Li Chen, having now achieved stream entry, would no longer have to worry about entering the lower three paths in his next life—namely, the animal, hungry ghost, and hell paths.
He arrived at the fourth nidāna, the thirty-sixth step. If the first three and the last three were linked to the soul, then these three were linked to the body.
Nāmarūpa — Name and Form.
Mind and body together. Nāma houses the five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. Rūpa is the physical form. Together they constitute the psychophysical organism—the being that arises in the womb, conditioned by consciousness.
He noticed that this mandala looked different. It was no longer made of rough basalt but sandstone, and the wind chimes were now iron, not bronze. There was a pillar in the middle, vibrating relentlessly.
He sat as usual with the Seven-Point Posture, facing the pillar.
He looked at his hands. They seemed to have grown long. He had been inside this place long enough that he had lost track of how long.
He tried to see the body as empty. He had just spent—weeks? months?—examining consciousness, formations, and name. He should be able to look at form and see through it.
He was unable.
The body insisted. It breathed without his permission. It was warm. It had weight. It was the one thing in his two lifetimes that had always been undeniably, irrefutably there.
The five aggregates lived inside nāmarūpa as a whole. Only when they were realised could he overcome this.
The mental formations of the second platform returned here, but were different. Before, he had seen his formations. The specific grooves carved by specific wounds. Now he saw formations as such—not his, not personal, just the nature of the conditioned mind. Every mind that has ever existed has formations. Formations arise. Nobody owns them.
The difference between before and now was the difference between seeing your particular prison cell and seeing that all cells are made of the same material.
At the third platform, consciousness. He saw the river without a drowning person.
Here it is completed. Consciousness was the last and most convincing aggregate because it presented itself as the witness—the one standing outside the process, watching it all, untouched. The observer.
He looked for the observer.
He found—observation happening. No observer.
The witness was also witnessed. The seeing was also seen. Consciousness was also just arising and passing, moment to moment, with no final, unchanging awareness standing behind it all.
The river had no banks. It was never contained. It was just water moving.
He was extraordinarily perceptive. Always had been. Psychology, reading people, pattern recognition—honed over decades of survival and study. He had always considered this one of his purest gifts: the ability to see clearly, to understand quickly, to cut through confusion to the essential thing.
He saw now that his perception had always been a translator. Experience arrived raw and undifferentiated. Perception instantly labelled it. Safe. Dangerous. Familiar. Unknown. Good. Bad. Useful. Irrelevant.
The labelling happened so fast that he had spent two lifetimes mistaking the label for the thing.
He had never actually seen anything directly. He had seen his perception of things. His categorised, filtered, pattern-matched version of things. The map was so seamlessly overlaid on the territory that he forgot the territory existed beneath it.
His greatest gift—the sharpness of his perception—had also been the most convincing curtain between him and direct experience.
He sat with this for a long time. Not trying to stop perceiving—that was impossible and not the point—but watching the labelling happen. Seeing the gap between the raw arising of experience and the instant categorisation that followed. Learning to rest in that gap, however briefly.
The comparing mind—conceit loosened here. Without the automatic labelling of better than, worse than, more advanced than, further behind than, the comparing had nothing to grip. The I that compares required perception to construct the comparison. Seen through, the comparing quieted.
It had become quiet in a way it had never been quiet before.
Feeling—he touched only briefly, like a hand trailing in water without stopping. Every moment of experience carried a tone—pleasant, unpleasant, neutral—and he had spent two lifetimes reacting to that tone before the experience itself had fully arrived. He saw this now. The tone was not the thing. The feeling was not the truth. It was the first colouring—the first brushstroke applied before the painting had even been decided. He did not examine it deeply. He noted it, acknowledged it, let it pass. A door glimpsed but not yet opened. Its time would come.
He sat with this resistance. Not fighting it.
Name and Form broken by Right Mindfulness. Seeing the psychophysical organism—body and mind together—as impermanent, not-self, empty of any fixed owner. Having understood selflessness, he was already halfway in. Mindfulness applied to the body and to mental factors directly addressed this link. Also, Right View contributed—understanding that what we call a self is merely name-and-form arising dependently.
He saw the body the way one sees one's own reflection in still water. Clearly present. Functional. Real in its way. But with no substance you could grip. Touch the water and the reflection distorts. Remove the water, and it vanishes entirely. The reflection was never the thing.
And then, last, quietest, almost gentle—name. Zhao Yuan. His parents named him Yuan , like a money bag, while they spoke things like it representing the primordial beginning, and him being the first child, as if they had a second one. One name had many meanings; ultimately, a name was a name. You gave yourself one name while others presented you with one.
The body was still there. Still breathing. Still warm. But it was no longer him.
Form without form. Not formlessness—form seen as it actually was. Empty of the solidity he had been projecting onto it.
With this seeing, sensual desire, which had never been strong in him, became almost laughable. You cannot strongly want what you can simultaneously see has no inherent substance. The desire did not vanish entirely—he was not yet a Non-Returner—but it became like a habit whose reason had been forgotten. It moved through him and dissipated without catching.
Desire for fine-material existence—attachment to beautiful forms, elevated states, refined pleasures still within the realm of form—loosened in the same moment. He had seen past the surface of form entirely. Why cling to a more exquisite version of what had just been revealed as empty?
He had entered the second stage of enlightenment—Once-Returner, Sakadāgāmi.
His fourth fetter, sensual desires, weakened, and the fifth, ill-will, long since weakened after the trials of Hell's Path. His next life would be in the human realm or the lower heavens, but only once.
He stepped forward. Surprisingly, he was not met with any resistance as he made his way through.
This must be ignorance or delusion of the animal path, he thought as he arrived at the forty-fifth step, Ṣaḍāyatana, the Six Senses. The iron chimes grew longer, and the pillar felt different, as if it were made with another material from before.
Here, he was unable to feel anything—no wave, no sound, no movement. As if he was missing something.
He remembered he had not yet awakened the sixth sense, nor had he refined the five senses. After the acupoint opening came spiritual sensing. Here, one must open their Nine Apertures. Refining them, one could awaken the four senses. Two eye apertures to enhance sight, two ear apertures to aid hearing, two nose apertures to amplify smell, one mouth aperture to augment taste, and the last apertures being the anterior yin and posterior yin. The remaining sense of touch would be elevated through skin refinement, which one must complete here.
He sat down, and the essence stored in his body entered the acupoint jingming—the Bright Eyes point, the primary gate to enter the eye region. His essence spread outward slowly, reaching toward tongziliao. One mistake, and he would go blind. He let the essence flow, clearing the heat that blocked the sensory portal, finally reaching chengqi, where it became grounded. The process was slow; one must never rush. He remembered the 365 acupoints by heart, especially those near the orifices, as the second stage demanded them.
He opened his eyes, having opened and refined two orifices, and looked at the vibrating pillar before him. He caught its vibrations, which were minimal to begin with, as if time itself had stopped.
Suddenly, his entire essence gathered into his eyes without his control, slowly transforming them. He panicked. He did not know what was happening, and he did not like this feeling. That feeling that he was not in control of his body.
The Dharma Eye—one was supposed to awaken after reaching stream entry. As he had not opened his orifices, it had gone dormant, waiting for its time to shine. Time flew by as his eyes slowly settled.
He slowly opened them, anticipating something pleasant. Indeed, it was pleasant that he could now see through objects. This was the equivalent of having the spiritual sense of a Qi Condensation peak great person. But it was not his sense, nor was it in any way related to spirituality. It was simply the eye power granted by the Dharma. He did not know that it could also differentiate between real and unreal, rendering him oblivious to illusions, and that it was a great asset to help analyse formations.
Time passed quickly. His refined ears—his essence flowing from tiangong to ermen—could now hear the vibrations of his kidney.
'Do they vibrate? Or is it because of the vibrations here inducing them?' he questioned. He was not a biology major; he had never gone in-depth into the study of the human body part by part, though he had done so vaguely. He could hear his blood flow, his veins, and his muscle sounds. It felt novel.
He refined yingxiang to the ancestral opening zhuqiao, refining the nose apertures. He transitioned from postnatal breathing to prenatal. From shuigou to chengjiang, he refined his tongue, the Magpie Bridge.
Now came the final two apertures: the anterior yin and posterior yin. These must be sealed to stop the leakage of essence. Pushing the essence from the sacrum toward the Governing Vessel, he sealed the posterior yin. Lifting the perineum huiyin toward the lower dantian, he closed the anterior yin.
Now that the nine orifices and four senses were refined, what remained was skin refinement—the long and arduous process of refining every skin cell. Some parts of the skin were far away from the acupoints and required much energy to reach them. He refined the lower body using hegu, wuqi, zusanli, xuehai, and sanyinjiao.
He put much more effort into refining the face than before: yintang, sibai, juquan, and taiyang.
Although described in minutes, it took months—if not years—to complete the whole process. Black, murky substances that had accumulated in his body now seeped out through his skin. Opening acupoints meant clearing blockages, and where did the waste accumulate? Near the outside of these acupoints. Now, finding a way, it came out as if the floodgates had been opened.
Disgusting. He wanted to vomit, but nothing came out. He was a cleanly person with a hint of OCD. He wanted to rush out of the temple and bathe near the waterfall outside; it took a great deal of determination to stop himself.
As time passed, he noticed these murky substances dissolved by themselves, and his almost fully blackened robes turned pristine white again.
What remained was to enter the state of senselessness and trigger his spiritual sense, thereby awakening his sixth sense—spiritual awareness. Through this awareness, he could sense the essence flowing inside his body and direct it at will. Though he could not directly look inside his body, he could sense the goings-on within. He could accurately point out where his organs were and where his nerves were. Without this sensing, he could not refine his blood and bones or cleanse his marrow in the latter stages.
He had no control over these newly awakened senses. Everything that he had found natural before now looked novel and amusing. His eyes were especially distracting; he spent who knows how long slowly gaining control of his five senses.
Cultivating mindfulness, becoming a witness, slowly observing his thoughts, feelings, and perceptions without judgment. Practising emptiness and non-attachment, which he could achieve easily. Through sensory restraint, guarding the senses. Instead of reacting to sensory objects with craving or aversion, observe them calmly. This was difficult for him at the beginning because of the awakening. This was the way to attain the state of senselessness.
He felt his essence stir, triggering the Niwan Palace, awakening the spirit. Some kind of power traversed his soul, triggering his spirituality, awakening his spiritual awareness.
He was now a step away from the Blood Refining Stage.