I. The Great Illumination Method
1. Step One: Illuminating the mind and seeing your true nature. Sit cross-legged (full lotus is best, but half lotus or loose cross-legged is also fine), with your hands resting casually on your knees, palms facing up. Visualize that directly beneath your seat is an identical you (just as if you were sitting on a mirror), except that this person is sitting upside down. Visualize this state clearly.
2. Once you have visualized the state in step one, visualize your thoughts suddenly entering the mind of the person below. Your real physical body becomes a visualized false appearance—the observer and the observed have swapped places.
3. If the cultivation and realization of step two is successful, in a single instant, the observer and the observed merge into one. There is no longer an observed and an observer.
The starting point of this dharma method is visualizing yourself sitting upside down. This is very close to a person’s posture in the mother’s womb. It greatly aids physiological transformation, and it can also prevent the phenomenon of nocturnal emissions that some men experience during cultivation and realization.