the lower Cinnabar Field, indicated by the four Yin-Yang symbols; these stand for the four external agents (Wood, Fire, Metal, Water), with the fifth one (the central Soil) represented by their conjunction. On the left of the Cinnabar Field is the “iron buffalo (tieniu) ploughing the earth and planting the golden coin,” an image of the first seed of the Elixir.

Middle

At the center of the picture is the middle Cinnabar Field, shaped as a spiral and located in the region of the heart. Just above it there is a child—here again, an image of the “true self”—who holds the constellation of the Northern Dipper, a symbol of the center of the cosmos. A remarkable aspect of this picture is the fact that the image of the child coincides with that of the Herd Boy. According to a famous Chinese tale, the Herd Boy (corresponding to the constellation Altair) only once a year can meet and conjoin with his lover, the Weaving Girl (corresponding to Vega), who is pictured below him, working at the loom. The middle Cinnabar Field is therefore the center, seen—as in all other analogous instances in Taoism—as the place of conjunction of Yin and Yang.

Top

The upper part of the picture represents the upper Cinnabar Field. Behind the mountains, on the left, the Control vessel (dumai) emerges, and below it the Function vessel (renmai) begins. Together, these two vessels form the route along which the so-called River Chariot (heche, another image related to water) transports the essence during the first stage of the Neidan practice, first upwards in the back of the trunk, and then downwards in its front.1 The old man sitting next to the Control vessel is Laozi, while the monk standing next to the Function vessel with his raised arms is Bodhidharma (who, according to tradition, transmitted Chan Buddhism to China). This image refers not only to the integration of Taoism and Buddhism, which according to many masters and adepts is accomplished in Neidan, but also to the fact that the third and last stage of the Neidan practice, based on the upper Cinnabar Field, has a symbolic length of nine years, the same period of time that Bodhidharma is said to have spent meditating in front of a wall. The two dots stand for the eyes and represent the Sun and Moon, or, once again, Yin and Yang.