Meditation in the Classical Daoist Tradition
Asian Traditions of Meditation October 31, 2016 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.21313/hawaii/9780824855680.003.0010
Summary
The classical Daoist textual corpus is rooted in a tradition of teachers and students focused on specific meditative techniques that include proper posture, breath cultivation, and attention. These practices aim to eliminate desires and reveal a deeper reality known as the Way. Over time, these self-cultivation methods became associated with rulership, linking rulers to cosmic energies.
Study at a glance
| Key finding | Daoist meditative techniques were developed to connect practitioners, particularly rulers, to a deeper reality and cosmic energies. |
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Abstract
The classical Daoist textual corpus, while often treated as abstract philosophy, emerged from a tradition of teachers and students that was primarily based on a common set of meditative techniques, and goals. These techniques emphasized proper posture (aligning the body and keeping it still), breath cultivation (concentrating, patterning, guiding, relaxing and expanding the breath), the use of attention (focusing on the one or on the center), as well as a variety of apophatic training regimes designed to restrict or eliminate desires, emotions, thoughts, knowledge and sense perceptions and reveal a deeper reality known as the Way, believed to underlie these faculties. With time, a tradition emerged for viewing these self-cultivation practices as particularly beneficial for rulership, connecting the ruler to a correlative web of cosmic energies.