Chapter One: Locating the Text of the Guanzi "Neiye" -- Where Does It Come From$14

I. The Nature of the Guanzi

To study this passage, one must first clarify the nature of its source -- the Guanzi.

The Guanzi is traditionally attributed to Guan Zhong, yet pre-Qin scholars already knew the book was not the work of a single hand or a single era. The Hanfeizi, "Five Vermin" (Wu Du), states: "Among the people within our borders, all speak of governance; every household possesses copies of the methods of Shang Yang and Guan Zhong." Evidently by the Warring States period, the teachings of Guan Zhong had spread widely, forming a school rallying under his name. The Guanzi is in fact the accumulated work of generations of scholars in the Guan Zhong lineage -- the community of thinkers at the Jixia Academy who took Guan Zhong's thought as their intellectual center.

The Jixia Academy was established outside the Ji Gate of Linzi, capital of the state of Qi, beginning under Duke Huan of Qi (Tian Wu) -- some say under King Wei of Qi -- and lasting over a century until it declined under King Jian. The Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), "Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan," records: "King Xuan delighted in scholars of literature and persuasion; from Zou Yan, Chunyu Kun, Tian Pian, Jie Yu, Shen Dao, Huan Yuan and their like, some seventy-six men were all granted residences and the rank of Senior Grand Master, deliberating without holding office." The Jixia Academy gathered the most distinguished thinkers of the Warring States, and the four chapters of the Guanzi -- "Xinshu Shang" (Techniques of the Mind, Part I), "Xinshu Xia" (Techniques of the Mind, Part II), "Baixin" (The Purified Mind), and "Neiye" (Inner Cultivation) -- are known among scholars as the "Four Chapters of the Guanzi" or the core texts of "Jixia Daoism."

II. The Meaning of the Title "Neiye"

What do the two characters nei ye signify$15

Nei means "inner," in contrast to "outer." Ye is glossed in the Shuowen Jiezi as "a large plank," extended by Duan Yucai's commentary to mean "undertaking" or "achievement." Here, however, ye should be taken in its original sense: "that which one applies oneself to," "the work one cultivates." Neiye thus means inner cultivation, the achievement wrought within.

By contrast, the Guanzi contains chapters like "Mumin" (Shepherding the People), "Xingshi" (Circumstances and Power), and "Quanxiu" (Weighing Cultivation), all concerned with the outer dimension of sagely rulership. "Neiye" treats exclusively the Way of inner sagacity. This accords perfectly with the principle of the Daxue (Great Learning): "From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all without exception must take self-cultivation as the root." Yet where the Daxue discusses cultivation in terms of the sequence of investigating things, extending knowledge, making the will sincere, and rectifying the heart, the Neiye focuses on the inner connections and practical techniques linking qi, heart-mind, spirit, and Dao.

III. The Relationship Between the "Neiye" and the Laozi and Zhuangzi

The intellectual sources of the Neiye can be traced upstream to the Laozi.

Chapter 10 of the Laozi asks: "In carrying the soul and embracing the One, can you remain undivided$16 In concentrating your qi and attaining suppleness, can you be like a newborn$17 In cleansing and purifying the profound mirror, can you be without flaw$18"

These three questions form a striking echo with the Six Questions in the Neiye:

Can you concentrate$19 Can you be one$20 Can you know fortune and misfortune without divination$21 Can you stop$22 Can you cease$23 Can you refrain from seeking it in others and find it in yourself$24

Both employ the rhetorical question; both point toward the possibility and ultimate attainment of inner cultivation. Yet the three questions of the Laozi are more terse, while the six of the Neiye are more elaborate and richly layered.

Consider also the Zhuangzi, "In the Human Realm" (Renjian Shi): "Unify your intent. Do not listen with your ears but listen with your heart-mind; do not listen with your heart-mind but listen with your qi. Hearing stops at the ear; the heart-mind stops at matching. Qi is empty and awaits things. Only the Dao gathers in emptiness. Emptiness -- that is the fasting of the heart."

What Master Zhuang here calls the "fasting of the heart" (xinzhai) and what the Neiye calls "the whole heart abiding at the center" and "unifying intent and concentrating the heart" are in fact different articulations of one and the same cultivation tradition. The Neiye, however, lays greater emphasis on the cultivation of qi, while the Zhuangzi emphasizes the realm of emptiness (xu).

IV. Viewed from High Antiquity: The Lineage of Wu-Shamans, Scribes, and the Dao

If we push our perspective further back into high antiquity, we must ask: what is the ultimate origin of the cultivation practice described in the Neiye$25

In the era of the Three Dynasties of high antiquity, those who commanded the art of communication with Heaven, Earth, and the spirits were the wu (shamans) and the shi (scribes/archivists). The Guoyu, "Discourses of Chu, Part II" (Chuyu Xia), records Guan Shefu's words to King Zhao of Chu: "In ancient times, the people and the spirits did not intermingle. Among the people, those whose vital essences were not divided, who were reverent, upright, and centered, whose wisdom could range up and down in accord with what is right, whose sagacity could illuminate afar and proclaim with clarity, whose brightness could shine and illumine, whose acuity of hearing could penetrate utterly -- when such persons appeared, the luminous spirits descended upon them. Among men they were called xi; among women, wu."

The qualities Guan Shefu describes in the wu-xi -- "vital essences undivided," "reverent, upright, and centered," "wisdom ranging up and down," "sagacity illuminating afar," "brightness shining," "hearing penetrating" -- bear a remarkable resemblance to the cultivation attainments described in the Neiye! "The whole heart abiding at the center" corresponds to "vital essences undivided"; "four limbs aligned, blood-qi calm" to "reverent, upright, and centered"; "the heart-qi's form brighter than sun and moon" to "brightness shining"; "the unspoken voice swifter than thunder and drums" to "hearing penetrating."

This raises a momentous question: Does the cultivation tradition of the Neiye descend from the learning of the ancient wu-shamans$26

From the documentary evidence, the answer is very likely yes. One important headwater of pre-Qin Daoist thought is precisely the rationalization and philosophization of the ancient shamanistic tradition. When, from the Zhou dynasty onward, the religious reform of "severing the communication between Heaven and Earth" (the Shangshu, "Lv Xing": "He thereupon commanded Chong and Li to sever the communication between Heaven and Earth, so that there would be no more descents") stripped ordinary shamans of their exclusive right to commune with the spirits, the cultivation techniques that had belonged to them gradually flowed into the broader populace and were absorbed and transformed by the Hundred Schools. The Neiye is a brilliant crystallization of this process of transformation -- it converted the shamanic technique of communing with the spirits into the cultivator's art of governing body and mind; it recast the religious experience of "luminous spirits descending" as the natural-philosophical explanation of "the pinnacle of vital essence."