The Neijing tu is an ancient stele in which the three cinnabar fields are depicted and symbolically illustrated. The mechanics for blocking the squander of inner essence, the jing, can be derived from the image itself upon proper explanation. In a fundamental internal alchemy principle, three different barriers are to be manipulated and commanded in order for the sage to stop growing old and extend life. In particular, in the lower dan t’ien, the two children are activating a siphon thru which water flows below and gets wasted. In the middle dan t’ien a young girl is spinning a loom, while at the uppermost dan t’ien Lao zi and Bodhidharma are represented together with the sun and the moon (the two white dots) representing the endless cycle of time, and a mountain girdle stands for the final arrival of energetic meridians.
