Zhuangzi’s fasting of the heart

In the fourth chapter of the Zhuangzi, a student named Yan Hui wants to travel to the state of Wei and advise its young, difficult ruler. He lists his plans. Confucius, who is a character in the story, takes each one apart. At last Yan Hui asks what is left, and Confucius answers with one word: fast.

Yan Hui says he is poor and has long gone without wine and rich food. Surely that is fasting? Confucius says no. He means something else. Then he says this, in our translation:

Make your aim one. Do not listen with the ears; listen with the heart. Do not listen with the heart; listen with the breath. Hearing stops at the ears. The heart stops at what it can match. Breath is empty, and waits for things. The Way gathers in emptiness. Emptiness is the fasting of the heart.

In Chinese the last phrase is 心斋, xīn zhāi.

Three ways of listening

Think of three layers. The ear takes in sound: the world as it arrives. The heart, which in old Chinese thought is also the place where we think, sorts the sound into meaning. That is a threat. That is praise. I should answer. The passage says even this has a stopping place, at what it can “match”: the moment the heart recognizes something it already has a slot for.

The third layer is breath. The word is qi (气), which means breath or air, and also the finest stuff that things are made of. Scholars differ on how literally to take it here. Whether it means the actual breath in the body, or the open, unforced state that breath stands for, the direction is clear: a listening that does not sort, rank or prepare a reply.

James Legge, whose 1891 translation is in the public domain, ends the passage with “such freedom is the fasting of the mind.” He reads emptiness as freedom from all pre-occupation. We like that reading. To be pre-occupied is to be occupied beforehand, with the answer already in the mouth.

What gets emptied

Fasting usually means going without food. Here it means going without crowding. The heart is full of plans, verdicts and rehearsed replies, and a full heart can take in very little that is new. The fast is not an attempt to have no thoughts. It is leaving a little room.

Yan Hui reports the result, and it is the best line in the passage. Before he learned this, he says, he was truly Hui. Now that he has it, there is no Hui. Confucius says: that is it. The self that was busy defending itself has loosened its grip. In chapter six Yan Hui comes back and says he can now sit and forget, zuò wàng, but that is a story for another day.

Our classes follow this road in their own way: from the sound of the room, to the thoughts about it, to the breath, and then to resting without a task. We read the passage as a practice of attention, not as a promise about any outcome.

Try it for one minute. Listen to the room with your ears alone, naming nothing. Then notice the thoughts that come about the sounds. Then let all of that fall behind you and notice only the breath going out. Stop.