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Thomas Cleary – The Taoist Classics
The Manuals of Taoist Sexual Practise – Talk on Supreme Guidance for the World 04

Energy has eight pluses and seven minuses. If you cannot employ the eight pluses and get rid of the seven minuses, then physical energy will diminish by half by the time you are forty; by fifty, your activities will decline; by sixty your hearing and vision will be unclear; and by seventy you will be withered below and debilitated above; sexual energy will not function, tears and mucus will run.

There is a way to restore strength: eliminate the seven minuses to quell afflictions, and use the eight pluses to enhance energy. Thus the aging can be restored to robustness, while the robust can avoid deterioration.

Educated people live in comfort and eat and drink what they want; their skin texture is fine, their energy and blood are full, their bodies are readily mobile. If they are too hasty in sexual intercourse, they cannot follow the proper course; this produces illness, sweating, gasping, internal disturbance, and mental confusion.

If you cannot cure this, you develop internal fever. Take herbs and moxacautery treatments to induce energy, adjust your diet to enhance physical strength. If you force intercourse, without being able to follow the proper course, that will produce haemorrhoids and scrotal swelling; there is distention with energy and blood, dysfunction of bodily openings, debility in the upper and lower limbs, piles and ulcers. So use the eight pluses skillfully, eliminate the seven minuses, and these ailments will not occur.