The thing in a person that has a direction. Suwen 2 is the chapter of this word: every season has its instruction for the will — let it grow, keep it from…
Suwen 1’s ideal ending: not that the body lasts, but that the body and the person’s alertness last together and finish together. The opposite is a body outliving its own presence.
The chapter’s title term: the four seasonal qi, and the regimen that answers to each. ‘Regulating the spirit with the four qi’ (四氣調神) means ordering one’s inner life by the season rather…
The line that made prevention central to Chinese medicine: don’t wait for the disease. The chapter closes with the image that makes the point — digging a well only once you are…
The form of address the Yellow Emperor uses for Qi Bo. It tells the reader how to take the dialogue: the questions are asked by a sovereign and answered by someone authorised…
The figure the texts use for a person who gets it right — not a moral paragon but someone whose conduct matches the way things actually work. In Suwen 2 the sage…
Not moral goodness in the English sense. De is what something has and does by being itself — and when heaven ‘stores’ it (藏德), the point is that its efficacy is invisible…
The body in its visible, labouring aspect — what walks, works, grows tired and decays. The texts nearly always pair it with spirit, and their programme is that the two should not…
Both a road and a method, and the texts lean on both senses at once. ‘Knowing the Way’ (知道) is not assent to a doctrine but knowing how to conduct a life;…