Answering a Zhihu Question: Differences Between Zhengyi General Initiation, Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, and Western Kabbalah Practice

Question: Greetings, Daoist Master. After reading the WeChat article describing the Zhengyi school's method of refining and summoning divine generals, I have some doubts and hope the Daoist Master can kindly enlighten me.
Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, when performing the flower-casting initiation, throws a flower into the mandala to find a predestined honzon (principal deity); in practice, after sending a carriage to invite the deity, one uses a hook-rope and bell to summon the honzon to merge with oneself as non-dual.
In their worldview, the deities of the mandala are manifestations of the principle/wisdom of the dharma realm, and realizing even one deity allows one to enter Buddha-wisdom through it.
In principle this seems similar to the practice of summoning and merging.
What is the difference between them?
Furthermore, in Western Kabbalah, the upper emanations that can be understood are presented in the Tree of Life model as ten sefirot; the practitioner gradually aligns with the sefirot, ascending one after another (this can involve meditation but also transformation of character; Hermeticism also holds that with each level one crosses, one sheds a negative mode of being), and the ultimate goal is to return to the divine.
From the Daoist perspective, is this graded practice still cultivation of the yin?

Answer: This is a fairly broad question. I will address some of the more typical aspects.

I. On the difference between the Daoist Zhengyi school and Japanese Esoteric Buddhism

 The method of flower-casting is actually similar to drawing lots: the practitioner casts the flower, and wherever it lands is taken as indicating affinity with that deity. Similar practices exist in Daoist lineages of the Lushan school, and also in some spirit-cultivation traditions in Taiwan—commonly spoken of as finding a spirit ancestor, usually judged through lot-drawing or divination.

 The Zhengyi school's transmission differs: the selection of a divine general is generally determined through fate-calculation, examining which general best matches one's Five Phases attributes. Some people also form affinity with a particular divine image beforehand, and this too reflects remarkably in destiny calculations, often coinciding with exactly the suitable general in one's fate. Although later practice may employ means such as summoning the general and forming a covenant, these are merely modes of applying the rites. Once the alchemical work of the Dao has been achieved, one's destiny is completely freed from its original constraints, and one can then summon and merge with any divine general, thereby achieving myriad transformations.

 In Daoist thought, deities are objects of reverence for all beings, true representatives of the supreme Dao—formless, imageless, and impossible to materialize. The divine general summoned and merged with from within oneself is not regarded as the result of cultivating devotion to some fixed deity. Quite the opposite: it is only through inner cultivation that one can then summon and merge with a divine general outwardly. The reason this summoning must follow affinity is that this is most beneficial; moreover, there is never just one general with whom one has affinity—generally, during cultivation there are two. In Esoteric Buddhist practice, by contrast, the honzon is usually one fixed, unchanging figure.

 Furthermore, in original Esoteric Buddhism, through visualization of the honzon one ultimately offers oneself to the honzon and merges as one with it. This stems from ancient Hindu methods of practice; similar methods can be seen in some modern Hindu practices, and one ultimately returns to a great deity one reveres.

 Japanese Esoteric Buddhism draws and absorbs the honzon into the body; this absorption is accomplished through summoning, typically using mantras and mudras. Many folk ritual schools in China do likewise when inviting masters and inviting deities in their rites; what is summoned in such cases is also a yin spirit.

 The reason one draws the summoned figure into the body for cultivation in pursuit of attainment is also related to Japanese conceptions—in Japanese culture it is held that a person becomes a Buddha simply by dying.

 If summoning-and-merging is defined by Esoteric Buddhist standards, then what Daoism does cannot really be called summoning-and-merging; it should rather be called transformation and birth (huasheng).

II. The difference between Daoist cultivation and Kabbalah

 Kabbalah essentially only began to flourish after the sixteenth century. In fact, early Kabbalah was on the one hand obscure and on the other profoundly esoteric, with not much substance in practical terms. After the sixteenth century, Western occult organizations absorbed a great deal of culture from around the world, excavated the Kabbalistic system, and reinterpreted it, only then forming the system we see today.

 The Kabbalistic system of practice is chiefly rooted in the Western European occult system. Within that system, one cannot avoid the emanation of the Monad influenced by Plato, and the projection of the idea of return through nous (a term with multiple senses)—for instance the belief that the soul emanates from the stars. These clearly bear the shadow of ancient Greece. The idea of cultivating through the Tree of Life, continually aligning with the sefirot, describes a process of constantly purifying oneself and then returning to the divine—a process worthy of affirmation. In particular, the divisions of three and seven in the Tree of Life bear considerable resemblance to the Chinese concepts of the three hun souls and seven po souls.

 Yet from the standpoint of serious Daoist cultivation, this system of practice only emphasizes the training of the hun and po: although the hun and po are continually purified, they lack an eternal vehicle. Returning to the divine is of course theoretically feasible, but it ultimately falls short of the ultimate goal of eternal indestructibility.

 Where does the dispute lie? Primarily, Western cultivation holds that something eternal in the soul itself always already exists (the concept of the source emanates from the Monad). From the Daoist perspective, the human body merely possesses the material that constitutes the eternal, but because of postnatal contamination, a certain process of refinement is necessary before that eternal vehicle can be constructed.

 Take, for example, the notion of a time crystal: even after the heat death of the universe it would continue to exist. If understood as a kind of eternal state, such a crystal clearly does not exist in the human body—but the Daoist idea is that, through conditions already present in the human body, it can be synthesized via cultivation.