Quiet Sitting Can Bring Long Life
(Liu Duzhou, male, Han nationality, born 1917, Professor at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. Elder Liu's life-cultivation rests on nurturing nature; he holds firm to the saying in calm, empty stillness, the true qi follows; he takes stillness as the chief means, and sits each day in quiet for an hour without fail. To this day he lectures and treats patients without weariness.)
The opening chapter of the Neijing, the Treatise on the Innate Truth of High Antiquity, records the yangsheng and disease-prevention methods of Chinese medicine.
It first asks: in ancient days people did not decline at a hundred, but today people decline at fifty. Is the cause a difference of the times — or a failure of the methods of self-regulation? The ancients who knew yangsheng could follow yin and yang and know the principle of harmonizing spirit through the four seasons; they also knew the methods of seven-loss and eight-gain; they regulated food and drink to nourish the latter-Heaven root, and were careful in rising and resting to husband the former-Heaven essence. They achieved gathering essence and completing spirit, spirit and form together; so their form and spirit were vigorous, they fulfilled their allotted years, lived through a hundred and then departed.
People today know not the methods of yangsheng, know not how to nurture nature, take recklessness as the rule; know not to preserve essence, but exhaust it with lust; cannot be tranquil, know not to hold the full, seeking momentary pleasure of mind — and so undermine life for later. No wonder they decline early and fall ill often.
The three teachings — Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist — all have methods of yangsheng, all advocate quiet sitting. They teach one to set aside the heart and remove thought, to lay down the dust of the world; to begin from the four words calm, empty stillness. Each thought of recklessness less; each measure of right qi more. Long continued, the true qi follows from within, the spirit guards inside — whence then can illness come?
Quiet sitting is also called dazuo. Beforehand one must do the three regulations: regulate the body, regulate the breath, regulate the heart. Regulate the body: the sitting posture must be proper — body neither stooped nor leaning back, waist and back straight, legs folded, the whole body relaxed, the belt loose. Regulate the breath: while sitting, close the mouth and conceal the tongue, with the tongue-tip touching the upper palate. Breathing is xi; if the breath is rough and audible through the nose, it is called wind, and one cannot enter stillness. Move from coarse to fine — breathing seeming present and seeming absent is best. Regulate the heart: settle the thousand threads of arising thoughts. Only when sitting do you discover how scattered thought is. See fame, gain, wealth, beauty as things outside the body; life is short, like dew, like lightning — make this contemplation. Cool the heart of leaping flame; loosen its bindings; let it be at ease, unmoved by desire — then the spirit is clear, the qi cool, and the true qi follows. One can then, as the Neijing says: "Lust cannot tire the eye; lewd evil cannot delude the heart… they all reach a hundred and movement does not decline, because their virtue is whole and they are not in peril."
I am seventy-six, growing old indeed, yet still can eat, lecture, and see patients, and complete what I take on. The strength comes, I suppose, from my hour of quiet sitting each day — unbroken, persevering. The ancients did not deceive me.