Our era is the era of freedom of information. But this freedom turned out to be a double-edged sword — its other edge became permissiveness. Searching the web for truthful information about self-cultivation practices and their bearers — the traditional schools of Taoist alchemy — has become, for seekers of truth, a search for a pearl among a host of profaners and false teachings...
Since deep antiquity the secrets of cultivation have been shrouded in mystery, and the rule of personal transmission of the Teaching has been unwaveringly observed. One of the reasons for maintaining such secrecy is the eternal human passion for profit through deception. And it is truly astonishing that the fraudsters and their methods in our days differ in no way from those described in the treatise of Master Wu Chongxu 400 years ago!
In China, separating the wheat from the chaff is aided by the Taoist Canon — the Daozang, consisting of the texts of the Patriarchs of Taoism of all schools. In the West, however, people suffer an acute shortage of such information: the traditions of Western countries have for the most part been interrupted, and treatises on cultivation in native languages were long ago supplanted by modern pseudo-psychological booklets of popular authors.
The situation began to change only in recent decades.
In the 1990s, Evgeny Alekseevich Torchinov, the most authoritative Saint-Petersburg orientalist, published his translations of Zhang Boduan's "Chapters on Awakening to the Truth", Ge Hong's "Baopuzi", and certain other Taoist treatises. Thus classical Chinese knowledge became available in Russia for the first time.
The tradition of professional translation of texts on Taoist alchemy was continued by E.A. Torchinov's student — Dmitry Artemyev. A true student of his teacher, he mastered the Chinese language at a high level and, using the knowledge of traditional alchemical practice available to him, in 2003–2006 thoroughly analyzed certain important points of Taoist alchemy on the Eastern portal oriental.ru, and also published translations of selected parts of the treatises of the Patriarchs.
This was done to spread the teaching of the Tao, but even then it was clear that the profaners would not let such a tasty morsel pass them by.
Over the following years the fraudsters absorbed the knowledge they received, comprehended it in a naive way, and presented the resulting mush as "ancient knowledge". For a long time we — the representatives of the Wuliupai School in Russia — turned a blind eye to what was happening, devoting all our strength to the development of our own students and the spread of the School.
However, by the end of 2009 one of the schemers — a certain Vitaly Lishina — had grown so brazen that, knowing no more about alchemy than what had been revealed on the Eastern portal, he permitted himself to distort the words of the Patriarch posted on our School's website — daode.ru — and to present his own "interpretation" of these words. Within a short time it became clear that this self-styled "creator of an ancient school of alchemy from Lü Dongbin" would not stop in his ignorance, and a decision was made to thoroughly analyze his "creation" and fully show people all the narrow-mindedness of the creator himself.
An even more important reason for this exposure was that, in the absence of any complete Russian version of the "Daozang", seeking people had nowhere to obtain canonical knowledge for independent analysis. And the possibility of playing on people's noble feelings had been unwittingly gifted to the fraudsters on the "Eastern portal".
Thus, bearing responsibility for "feeding" the profaners with information, and wishing to help people sort out the "teaching" of Lishina's pseudo-school — "Zhendaopai" — this website was created by the collective of the Daode Center.
In the "Facts and Evidence" section of the site, detailed proof is given of V. Lishina's duplicity and of his profanation of the teaching of Taoist alchemy.