Zhuangzi's original text is:

Yan Hui said, "It's good for you." Zhong Ni said, "What is it?" He said, "I will forget benevolence and righteousness." Yue: "Yes, but not yet." When he looked again, he said, "It's good to be back." Yue: "What is it?" Say, "forget the music!" " Yue: "Yes, but not yet." When he looked again, he said, "It's good to be back!" Yue: "What is it?" He said, "Sit down and forget." Zhong Ni suddenly said, "What is forgetting?" Yan Hui said, "It's smart to fall on all fours. If you leave your form knowing, you will be connected. This is called' sit and forget'. " Zhong Ni said: "If we are the same, there will be no goodness, but if we are changeable, it is not eternal. If it is benign! Qiu also asks you to come back later. " [ 1]

Here, Yan Hui spoke Zhuangzi's heart, as if he had a direct dialogue with Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, but this is not what Confucianism really cares about. On the contrary, Confucianism pays more attention to realistic ethics and politics, pays attention to self-cultivation and governing the country, and Laozi also stresses governing the country, but in different ways. He said, "Can you do nothing by loving your country and governing the people?" [2]

However, in Zhuangzi, there is a growing tendency to break away from limited reality or transcend reality. He believes that "the emperor's business is a saint's business." [1] What about his ideal of being a saint?

"Happy Travel" puts forward that "there is no one in the world, the immortals are useless, and the saints are nameless." The overall concept of "God Man" also depicts the God Man in Zhu Gu's shooting mountain, that is, "living in harmony with God". If the skin is like ice and snow, if you are a virgin, you don't eat grains, suck the wind and drink dew, ride a dragon on a cloud, and travel around the world; Its spirit is condensed, so that things will not be flawed and mature. "Obviously, there is a very obvious religious spirit here, especially later, he discussed the profound image of a man with Tao in his article, such as a wonderful and mysterious description in Master," What is a real man? The real people in ancient times were not rebellious, successful or ignorant. If so, you will regret it, but you will not be complacent. If so, it is not difficult to climb high, not into the water or fire. Even those who know may be false to the Tao. Real ancient people, sleeping without dreams, feeling carefree, reluctant to eat, take a deep breath. The real person's breath is in the heel, and everyone's breath is in the throat. What gives in is full of words. People who think deeply are shallow. The real people in ancient times did not know how to live or die; Don't go out, don't go in; However, it has gone, but it has just arrived. Don't forget the beginning, don't ask for the end; Enjoy it and forget it, that is, don't donate Tao with your heart, and don't help heaven with people. Yes, just a real person. If so, its mind, its silence, its embarrassment; Like autumn, like spring, like the four seasons. It applies to things, but you don't know its extremes. " [ 1]

Of course, his description of the ideal Taoism inherited Laozi's thought, but Zhuangzi's interpretation of its true image in words directly means that, to a certain extent, Taoism can be learned and mastered, and its main purpose is to persuade the world to cultivate and extricate themselves.

His transcendence method is revealed in Zhuangzi, which not only makes people realize the nature of the world and people, but also provides concrete transcendence methods, namely "keeping in mind" and "forgetting".

In On Earth, he expounded his theory through the dialogue between Confucius and Yan Hui.

"Yan Hui said,' When I returned home, the poor were those who didn't drink or eat meat for months. "So, can it be lent out?" He said, "This is a sacrificial fasting, not a spiritual fasting. He replied,' I dare ask my heart.' Zhong Ni said: "If you make up your mind, you won't listen with your ears, but listen with your heart, listen with your heart! Listening stops at the ear, and the heart stops at the symbol. Angry people confuse the real with the fake. Only the Tao is empty. Empty people are also hungry. " "[ 1]

Will Confucius and Yan Hui be like this? Maybe we believe that Confucius may admire Taoism, but he didn't practice it, on the contrary, so most scholars think that Zhuangzi expressed his feelings through Confucius.

In fact, Xinzhai has realized the emptiness of the mind, but what about "forgetting"

Sitting and forgetting not only refers to the sitting posture, but also refers to the so-called "forgetting" state. It should be a real life state verified by body and mind, not a narcissism or anesthesia. "Tian Yinzi Sit Forgotten" said: "Those who sit forgotten, because they read it, forget it because they read it. Don't you mean "sit" if you don't see your movements when you walk? Don't you take action when you have opinions? Isn't that what "forget" means? What is "no"? "My heart is still there. "What is' missing'? Yue: "All shapes are lost. " [3]

Sitting here should be a way from form to substance, just like crossing a river on a raft. When you reach the other shore, you can't miss it, but forget that it is a state beyond the rules of the secular real world. Obviously, this does not mean self-anesthesia and escape. First of all, it is impossible for a self-anesthetist to completely forget his concern, and escape is not an eternal way. One day, he will face the real world, so can the river of his heart really calm down? I'm afraid it's difficult. The only thing we can do is to be completely clean. At this time, there are two ways. First, we can transcend reality, complete reality and then surpass ourselves, thus achieving spiritual purity. Secondly, to transcend oneself and return to life as the sustenance to practice physical and mental transcendence. Obviously, Zhuangzi prefers the latter.

Dr Yu Heng pointed out:

Forgetting is to settle down, that is, the person who has forgotten is actually in a state of centering. Shen Jie, the son of Yin Tian, said: "Fasting means faith, being at ease means leisure, thinking deeply means wisdom, sitting and forgetting means determination, faith means leisure, and the four schools mean god.". In other words, sitting and forgetting is the fourth stage of the five levels of Taoist cultivation, and it is a stage of centering and resolving. The symbol of success is sacred understanding and enlightenment, which means whether success is forgotten or not, and enlightenment is the best measure. [3]

And also made a profound comparison with Buddhist meditation, such as:

Although meditation and meditation have basically the same status in their respective cultivation systems, they are both necessary conditions and direct forces for acquiring the Tao, but their processes, contents and final results are completely different: the object of meditation is Zen, and the object of meditation is things and me; There are many ways to participate in meditation, and the means of sitting and forgetting is just silence and ignoring; Meditation can be a gradual practice or an epiphany, and meditation can only be a gradual practice; The result of meditation is enlightenment and liberation, while the result of meditation is enlightenment and eternal life. These are all different. [3]

In fact, his comparison is more based on the difference between Taoism and Buddhism, but the idea of "forgetting" is not just a Taoist method in the future. Although their superficial nouns are different, their core meanings have been confused in many fields.

In my opinion, the fundamental difference between forgetting to sit, escaping and anesthesia is that it is a fixed environment, which will not be like a smoke cloud floating in an instant, nor will it be like a frog in the well. It is a high grasp of the subjectivity of life and an understanding of the original intention of life.

Two.

Up to now, I think there are three levels, one is medical care; The second is the way of thinking; The third is the philosophical level.

1

Health level.

Then let's take a look at the definition and understanding of health care. Often said in the benefits of learning qigong:

Health, martial arts is called heaven, and the sky is retrograde; ..... Retrograde, in order to practice the essence and spirit, the spirit is still deficient, but the deficiency is not yet, and the deficiency will return to the Tao one day. In other words, people have never been born out of nothing, and they have to return to being unable to adapt to nature. It is said that this is the evolution and promotion of Japanese things, so what is empty is real, and what is out of nothing is there. Therefore, Confucianism calls the result of this ascension "transcendental holiness", Taoism calls it "feathering into immortality", Buddhism calls it "nirvana into Buddha" and disambiguation calls it "real person". [4]

From here on, his explanation seems to say that keeping in good health is heaven. What is heaven? Also called retrograde, will retrograde violate the aesthetic and monastic principles of letting nature take its course?

Zhuangzi said, "My life is limited, but so is my knowledge. With the limit, there is no limit, and it is almost there. Knowing what you already know is almost enough. There are endless fame for good and endless punishment for evil. The Governor thinks that you can protect yourself, you can live all your life, you can support your loved ones, and you can spend all your years. " [1] First of all, Zhuangzi does not advocate that we should do too many things that are far from the essence of life. He opposes alienation. Secondly, if he wants us to enter the secular society, we should try our best to act according to the rules of the secular society. Even if you want to realize your personal value, you have to act according to the way of nature and the way of society. This point was fully explained by him in my understanding of cattle.

The author thinks that keeping in good health is really based on nature and the highest principle, but there are two aspects to true nature. First, it is natural without affectation, and second, it also includes man-made behaviors and thoughts that conform to natural and social laws.

Then the heaven mentioned above is the behavior and thought between people that conforms to the laws of nature and society. It emphasizes the sublimation of people's conformity with heaven, rather than letting their own behavior go. Simply put, if you can choose two kinds of food, A is good for you and B is bad for you. If you know this knowledge, if you were given a choice, what would you choose? If you want to choose with a laissez-faire view, you are resigned to fate, just like guessing the pros and cons of a coin falling. In fact, your choice at this time is not the kind of "natural" idea, because you have already participated, but you have given up another opportunity. And if you want to choose with a kind of "man-made behavior and thought that conforms to the laws of nature and society", then you will definitely choose A. Of course, we can't say whether A and B are suitable for us yet.

Above, I explained the specific problems about health care from a personal point of view.

To some extent, sitting and forgetting is a way and achievement of keeping in good health.

Of course, we can also elaborate on Chinese medicine and fitness techniques. For example, Master Deqian of Shaolin attributed Shaolin's method of prolonging life to the method of meditation, in which meditation is of great significance. Meditation says that meditation can dredge human meridians, unblock qi and blood, balance yin and yang, strengthen physical fitness and enhance vitality. He also said that "the quiet can nourish the heart" because "the heart is the head of the five internal organs, and the heart governs the blood and the mind. The heart is normal and healthy, and the five internal organs are healthy. If the heart is weak, the blood will drop, causing the whole body to get sick. " [4]

On the level of health preservation, there is not much difference between Taoist meditation and Zen meditation From a modern point of view, their combination lies in Qigong and some concepts.

As for modern psychology and modern therapeutics, there are many explanations, so I won't go into them here.

2

Way of thinking.

This state contains a mysterious experience, which was mentioned in Laozi, but later Laozi returned to the realistic ethical level, which is different from that of Zhuangzi. Scholars from various schools have talked about it when later generations came home, and the realm of meditation and monasticism is profound. In fact, "Xin Zhai" is also integrated with "sitting and forgetting". In other words, Xin Zhai is a way to start, and sitting and forgetting is the realm of achievement. It is worth mentioning that the forgetting state is related to what Bergson said, that is, when entering the forgetting state, psychological time may have disappeared.

How to acquire intuitive ability, Gu Jiasheng said in Bergson's Research on Intuitionism: "Intuition is hard work, and it requires the efforts of the will. Only by turning people's thinking from the habitual direction of rational thinking, beyond the scope of perceptual experience, rational understanding and practice, abandoning all logical thinking forms such as concepts, judgments and reasoning, or even using any language symbols, can all the possibilities of fixed and stagnant understanding be eliminated. Because metaphysics must use intuitive methods to achieve absolute reality. " [5]

This is very similar to Taoist meditation and Zen in the East, for example, forgetting "benevolence and righteousness" and "rites and music" and transcending specific knowledge and skills to gain a mysterious spiritual experience and ability, which is related to intuition.

Intuitive thinking mode and experience are very obvious in art, such as in the field of poetry.

Many poets in the Tang dynasty also pursued intuitive experience, all of which were lifeless. "The specific way for them to learn lifelessness is meditation, that is, to sit still and be pure, to calm their thoughts and emotions to the maximum extent, and to keep their body and mind in an empty state close to silence. This can transform the pure consciousness of the individual's heart into an intuitive state, such as spontaneous light, which produces insights and feelings of the integration of all things and enters the realm of' I' where things and I are integrated. " [6]

It is this intuitive way of thinking that leads to many dazzling poems, such as the ethereal realm of "moonlight in the pine forest and crystal stone in the stream" embodied in Wang Wei's famous poem Autumn Mountain.

In the exploration of cognitive methods, the East attaches great importance to inner peace and transcendence, which may remove all kinds of factors that hinder understanding, especially emotional factors. The pursuit of inner peace and transcendence is not only because of these, but also because of the pursuit of intuitive understanding. Intuition usually exists in a high degree of rationality, and it does not abandon rationality. Instead, I began to understand life with intuition, take rationality as a refuge, and improve the quality of intuition with rationality, just like "Can it be as soft as a baby?" Can repairing the mysterious view be seamless? How can it be unwise to love the people and govern the country? Can Tianmen be opened and closed for women? Understand four, can you be ignorant? "[2] finally returned to the rational goal.

three

Philosophical level.

This is also the part that Zhuangzi surpassed. In other words, this is a transcendental philosophy, but it is introverted. Sima Chengzhen said in "On Sitting and Forgetting": "Why can't a husband forget? I don't know the whole body inside, but I don't know the universe outside. I am one with the Tao and worry about everything. Therefore, Zhuang Ziyun and Datong. " [7]

This philosophical way is obviously a philosophy of life with a very strong humanistic consciousness. Because this way of transcendence is based on people themselves.

Yan Xianglin summed it up today.

"Time and space constitute the main material limitations of life. In view of this, Zhuangzi first made a philosophical denial of time and space. " And this is also "a way of poetic imagination and intuitive experience." [8]

So how did this intuition begin?

One of the important methods is to "sit and forget". He made the following explanation for the specific operation method of sitting and forgetting. He divided sitting and forgetting into the following parts: first, the moral consciousness and values of sitting and forgetting; Second, forget to feel the body or sensory organs; Third, forget the psychological "intelligence"; Fourth, forget about knowledge forms and cognitive activities; Fifth, it also contains the ideological connotation of forgetting the worry of death; Sixth, there is the idea of forgetting "love". [8]

Of course, it must be noted that this transcendence seems to be purely intuitive cognition, but it is not. First of all, if we want to admit that everything is purely intuitive, then first of all, theorists have to abandon the original understanding itself-the knowledge and methods about intuition and transcendence. Secondly, as mentioned above, all intuition in Tao Te Ching starts from rationality and returns to rationality.

However, in the end, the theory of transcendence about sitting forgetting was used for religious transcendence, not because of the lack of language of later scholars, but because sitting forgetting itself contains a certain degree of religious factors, that is, can some characteristics of people or people trained through certain procedures really achieve eternal existence beyond the limitations of time and space?

In particular, the later Taoist Neidan School developed Yang Shen's theory of OBE, claiming that these theories can be successfully practiced to some extent.

Three.

The Modern Significance of Sit-in Forgetting

It is worth noting that in modern society, there are millions of lifestyles, and so are life forms. These can no longer be divided by a certain standard, but the re-evaluation of all values is not endless. It, the ultimate ideal of mankind, will never be divorced from the greatest freedom for an eternal reason. This kind of freedom is an orderly state of existence, which always requires people to have the outside world to a greater extent.

What's more, when everyone's mind is attracted by the brilliance of the outside world, it is easy to ignore the modernization of the inner world. This situation is that the development of internal and external, spirit and material, mind and skills presents an imbalance, and the wasteland phenomenon in modern philosophy and literature is actually an extreme imbalance in the above situation. This is a one-way imbalance, that is, in the highly developed shell of science and technology, countless hearts like deserts and wasteland are struggling. Of course, the dangerous situation is not limited to these, there are more variables, either bright or dark.

In this situation, the transcendence of Taoist thought is undoubtedly a very important concern, which not only radiates brilliance on the metaphysical level, but also has dazzling and moving light on the metaphysical level, which requires each of us to experience it all our lives.

[1] Zhuang Zhou. Zhuangzi [M] Jilin. Jilin Literature and History Publishing House, edited by Wang Erli, 2nd edition, August 2006,

[2] Lao Tzu. Tao te ching [EB]:

[3] Yu Heng. Zen and Meditation —— Based on the Theory of Mind and Nature of Zen and Taoism

[4] Deqian. Authentic Shaolin Qigong [M] Beijing Institute of Physical Education Press, 1st edition, August 1988,

[5] Ancient Li Shusheng. Bergson's study of intuitionism,

[6] Yuan Xingpei. Luo Zongqiang's History of China Literature (Volume II) [M] Higher Education Press, August 1 Edition, 1999.

[7] Sima Cheng Town. Sit and forget.

[8] Yan Xianglin. On the method and attitude of Zhuangzi's skeptical aesthetics [J] Hunan. China Literature Research, No.2, 85, 2007.