Daoist Meditation in the Eastern Han Period : หน้า 132/141

Daoist meditation in the Eastern Han period When An Shigao arrived in China around 148 CE, very few if any Buddhist meditation texts had been translated into Chinese.60 However the Chinese people were already familiar with the meditation practiced by small groups of Daoist hermits who attempted to achieve immortality through breathing exercises, sexual techniques and the use of medical elixirs.61 Traces of the earliest form of meditation can be found in the fourth or third BCE in Chinese philosophical works like Guanzi 管子(Master Guan), Zhuangzi 莊子( Master Zhuang) and particularly Laozi’s 老子Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) all of which refer to meditation practice as neidan 内丹, “inner cultivation”“inner alchemy.”62 Breathing techniques were part of Daoist meditation as well. According to Ye Young, “the Chinese traditional meditative practice (including Daoism and Buddhism) consists of an array of terminology, breathing, concentration, and visualization techniques: xinzhi 心齊, or “fasting the heart,” zuowang 坐忘, or “sitting and forgetting,” cunsi 存思, or “focusing and observing,” shouyi 守一, or “observe on one,” xingqi 行氣, or “circulating qi,” fuqi 服氣, or “consuming qi,” taixi 胎息, or “fetus breathing,” tunai 吐納, or “expelling the old breath and drawing the new,” zhiguan 止觀, or “calmness and insight,” zuochan 坐禪, or “sitting meditation,” neidan 内丹, or “the inner alchemy.”63 According to Daoism, the practice of meditation, called neidan 内丹 or “the inner alchemy” or “inner cultivation”64 is a method of