Work
Neiye
Overview
The c. 350 BCE Neiye (Chinese: 內業; trans. "Inward Training") is the oldest Chinese received text describing Daoist breath meditation techniques and qi circulation. After the Guanzi, a political and philosophical compendium, included the Neiye around the 2nd century BCE, it was seldom mentioned by Chinese scholars until the 20th century, when it was reevaluated as a "proto-Daoist" text that clearly influenced the Daode jing, Zhuangzi, and other classics. Neiye traditions also influenced Chinese thought and culture. For instance, it had the first references to cultivating the life forces jing "essence", qi "vital energy", and shen "spirit", which later became a fundamental concept in Daoist Neidan "internal alchemy", as well as the Three Treasures in traditional Chinese medicine.
Alluded to by Mencius and others, including other parts of the Guanzi, the Neiye was the most influential and detailed of the preserved older texts on self cultivation until the Mawangdui silk texts. The Mawangdui's texts on cultivation only went into broad circulation much later, a couple generations after the late Warring States period Han Feizi.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Related ideas
- Conjunction (grammar)
- Liu Xiang (scholar)
- Jixia Academy
- Ziran
- Yin and yang
- Mind–body dualism
- Cosmology
- Zhuangzi (book)
- Warring States period
- Mencius
- Changsha
- Mohism
- Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
- Mencius (book)
- Qi
- Hundred Schools of Thought
- Taoism
- Tao
- Mawangdui Silk Texts
- Huang–Lao
- Neo-Confucianism
- Religious studies
- Joseph Needham
- Qi (state)
Place in the tradition
Part of Taoism.