The idea of contentment or sufficiency is an important theme throughout the Laozi 老子, and Western readings of this text have especially emphasized an understanding of contentment in terms of satisfaction with an existence free of excessive material possessions. Building on recent scholarship that suggests a close connection between the kind of early breath cultivation described in the “Neiye 內業” chapter of the Guanzi 管子 and the form and content of the Laozi, this article explores how the concept of (...) contentment or sufficiency is treated in both texts as an embodied phenomenon, often manifesting as a balance of psycho-physical energies. It argues that reading the Laozi on contentment in this light yields a more complete picture of how this concept functions there, concluding that this reading will be more helpful in thinking about wider ethical issues of materialism and acquisitiveness. (shrink)

-- Background, context, overview, and guiding philosophy -- Emotional intelligence meets virtue ethics : implications for educators -- Emotional intelligence as a component of business ethics pedagogy -- Nourishing life, the daoist concept of virtue -- Cultivation of virtue (dé) 1 according to the neiye -- Cultivation of virtuous leaders according to the huainanzi -- Is there a place for contemplation and inner work in business ethics education? -- Incorporating the inner work of ei and contemplation in ethics education (...) -- Glossary -- About the author. (shrink)

: Xunzi borrows several significant ideas originating in the Zhuangzi and the ''Neiye'' chapter of the Guanzi, adapting them to solve problems in his own theories of mind and self-cultivation. This reworking occurs in three main areas. First, he uses some of the psycho-physical terminology of the ''Neiye'' but alters its cosmological background and thus its implications for selfcultivation. Second, largely for rhetorical effect he adopts the language of shen and shenming from both texts, but uses them to (...) argue for the potency of the Confucian Way rather than some ineffable cosmic Dao. Third, and most significantly, he takes and transforms the terminology of emptiness, unity, and tranquility, using them in new ways within his own Confucian vision to solve important philosophical problems generated by his own positions. (shrink)

This work presents a systematic cross-traditional convergence analysis drawn from 53 primary texts spanning all major world religious, mystical, and philosophical traditions — including the Hebrew Bible, Nag Hammadi Library, Gospel of Thomas, Book of Enoch, Dead Sea Scrolls, Zohar, Talmud, Corpus Hermeticum, Emerald Tablet, Popol Vuh, Bhagavata Purana, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Mathnawi of Rumi, Sahih al-Bukhari, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Diamond Sutra, Lotus Sutra, Neiye, Gathas of Zarathushtra, and the Law of One, among others. div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 (...) [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> Applying the Presignal Subtraction Framework — which isolates core signal from institutional, ego-motivated, and fear-based distortions — the document identifies eight convergent signal categories present across all examined traditions: (1) the interior location of the sacred; (2) cyclical civilizational time; (3) the universal Golden Rule as evolutionary strategy; (4) the Earth as a living system requiring stewardship; (5) the service-to-self versus service-to-others orientation binary; (6) the unity underlying apparent diversity; (7) the remnant survival archetype across reset/flood narratives; and (8) the directionality of consciousness expansion as the core developmental imperative. The document argues that these convergences are not coincidental and are not the product of cultural diffusion. They represent independent arrivals at the same territory by human beings across thousands of years and every inhabited continent — and that the underlying signal encodes survival-critical information about the conditions for stable, long-duration human civilization. The mythology is examined against its scientific correlates: paleoclimatology, evolutionary biology, game theory, and contemplative neuroscience. The work is intended as a philosophical and comparative resource — not as an advocacy for any tradition — and is framed to be accessible across religious, scientific, secular, and non-affiliated readerships. It is organized to facilitate cross-traditional dialogue without requiring acceptance of any tradition's theological claims. (shrink)

In this collection, Harold Roth brings together the pivotal essays representing both the innovation and expertise that have marked his scholarship on Daoism for roughly the last twenty-five years. It is Roth's position that the foundations of classical Daoism rest upon a distinctive set of contemplative practices that he calls "inner training," which can be found in the Neiye, Laozi, and Zhuangzi, but also in a number of other classical texts of mixed traditions, including the Lushi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 and (...) the Huainanzi 淮南子. The traces of these actual practices are evident linguistically in a recurring family of concepts appearing in these texts including wuwei, wuxing... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism by Harold D. RothDerek Asaba Chi (bio)The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism. By Harold D. Roth. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. Series: SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Pp. xiii+ 522. Hardcover ＄ 77.37, isbn 978-1-4384-8271-2. The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism (hereafter Contemplative Foundations) is a compilation of articles and book chapters selected from Harold Roth's almost (...) 27 years of scholarly publications on the origins and early history of the classical Daoist tradition. The essays that constitute this collection seek to counter certain myths about Early China Studies and Daoist Studies that have previously prevented the field from identifying, in a historically plausible, contemplatively grounded, and textually justified fashion, some of the basic contours of classical Daoism. Roth begins by discussing prior studies of the early history of Daoism. In his view, these studies were hampered in their understanding of the contemplative foundations of Daoism by limits derived from a set of unreflective assumptions that restrict human cognitive possibilities to merely those that were deemed possible by European cultures. Some of the most deleterious of these assumptions were: "all human beings have a genetic predisposition to a belief in gods or other supernatural beings; veridical human cognition is restricted to either reason or emotion—categories established by the European Enlightenment" (p. 2). Roth argues that these products of unreflective Eurocentrism have largely contributed to a failure to recognize that early Daoist thinkers could possibly have derived their ideas about human psychology, human nature, and the nature of the cosmos through anything other than abstract rational thought or emotional responses (pp. 3-5). These unreflective thoughts have contributed to constructing the idea that contemplative experiences can never be epistemologically valid, and that, because of this non-veridicality, attempts to ascertain the contemplative foundations of classical Daoism are either unnecessary or deluded. The author also discusses the distinctive philosophical origins of classical Daoism. The first myth about the origins of classical Daoism revolves around beliefs that the Daoist tradition began with Lao Dan 老聃 in the sixth century BCE and his outstanding work the Daodejing 道德經. Further, Lao Dan founded a Daoist "school" that included Zhuang Zhou 莊周, the sole author of the Zhuangzi [End Page 1] 莊子, and other eponymous works created by later disciples such as Liezi 列子 and Wenzi 文子. Together they created and transmitted a Daoist school that developed a lofty mystical philosophy which accepted death as a natural transformation and maintained a cosmology of the Way Dao 道 and its Inner Power or Potency De 德. However, this tradition of "philosophical Daoism" or "Lao-Zhuang" 老 莊 became singularly corrupted through its contact with superstitious beliefs in longevity, immortality, and polytheistic deities to form the organized Daoist religion that emerged in the second century CE and that persists until today (p. 3). Roth argues that the contemplative foundations of classical Daoism are grounded in a distinctive form of practice that the author defines as "inner cultivation," neiye 內業, or "inward training" (p. 6). Roth provides a list of works that present surviving evidence for these practices. These include: the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, as well as other classical texts of mixed traditions, including the Lüshi Chunqiu 呂士春秋 and the Huainanzi 淮 南子. Contemplative Foundations is divided into two parts which present a more or less holistic view of the contemplative foundation of classical Daoism. Part I is dedicated to the careful textual analysis of the major surviving sources of classical Daoism to derive evidence for both its contemplative foundations and its historical and social context. First, the author examines the theories of the physiological basis of psychology and self-cultivation as discussed in three texts from the Guanzi 管子 and in the Huainanzi. Despite its apparent absence in the early Daoist tradition, the physiological basis of human psychology plays a major role in the theory and practice of neidan 內丹, or "physiological alchemy," which emerged somewhat later, when Daoism became institutionalized (p. 23). Roth tries to link the psychological experience to physiological conditions that make possible a whole range of neidan practices that seem to have preceded Daoist religion but became fully developed therein. Roth moves on to debunk the traditional... (shrink)