dawei

my son is here... so I get to hear his beats...

It's an interesting opening set of verse... I'm draw to 'above and below'... and thus it encapsulates everything in-between... and outside as well... so there is no boundary to how Jing affects the world/universe/people. I would say, we all have Jing, obviously, and we can likely agree to that... but the jing talked about here is not what modern alchemy means; Jing in this work is higher than Qi (not below) and seems almost more like De (inherent power). It is for the taking on some level. Folks can think and call it and its location what they want: breast, chest, MDT, etc. Due to the 'above and below' comments I made, I find there is really a question about location in a strict sense. IMO.

I think the sentence itself could be... but the repeated use of XIN throughout the text seems to make it likely less plausible. A question that could asked is whether there is a 'location' being spoken of in the first place. I think we should ask this throughout the text. I think when we focus on the text, we do get an 'inner' sense'.. but I'm not convinced it wants us to look inside

I always wondered if you weren't playing with us... of course we should read your first name as No-One... but I always wanted to see it as Noon-E... are you now an old dragon ? Anyways, done

yes, this is a curious thing on storing in this work. The character here is 藏 hide, conceal; hoard, store up It is a picture of hiding under the grass. Your query is at the heart of many practice issues. Is it the Sage doing something vs the inherent essence doing on its own. I might say, it is both, without each one, there is nothing.. well, Jing is there regardless of a person; so it exists. So I am more inclined to say that an open heart welcomes the already present jing, ready to nourish to foster a stable residence in some way, but the jing is there, somewhere nonetheless.

Jing... The vital essence of all things,

does he store it or does it store of it-self? We may forget this is a legalist work, after all who or what is doing the storing ?

yes... back to your point... if you clean it, they will come

So some comments on a particular line: 藏 於 胸 中 藏 - conceal/hide/harbor/collect 於 - ah 胸 - chest/heart/mind/thorax 中 - inner/centrally location So, opening lines point to the chest... ergo, heart

I had already started looked gathering connections before Taoist text made his comment anyways, so his comments were leading. 😀 Yes, Sima Qian might not of mentioned it but he seemed hung on Huang lao. Enough Daoist and Confucians were affected by the sensibilities of the Neiye... as has been shown of the metaphysical poet Donne. I was equally convinced and wasn’t going to get into a full rebuke. I’ve shifted some of my thought on it already, enough that it’s enough for me to see its position. But as Guanzi was a legalistic, I find smiles he hide this work among his collected ones. The earliest commentary on laozi was another legalistic, Hanfeizi, so the legalistic deserve their day i have in other places raised the legalistic vs daoist groups and glad to add this work as yet another bridge. As another work states, The Dao produced Law...

Some additional comments on the Neiye: 1. If you want a full chinese text on it, see ctext: https://ctext.org/guanzi/nei-ye 2. Several phrases are used by daoist and confucians in well known latter works: Flood like Qi… used also by Mencius. losing onself, sitting and forgetting, fasting of the mind… ZZ Dao that cannot be spoken… LZ Guarding/embracing the One… Taiping texts and LZ 3. A work like this shows a very close adoption of meaning: Classic of Inner Contemplation With always empty Heart and tranquil Shen The Dao naturally arrives to its residences 4. The Jade Inscription on a block is the other oldest mentions of breathing and reads as: To circulate Qi; Deepen then store, Store then extend; Extend then descend, Descend then settle; Settle then stable, Stable then sprout; Sprout then grow, Grow then retreat; Retreat then (return to) the Heavens. The secret of the Heavens is above. The secret of Earth is below. Follow (this principle) then (you will) live (a long life), Go against (this principle) then (you will) die (as a normal person). Can compare to the Neiye as: For all [to practice] this Way: You must coil, you must contract, You must uncoil, you must expand, You must be firm, you must be regular [in this practice]. Hold fast to this excellent [practice]; do not let go of it. Chase away the excessive; abandon the trivial. And when you reach its ultimate limit You will return to the Way and its inner power. (18, tr. Roth 1999: 78) 5. Zhengxing 正形 "aligning the body" is a basic Neiye practice, and jing chu qi she 敬除其舍 "cleaning out the lodging place of the numinous" resembles this shen jianglai she 神將來舍 "the numinous will enter its lodging place". In the second Zhuangzi passage, Laozi instructs Nanrong Zhu (南榮趎) about meditation practices by paraphrasing, if not quoting, the Neiye. The practice for guarding vitality [衛生之經]: Can you embrace the One [能抱一乎]? Can you not lose it [能勿失乎]? Can you not resort to divining by tortoise or milfoil [能無卜筮]? Yet know good and bad fortune [而知吉凶乎]? Can you be still? Can you cease [能止乎能已乎]? Can you quit (seeking for) it in others [能舍諸人] And seek for within yourself [而求諸己乎]? Can you be casual? Can you be naive? Can you be like a child? The child howls all day but its throat does not become hoarse. (tr. Roth 1999: 159) These Zhuangzi instructions are an almost verbatim repetition of Neiye Verse 19. By concentrating your vital breath as if numinous, The myriad things will all be contained within you. Can you concentrate? Can you unite with them [能一乎]? Can you not resort to divining by tortoise or milfoil [能無卜筮]? Yet know bad and good fortune [而知吉凶乎]? Can you stop? Can you cease [能止乎能已乎]? Can you not seek it in others [能勿求諸人]?, Yet attain it within yourself [而得之己乎]? … (tr. Roth 1999: 82) 6. Mencius's description of a sage's qi vital energy as haoran 浩然 "flood-like" was likely taken from this Neiye passage: For those who preserve and naturally generate vital essence On the outside a calmness will flourish. Stored inside, we take it to be the well spring. Floodlike, it harmonizes and equalizes [浩然和平] And we take it to be the fount of the vital energy. (15, tr. Roth 1999: 74) Graham dates the Neiye from the 4th century BCE, and says its practices may predate the hypothetical split between Confucianism and Daoism (1989: 100). 7. Another Neiye-Mencius textual parallel exists between "By concentrating your vital breath as if numinous, / The myriad things will all be contained within you [摶氣如神萬物備存]." (19, tr. Roth 1999: 82, see Zhuangzi above) and "Mencius said, 'The myriad things are all here at my disposal in myself [萬物皆備於我矣]. There is no greater joy than to look back into oneself and find integrity'." (7A/4, tr. Graham 1989: 127, cf. Legge 1875: 345) 8. Laozi often mentions calming the heart, embracing One... etc. but pay attention to the chapters 10, 15, 16, 22.

Separate threads for each chapter. Thanks for the comments and also looking forward to the comments it raises.

Interesting point... so something I'm looking at.

For this thread, I'd rather encourage folks to read the paper and we discuss his comments in light of the Neiye. I plan to start a more multi-translation thread to look at the Neiye line by line within the overall context. In the paper, he proposes the heart will 'house' jing and Dao. And even Qi is a part of the cognitive processes only when it flows near the heart. As Qi is considered a fluid, the heart is the house for such fluids.... yet Shen and Dao are not called a fluid. It seems throwing darts with speculative ideas on the role of the heart, in relation to jing, Qi, Shen, Dao in order to arrive at an understanding of its (heart) role in cognitive processes. I don't think this is what most called Inner Alchemy... but what a study might find is that it seems to clearly be a precursor of why a clear heart is beneficial to one's inner cultivation.

This is meant to give a chance to comment on this below work, that Zhongyongdaoist found and cites in another Neiye thread. “A Chinese Model of Cognition: the Neiye” In order to give some idea of the paper without someone having to read all 133 pages, I will share, unfairly on some level, about 10 pages of quotes according to the main sections of the paper. I will forewarn that there are soem typos as the copy paste from the original seemed to be at times like a OCR and I tried to fix most of it. I will post here the TOC , then separate posts on: Preface and Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Conclusion Followed by some of my thoughts. TOC: Table of Contents Preface . Introduction: Studying “other realities." 2 Chapter 1: A hermeneutic strategy for cross-cultural studies: interpreting metaphors and cognitive models 12 1- The Lebenswelt : an anti-foundational view of reality 13 A. The notion of Lebenswelt 14 B. The persistent difficulty of interpreting alien categories 15 c. The relations between language and reality: non-arbitrary meanings in non-foundational realities 16 D. The notion of metaphor: a window into alien categories 19 II- Understanding and construing metaphor 21 A. Poetic and rhetorical metaphors: ad hoc figures of speech 21 B. The semantic deviance of poetic metaphors 21 C. Construing metaphors 22 1. Paul Ricoeur: "What meaning does a metaphor express?" 22 2. Taking metaphors literally (1). Donald Davidson: "Under what circumstances are metaphors true?" 23 3. Taking metaphors literally (2). Samuel Levin: "What conceptions do metaphors imply, and what are the epistemological consequences of accepting these conceptions. . .25 4. Lakoff and Johnson: metaphorical concepts in our understanding and experiencing of the world 27 S. The delicate notion of literality 29 6. AlI reading involves construal 32 111- Accessing the ancient Chinese Lebenswelt : analyzing Chinese terms as metaphors 33 Chapter 2: What it implies to see the heart as the locus of conscious virtues 37 I- The importance of not neglecting the meaning of xin 37 A . The differences between “xin”, "heart", and "mind" .38 B. A difficult phrase: xin zhi xing 40 C. The dangers of "psychologizing" ancient Chinese texts 41 D. A first step towards avoiding "psychologization": taking terms literally 45 II- The consequences of ascribing conscious activities to xin 46 A. Introduction 46 B. Approaching the Lebenswelt of the authors of the Neiye: the general consequences of ascribing cognition to the heart....47 Chapter 3: The physicality of cognitive activities in the Neiye 51 A. More than simple breathing techniques 51 B. Dao in the Neiye: what it is and how to attain it 53 C. Xin in the Neiye: a concrete location in the body 55 II- The physicaIity of cognitive practices in the Neiye 58 A. Two important passages 58 B. Seeing the internai logic of cognitive models 59 III- The heart in its natural form as the only access to dao 64 IV- Jlng as a bodily state 67 V - Countering the stirring effects of the senses and emotions on the heart 68 A. The importance of escaping Western folk psychology: external stimulations as stirring qi and the heart 68 B. Guan T C'offices" 1 senses): a political metaphor 70 C. Qing (reactions to the outside world emotions): a tricky metonymy 71 VI- Xin zhi xing : the proper configuration of the heart 76 Chapter 4: The mind-body problem, higher levels of consciousness in the Neiye, and early Chinese mysticism 80 I- Irrelevance of the mind-body problem in early Chinese thought 80 A. The problem with the mind-body problem 80 B. Beyond "the mind": towards a more suitable understanding of cognition and perception in the Neiye 83 II- The difficulty of shen and its meanings in the Neiye 85 A. The oddity of shen in Western categories 85 B. The primary and metaphorical senses of shen : adjusting our definition of category 86 C. Shen in cognitive models 87 D. Shen as a lexicalized metaphor: following perceived homologies 88 E. Shen in the Neiye: a ghost or a metaphor? 91 III- Conceptions of body, cosmos and knowledge: how they May he related 94 A. The body as a natural metaphor? 94 B. Early Chinese mysticism 97 Conclusion 101 Appendix 1: passages in Chinese 109 Bibliography 111

It scares her. I like the mind reading myself. Agree on expanding aspect. And some do find it fearful.

My wife bitterly complains, and is on the edge of being scared... that I can read her mind. We exist within a shared space and it only makes sense that we can share thoughts, however odd or nutty that sounds. I think that most [here] would agree that remote healing or sensing is possible... so why not remote thoughts ? If we quiet our 'thinking' enough, there is a beacon of light that talks to us. As for food, I eat whatever my wife makes. Peace is important But I did read that blood type book on diets and found it very exact as to my tastes

I finally got around to having an interest to read this linked paper... and hope others will want to discuss it. Just giving some notice for folks to have a read. The quote of TT above is a line translated by Linnell that can be found here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38585/38585-pdf/38585-pdf.pdf Eno's translation is mentioned earlier in the thread. I prefer these two as they don't translate Xin as simply 'mind'... which the linked paper argues against, and I agree. I'm almost through that paper and the more I read the more I feel he falters in his points. I think it starts off strong and makes lots of sense but as he goes deeper, he creates lots of absolutes about his opinions I don't agree with. Likely I should start a new topic and we'll see if anyone is interested to talk about it.

This original link still works so decided to read it... The paper on Chinese model of Cognition can be found here, along with other Neiye links:

If there is no input then there is no response... so how can one focus on limiting an input and then claim a response to focus on?

Any staff has the tools.

If anyone finds out they are related to another person on this site... please keep it to yourself

WOW... how did this get to four pages without a report I guess, good job I only have two thoughts: 1. The federal government should stay out of it and let states decide. 2. TO Luke... did you really type his name 3 times, or copy the first and then paste it twice ?

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