Zhuangzi "mind-heart" Research

"The fasting of the heart" in the first fable of "This Human World" is an important exposition of Zhuangzi’s practice approaches. The exordium of this paper firstly ponders over its meaning and significance, and reviews the related researches in history. The body part of this paper is divided into the following four chapters.Chapter I firstly points out that the reason Zhuangzi put forward "the fasting of the heart" is to prevent the name, knowledge and contention’s destruction of De(德). This is an important clue to understand Zhuangzi’s fasting practice. Then the paper analyzes two important concepts in the related text, namely hearing and will(heart), and concludes that hearing means perceiving and reacting, i.e. all the activities of the heart, and that the ears, mind, spirit are actually different sides of the heart.Chapter II gives an interpretation of the following sentences:"hear not with your ears, but with your mind";"let your ears stop with the hearing". The chapter concludes that the ears mean the perceptibility of the heart, and "hear not with your ears" means not hanging on and being harassed by what you have perceived, and thus "let your ears stop with the hearing" means facing what you have perceived agreeably and easily, since "the hearing" is just the existent situation of human being.Chapter III gives an interpretation of the following sentences:"hear not with your mind, but with your spirit";"let your mind stop with the tallying". The chapter concludes that "hear not with your mind" means not taking the mind itself as your model, and thus "let your mind stop with the tallying" means let your mind move and tally with the objects. The approach to this aim is firstly to set yourself aright, and then to be cordial but not overly intimate, to be agreeable but not overly effusive.Chapter IV gives an interpretation of the following sentences:"Let your spirit be like a blank, passively responsive to externals. In such open receptivity only can Tao abide. And that open receptivity is the fasting of the heart." The chapter concludes that to stop with what you should stop with is the practice approach to the open receptivity of the spirit. Only fulfill the two "stop with" the paper has analyzed above, can you hear with your spirit and go alone with the pure spirit of heaven and earth.