shù shù
Also rendered: The arts of calculation (Risks reading as divination only) · Techniques (Loses the measure)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Regimen governed by number — measured breathing, diet and practice rather than indulgence. The phrase is deliberately technical: what is recommended is a discipline that can be kept or broken, not an attitude.
術數 is easy to glide past. Read loosely as “the arts of calculation” it sounds like divination; read as “techniques” it loses the number. The chapter is pairing it with yin-yang: one names the pattern, the other names the practice that keeps step with it.
What matters for reading is that the word is countable. A regimen of measure can be kept or broken, and the chapter’s whole argument is that people broke it.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
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Reading path
This term belongs to Foundations — the five core concepts, in the order the Suwen introduces them.