Translated by : Janny Chow
Page 79 in my book Ti Ling Hsien Tsung [Earth Magic and Spirit] begins the chapter "The Placement of Beds" where I recorded Taoist Master Ch'ing Chen's following instructions:
Avoid having a strong beam pressing down on the bed.
Be able to see the door when lying in bed.
Avoid having the bed directly facing the door.
In this chapter, I shall explain these rules in detail.
Avoid having a strong beam pressing down on the bed.
Above the bed, there should not be any steel reinforced concrete beams, transverse or parallel. Wooden beams are not good either. Pipes for air conditioning or heating should also be avoided. It is also not good to have beds under staircases. In brief, it is best not to have anything directly above the bed. Deliberately installing canopy-type decorations above one's bed invites trouble. Once the feeling of oppression is generated, ill influences result.
Be able to see the door when lying in bed.
When we are lying in bed, we must be able to see the bedroom door. The bed is in a correct orientation when we are able to see the door without straining or contorting. Some people place the head of the bed against the wall that has the door, and when they sleep, they face away from the door. This is an incorrect orientation. Sleeping with one's back to the door has ill effects on one's health.
Avoid having the bed directly facing the door.
When a bed faces the door, chi entering the room rushes straight toward the bed. The best position for the head of a bed is the corner diagonal from the door. It is ominous to place a bed directly facing the door. When chi first enters a room, it has not yet settled down and such strong chi can be harmful.
I would like to add a few more points. Firstly, do not arbitrarily install skylights in the ceiling above the bed. Secondly, the head of the bed must rest against a solid wall. The wall against which the bed leans should not have a window directly above the head of the bed. To rest against a solid wall is to have support. Sleeping in a bed directly under a window may have ill influences on one's health and wealth.
I once performed a feng-shui reading for a household whose family members all slept in beds placed in the center of their rooms. This kind of placement is inappropriate. Without walls for support, one feels "insubstantial," as if one is "floating in the air." Such bed placement will in fact lead a person's career to become ungrounded and "insubstantial."
Is it also necessary to orient the bed according to one's magnetic birth orientation (based on the twelve Earth Branches directions)? I have already addressed this in the book Ti Ling Hsien Tsung. The ideal situation is for the main door of one's home to be in an orientation compatible with the magnetic birth orientation of the owner and for the bed to also be oriented appropriately following the twelve Earth Branches directions. However, due to the constraints in the rules for positioning a bed it is often impossible to orient the bed according to the twelve Earth Branches directions. Therefore, in this situation, I feel that one does not have to adhere rigidly to these particular positioning rules. There are many other reasons as well.
I previously stated the following: "Some geomancers believe they must take the magnetic birth orientation into account in positioning the bed. The result is an awkward looking, ill-placed bed with unusable working space. It is irrational to sleep in such a bed. A bed positioned so that its four sides are facing corners may even invite noxious chi, grave injuries, and possible death. It is therefore erroneous to claim that one must always orient the bed according to one's magnetic birth orientation."
I have, for example, seen quite a few unusual bedrooms:
One had mirrors installed all around, above, and below the bed. The room felt like an illusory dreamland of mirrors.
In another, the headboard of the bed was a dragon sculpture that spewed water.
Installed on all sides of another bed were heads of animals such as tigers, leopards, lions, and elephants. Sleeping in such a bed must make one feel like the king of beasts!
I once saw a heart-shaped bed, whose owner treasured love above all else.
Another individual had a round bed, placed in the center of the bedroom.
One bed had a mechanism installed so it would rock up and down and rotate in both directions.
Unfortunately, all the rich men sleeping in these bedrooms subsequently met their decline. These strange beds were not in accordance with the teachings of feng-shui and symbolized degeneration.
I had heard that some of those beds were actually designed by geomancers to satisfy the psychological needs of their wealthy clients. Yet "too many mirrors" lead to a loss of inspiration. "Water at the head of a bed" indicates entanglements and difficulties. A "bed of animals" causes fatigue in both body and mind. A "heart-shaped bed" can lead to pessimism. "Round beds" make one unfavorable among one's circle of friends. And a "mechanical bed" causes endless disputes. These are the feng-shui implications of the above designs. Such beds may have appealed to the vanities of the wealthy, but the losses incurred were not worth the trouble.
A bed may be comfortable and the room's decorations elegant, yet one should always take feng-shui into consideration. Do not deliberately create strange and unnatural effects. These will lead to sluggishness and confusion as well as the loss of inspiration for work and the diminishing of willpower. One will then become listless, idle, and decadent.
Such are the drawbacks of bedrooms that are too luxurious. Without proper suppression of self-indulgence, endless greed and desire arise
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Chapter 21 : The Placement of Shines
Written by : Master Sheng-yen Lu
Translated by : Janny Chow
When I first arrived in the United States, I received many invitations to give feng-shui consultations. One was a request to inspect a "very good" restaurant that had excellent feng-shui. Many geomancers had inspected the locale before me, and they all concurred that the site was very good.
After inspection, I too found the feng-shui very good. However, the reality was that business there was bad. Not only were all the staff sluggish, even patrons appeared to become infected by a miserable dreariness upon entering the restaurant. There were never more than a few customers in the restaurant, and at the time I arrived, the owner could barely afford to pay his bills.
As I looked around the restaurant, I noticed a shrine set up directly above the upper ledge of the door leading from the kitchen into the dinning room. This door happened to be the passageway through which waiters brought dishes into the dinning room.
I told the owner, "The set up of the shrine is wrong."
"Why is it wrong?"
"There is nothing below the shrine."
"Why is this bad?"
"The shrine is set up with nothing beneath it; this makes it impossible to bring in the money chi. The door below constantly opens and closes, making banging noises. How can a deity sit still at such a spot? This deity ran away a long time ago."
"The deity may have run away, but couldn?|t the customers have stayed?" the owner said with a laugh.
"The deity running away had a negative influence on business causing customers to also run away."
The owner of the restaurant did not actually believe in the existence of gods or deities, and the installation of a shrine had merely been a customary cultural practice. But after listening to my advice, without further comment, he moved the shrine to a money-reserve spot in the dinning room. At the new location, the shrine had solid back support with walls to the right and left preventing chi from slipping away. This new location was also warmer and quieter. I also requested that the owner place a few more lights on the shrine to brighten it and suggested he make regular offerings.
I then told the owner to place an advertisement announcing that, in celebration of the restaurant anniversary, each party of customers would receive one complimentary dish and a plate of fruit. I also suggested he hire a new assistant chef to prepare some specialty dishes.
After moving the shrine and following my suggestions, business suddenly turned around. Every day, a long line of customers waited outside. The line stretched from the door all the way to the main road, and inside, the restaurant was always jam-packed. There were so many customers that the owner could hardly believe his good fortune.
Thereafter, each time I visited him, the owner would come out to greet me with a large smile, "Welcome, Living Buddha, my lucky star, welcome."
In this case, by simply moving the shrine from above the kitchen door to an auspicious location where regular offerings were made, the problem was solved. These actions resulted in spiritual protection and prosperity for the entire restaurant.
The owner of the restaurant saw a huge increase in profit and has since opened two additional restaurants. He also consulted me for the remodeling and installing of shrines in these new restaurants. All three restaurants are currently doing very good business and bringing in a great deal of money.
During my feng-shui readings in Taiwan, I remember coming across two shops that also set up shrines directly above passageways. Below the shrines, people walked to and fro. I warned the shop owners against having empty space or traffic below the shrine and suggested they relocate their shrines or close up the passageways. They both said they would do so, yet they never carried out my instructions.
Recently, I learned that one of the owners had declared bankruptcy, and the other was very much in debt and looking for someone to take over the business.
I consider it best not to have any empty space above, below, or on either side of the shrine. If there must be windows in the establishment, these can be installed in the center of the left and right walls. An empty space above or below the shrine is inauspicious because the shrine will not receive money chi. The reason for this is very simple: an opening above, below, or on either side leads to great dissipation of chi and the instability of the chi of the deity.
Even in ordinary households, shrines must be set up in proper locations with no empty space above, below, or on either side. If the shrine is installed correctly, it will accumulate positive energy from the residing deity and compensate for minor feng-shui problems in the home.
In the past, I had written that there should be no empty space above, below, or on either side of the shrine. Many students misunderstood these directions to mean there should be no windows on the three walls. Actually, the only wall that should not have any windows is the wall that forms the shrine?|s back support. The right and left walls may have windows in the middle as long as these walls still give rise to the form of two "protecting arms."
I have seen cases where shrines were installed besides doors. This is also improper as the opening and closing of the door creates much noise and a draft that leads to unstable chi. Take care to ensure that the back wall of the shrine is strong and solid. If the wall is rickety, the shrine will not sit comfortably and securely. It will eventually fall, and once the shrine falls, bankruptcy will follow.
Source:
http://www.padmakumara.org/books/book69/chap20.shtml
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