This category gathers writings and media on Confucian (Ru) meditation and spiritual cultivation. It includes public-facing essays, instructional materials, recorded talks and videos, as well as interviews and conversations. Together, these posts explore meditation not only as a technique, but as a way of self-cultivation, ethical formation, and lived spirituality within the Ru tradition, while remaining accessible to contemporary readers and practitioners.
The Routledge Companion to Chinese Philosophy (Routledge, 2026), edited by Brook Ziporyn and Stephen C. Walker, includes a chapter by Bin Song titled “Quiet-Sitting Meditation: A Philosophical Practice in the Cheng–Zhu Learning of Pattern-Principle” (Chapter 41, pp. 439–450).
Building on Song’s earlier work on Confucian meditation, the chapter offers a sustained philosophical account of quiet-sitting within the Cheng–Zhu lineage of Song-dynasty Ru learning. It identifies three distinctive Ruist exemplars of quiet-sitting, associated with Cheng Yi, Yang Shi, and Zhu Xi, and clarifies their philosophical structure and practical orientation.
A central contribution is the analysis of Zhu Xi’s understanding of quiet-sitting as unfolding in three stages, examined through their inner dynamics and intellectual lineage. The chapter concludes by engaging recent discussions in the philosophy of meditation, showing how, in the Cheng–Zhu tradition, philosophical inquiry and spiritual practice are inseparable.
Written for both specialists and interested general readers, the chapter presents Confucian meditation as a rigorous philosophical practice that integrates reflection with lived self-cultivation, contributing to contemporary cross-traditional conversations on meditation and philosophy.
Inspired by the ancient Confucian tradition, this conversation explores a timely question: How can we meditate as scholars, administrators, or modern professionals?
I also explain the misnomer of “Confucianism,” clarifying the Ruist (Confucian) tradition of contemplative practices and self-cultivation, and distinguishing it from other major ancient Asian traditions, such as Chinese Mahayana Buddhism.
Excerpt:
Contemplation in the Ru tradition is best understood as a state of heightened attention grounded in reverence. It means focusing your energy and aligning your consciousness with a guiding principle in order to gain insight into reality and engage with it.
What does heightened attention involve? It requires integrating all dimensions of the self, including understandings, feelings, emotions, actions, and more. This is traditionally described as sincerity or authenticity (cheng). You study ethical and metaphysical teachings, practice them, and cultivate a unified way of living. This coherence is what Ru thinkers mean by heightened attention.
And what about insights? As we see in Buddhism’s emphasis on mindfulness, many traditions seek direct, unclouded awareness of reality. Ruists (or Confucians) also aim for this: accessing reality free from prejudice and partiality. However, each tradition defines reality in its own way.
Video Lecture: Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong by Bin Song.
Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College, and I am talking of the Ru style of meditation for varying courses I am offering to the college on the topics of Asian and comparative philosophy, religion, theology and literature.
The ancient Chinese Ru tradition, also named Confucianism in English, experienced its second peak time in the second millennium of imperial China (which is approximately from 9th to 17th century C.E). This period of Ruism is termed as Neo-Confucianism in English. Using its original Chinese self-reference, I’d like to name this period of Ruism as the Daoxue movement (道學). Daoxue means the learning of Dao. Among many new traits of Ruism that the Daoxue movement embodied, the practice of quiet-sitting and other related forms of meditation stand out impressively. As influenced by the Daoist and Buddhist styles of meditation, the Daoxue movement developed its unique Ruist style. This style cares about the holistic well-being of human individuals, advocates social activism, cherishes a this-worldly oriented ethic, and is very friendly to intellectual analysis and integrative learning. In this talk, I’ll use the example of Gao Panlong to illustrate these distinctive traits of Ru Meditation.
In the introductory part of the assigned book “Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong,” I furnished a short biography of Gao Panlong. He was a typical Ru governmental-official who had dedicated his entire career to philosophy, community-building and politics. Among his many venerated philosophical accomplishments, Gao Panlong’s practice and contemplative writing of Ru meditation are particularly influential, and in my view, Gao is among the Ru scholars who has achieved the highest spiritual state of contemplative life in the Ru tradition.
Three traits highlight Gao Panlong (1562-1626)’s contemplative practice and writings:
Firstly, Gao’s understanding of the significance of quiet-sitting evolved throughout his life, and he also furnished rich phenomenological descriptions of his meditative experiences in varying genres of literature such as poetry and prose. For instance, his four five-character poems titled as “Chants for Quiet-Sitting” describes his sitting meditation in the mountains, on the river bank, among the flowers, and beneath the tree. These are really among the best contemplative poems we can find in the Ru tradition.
Secondly, living in the conclusive decades of the Daoxue movement, Gao sought to ritualize Ru meditation in a fixed format of time, place and agenda. For instance, his “A Syllabus for Living in the Mountains” and “Rule for a Seven-Day Renewal” (2018:19-26) describe how he conducts a meditative retreat respectively in a one-day and seven-day format. I once assigned my students at Washington College to come up with their own agendas if they had a chance to organize a spiritual retreat inspired by Gao’s, and the results are just lovely.
Thirdly, in the advanced stage of his contemplative practice, Gao conceived of the goal of Ru meditation as the achievement of “being normal-and-ordinary (pingchang 平常).” Resonating with the Centrality and Commonality (zhongyong 中庸), one of the four Ruist classics canonized by the Daoxue movement, the state of pingchang intends to execute the norm, viz., the varying pattern-principles (理, li) which indicate how diverse factors in a given situation dynamically and harmoniously fit together, in the ordinary moments of everyday life. In other words, a person of pingchang would try to realize the highest spiritual awareness within ordinary moments of their mundane life, such as how to conduct one’s morning routines, how to interact with human fellows in varying relationships, and how to be dedicated to one’s meaningful work for the benefits of oneself and others. In consideration of the prevalence of the emphasis by global traditions over the mysterious and extraordinary nature of meditative experience, the culmination of Gao’s contemplative philosophy in pingchang speaks to the this-worldly oriented spirituality of Ruism exquisitely.
Fourthly, regarding the method of achieving pingchang, Gao (2018:34) says, “in everyday life, whenever we don clothes, put on our hats, or see and meet with one another, we do so with order and decorum. Through this practice, our heartmind (xin 心) gradually trains itself over a long period, and then, just as gradually, it becomes normal-and-ordinary.” In other words, the sustaining practice of “reverence (jing 敬)” towards the appropriately ritualized details of everyday life leads to pingchang. More importantly, Gao thinks that one’s ability of discerning appropriate ritualizations depends upon the final and utmost endeavor of self-cultivation elaborated by the Daxue, viz., “investigation of things (gewu 格物),” since it is only via the investigation of things that the rationales of ritualization, viz., the pattern-principles of things, can be discerned.
The fourth trait highlights the distinction of Gao Panlong’s contemplative lifestyle from previous Ru meditators. In the Daoxue movement, there is a distinction of the lineage of pattern-principle led by Ru exemplars such as Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and Zhu Xi (1130-1200) from the lineage of heartmind led by Ru thinkers such as Wang Yangming (1472-1529). There would not be enough time here to elaborate their differences, about which I do encourage you to take on my more advanced level of courses such as the three hundred “Ru and Confucianism.” However, it suffices to say that Cheng-Zhu’s learning style is more externalist, since they predicate their Ru learning upon the investigation of pattern-principles of things in the world. Nevertheless, Wang Yangming’s learning style is more internalist, because Wang thinks the gist of Ru learning consists in recovering the pure moral intuitions which are already within the human heartmind. In Gao’s time, Wang Yangming’s influence was widely felt and kept rising. Gao Panlong, however, systematically refuted the critiques offered by Wang Yangming and Wang’s follows to Zhu Xi, and sought to strengthen the lineage of the Cheng-Zhu learning of pattern-principle. I will raise one instance as follows to illuminate such a distinctive role of Gao in the Daoxue movement. Once again, the following instance has a very dense philosophical context, and if some of my listening students feels it difficult to grasp the essentials of the addressed philosophy, please seek my other courses on Eastern Religions. So, the instance goes on like this:
As mentioned, Wang Yangming believes in the existence of an innate moral capacity of liangzhi, translatable as good knowing or conscientious knowing. In reliance upon the intuitive capacity of liangzhi to grasp pattern-principles of things in the world, Wang Yangming (Chuanxilu: 2) once employed the dictum “no pattern-principle exists outside the heartmind (xinwaiwuli 心外无理)” to repudiate the externalist and intellectualist tendency of Zhu Xi. For Zhu Xi (14 Zhuziyulei 3:298) once insisted that the knowledge of pattern-principles of realities ought to be obtained prior to one’s moral actions towards them. However, to refute Wang’s critique and clarify Zhu’s instruction, Gao Panlong (1773 8a:24) says, “Pattern-principles belong to the heartmind, and it is also up to the heartmind to scrutinize the pattern-principles. However, if the heartmind is not dedicated to scrutinizing (a pattern-principle), we cannot say that the heartmind has possessed the pattern-principle. If a pattern-principle has not been scrutinized, the pattern-principle cannot be deemed as belonging to the heartmind either. … Everything has its own norm endowed by Tian (heaven or the universe), and we humans just need to abstain ourselves so as to treat things as they are in our everyday life.” In other words, Gao agrees with Wang in principle that “no pattern-principle exists outside the heartmind.” However, Gao does not think that the pattern-principles are therefore able to be totally invented by the heartmind. Instead, only when the heartmind invests itself in scrutinizing the pattern-principles of existing things in the world, the ontological reference of “heartmind” can be deemed as equivalent to the one of “pattern-principle.” To highlight this outwardly oriented method of scrutinizing pattern-principles, Gao (1773 8a:3-8) insists that even the pattern-principles of seemingly trivial things such as a blade of grass or a piece of wood (yicaoyiwu 一草一物) ought to be investigated. This is because one would then be aware of how the life-generating power of the universe is concretely manifested in grasses and woods, and the awareness shall connect one to the power so as to nourish their own heartmind (yangxin 养心). This contemplative and self-nourishing attitude towards the investigation of outside things puts Gao’s thought in a direct opposition to Wang Yangming since Wang once famously told (Chuanxilu:120) that he turned into the inward learning of heartmind because he once failed so miserably to investigate the pattern-principle of bamboo trees using Zhu Xi’s method.
In a word, Gao Panlong exemplifies how a Ru meditator is able to do meticulous intellectual work and access the sublime experience of spiritual transcendence simultaneously. For students, scholars and professionals who are either working in or next to the environment of modern universities and colleges of liberal arts, I think such an approach to meditation of Gao Panlong would appear very appealing.
References:
Gao, Panlong 高攀龙. 1773. The Posthumous Works of Master Gao高子遗书. Qin Ding Si Ku Quan Shu Ben 欽定四庫全書本. ——. 2018. Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong (1562-1626). Translated by Bin Song. Boston: The Ru Media Company.
Wang, Yangming 王阳明. 1992. The Complete Works of Wang Yangming 王阳明全集. Shanghai: Shang Hai Gu Ji Chu Ban She.
Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College!
After discussing the varying yogas in the Bhagavad Gita, it is a perfect occasion for us to start reading Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. The Lord Krishna taught Arjuna to achieve his total inner equanimity while performing his vital duties in the battlefield, whereas, in the Yoga Sutras, what Patanjali accomplished is that after learning the contemplative Hindu practices as they were indicated by varying classical Hindu writings, for the first time of Hinduism, Patanjali furnishes a systematic elaboration about the philosophy, experience and technique of meditation per its Hindu bent. Since meditation would be such an important, generic theme of our course on Eastern Religions (I do think meditation is the most important religious practice for individuals in the traditions of the so-called “Eastern Religions”), let me explain my approach of teaching meditation.
Firstly, I need to emphasize that meditation is ubiquitous to all major world religious traditions. Nowadays, people normally think of the lotus position in Buddhism whenever the term “meditation” is mentioned; also, whenever the term “yoga” is mentioned, people normally have the idea of the varying stretching postures without particularly thinking of the lotus position of Buddhist meditation. However, all these popular notions about “meditation” are actually quite misleading. If we understand “meditation” as essentially a training of attention, and hence, as being an intensive inner work of human mind while the mind is pursuing varying causes, there is no world religious tradition which does not practice meditation. Accordingly, not only the lotus sitting of Buddhism or the stretching yoga postures of Hinduism [which is called hatha (force) yoga among varying yogas practiced by Hinduism] is meditation, prayers, ritual-performances, sleeping, walking, running, artwork, and a gazillion other aspects of human life can also be considered to be meditative.
Because of the variety of meditative activities that are practiced by human beings in varying religious traditions, I would lay out three major approaches to learn any of them, and these three approaches are technical, experiential, and philosophical.
Technically, we need to pay attention to how religions present their techniques of meditation, viz., how one starts and deepens their meditation in concrete ways. In the Yoga Sutras, we find the “eight limbs of Yogic practice,” starting from moral disciplines which urge meditators to be a good human being in their daily life at the first hand, and then, going through “posture, breath control and withdrawal of senses,” and eventually culminating on how to refine one’s mental state regarding an object in such steps as “concentration (dharana), meditative absorption (dhyana) , and integration (samadhi)”(Yoga Sutras, III.4, translated by Chip Hartranft). The latter three are further called a “perfect discipline,” and with a deepening training of this perfect discipline, meditators can eventually realize their “pure awareness” which remains unmoved, unperturbed, and perfectly peaceful regardless of the changing phenomenal world.
Experientially, which can also be called phenomenologically, we need to study how the experience of meditation in its varying states is described by meditators. This description is an important material for beginning learners to grasp so as to confirm whether they themselves get there or not. For instance, when the Yoga Sutras describes the “steady and easy” posture of yoga, it states poetically “It (the posture) is realized by relaxing one’s effort and resting like the cosmic serpent on the waters of infinity” (Kessler, pp. 75); Also, each of the three steps of the perfect discipline is specified by phenomenological descriptions about what happens to human mind if it is trained as such: “Concentration locks consciousness on a single area” (III.1); “In meditative absorption, the entire perceptual flow is aligned with that object” (III. 2); and “When only the essential nature of the object shines forth, as if formless, integration has arisen” (III, 3). Here, the three steps of perfect discipline of human consciousness is depicted experientially as a process starting from human mind’s endeavor of concentrating on one object, proceeding through steadily and uninterruptedly focusing upon the object, and eventually, letting the object occupy the entire mind so that no split between subject and object avails. Obviously, all these phenomenological descriptions are quite helpful if a reader of the text tries not only to intellectually understand it, but also starts to practice meditation.
Philosophically, we need to attend to how meditators in their writings weave every piece of their meditative experiences together, so as to articulate the truth or the broad meaning of such experiences. Patanjali was influenced by a Hindu philosophical school called Sankhya, and believes that the world of “pure awareness” is separated from and ultimately unperturbed by the material, natural world. Varying patterns of human consciousness such as desires, memory , latent impressions and intelligence for Patanjali also evolves from the natural world, and hence, Patanjali defines the goal of meditation is to “still the patterning of consciousness,” and describes the final state of yoga as such: “Freedom is at hand when the fundamental qualifies of nature, each of their transformations witnessed at the moment of its inception, are recognized as irrelevant to pure awareness; it stands alone, grounded in its very nature, the pure seeing. That is all.” (IV. 34). It is quite obvious that Patanjali’s yoga practice is grounded in an elaborate philosophy, and this philosophy states both its ethical ways of human living and also its ultimate soteriological goal of achieving ultimate freedom.
These three aspects of meditation are normally intertwined in given contemplative traditions. Techniques affect how meditators experience, the experiences inform their philosophies, while their philosophies also color and fashion how they report their experiences. If we look at these three aspects cross-traditionally, we’ll find a fascinating phenomenon that each of these aspects can be borrowed, revised, and accommodated within a new tradition so as to form a new relatively stable pattern of meditative style. For instance, Buddhists may use the same techniques of posture and breath control as articulated by Patanjali, but practice them using a different philosophy. For Buddhists, they do not typically think of the goal of meditation as discovering one’s genuine self since they believe nothing has a self, and accordingly, their vision about the position and destiny of human beings in the ever-changing karmic world is also different from the Yoga Sutras’ Hindu view. So, the question is: as beginning learners, what shall we do in face of this vast and complex body of meditation literature accumulated by so many religious traditions so far?
Two suggestions from me at this beginning stage of your learning and practice of meditation:
(1) Whenever learning meditation from a given tradition or an established teacher, practitioners should broadly and critically examine all the three major aspects of meditation, and on the basis of this, form their own way of contemplative practice fit for their own lifestyle. This implies that you may borrow techniques from a certain tradition without necessarily buying into its philosophy; also, it may imply that you can feel differently from the established meditators in a given tradition during your meditating process, but as long as you have your own philosophy to coherently and positively connect your practice with other aspects of human life, the difference is warranted. In other words, while practicing meditation, we need to dedicatedly practice it while critically thinking over it.
(2) For major meditative traditions in the world, they normally have their established ways to solidify the three major aspects into a coherent whole. This means that in order to reach a certain goal, it would be more practical for beginning learners to focus upon such an established way for a certain period of time. Therefore, it will do a disservice to beginning learners of meditation to delve into varying traditions superficially, and then, to hastily try to form their own meditative style. More ideally, beginning learners should find a teacher fit for their initial preference, practice that particular style for a while, and see whether it works and to what extent it works before deciding to change the approach or starting to create synthetically one’s own. After all, as similar to learning any other subject, a certain degree of dedication is still necessary for learning meditation.
Finally, in order to facilitate your learning and practice of meditation, I made a series of youtube videos with attached scripts about how to meditate in a Confucian approach. Some of these videos contain concrete guidance about how to breathe, sit, walk, etc. So hopefully, while pursuing the course, you can start to practice physically what you have learned intellectually. But please do not forget, while teaching meditation, my hope is not to promote any religion, but to have you critically study meditation in an integrative way so as to form your own unique contemplative lifestyle.
Five major approaches to meditation in Confucianism (Ruism) are described as follows:
(1) Attention. Technically, focusing upon breathing is, as many traditions have practiced, a very efficient way to start and maintain Ru meditation. This implies that whenever our mind feels distracted, constantly going back to breathing will keep our meditation on the track. Of course, if breathing reaches its own natural, deeply meditative pattern, that is when it becomes very slow, fine, delicate and permeating, our mind is free to be directed to something else for enriching meditative experiences. For adept meditators, however, the time used to reach this natural pattern of breathing tends to be much faster, and its effect is much more guaranteed. For example, after 7 years of uninterrupted practice, whenever I take a nap, go to sleep, or even sit quietly on a train, the feeling of this extraordinary, yet natural pattern of breathing arrives almost as a constant.
(2) Empathy. When the breathed air is permeating within our body, the boundary feeling between our body and the outside world will gradually melt away. This is when the incipient sprout of empathy, which Mencius once talks about in his famous thought experiment of falling baby, is budding and grows. Many philosophers analyze Mencius’ thought as if it intended to construct an ethical theory. However, rarely has any theorist ever noticed that what Mencius really talks about is his meditative practice, and a corresponding Ru way of living. It is in the unitary feeling of ourselves and every creatures in the universe that lies the root of the cardinal virtue of Ruist ethics, i.e., humaneness (仁, Ren).
(3) Problem-solving. This is, without any doubt, the most important and salient part of Ru meditation. The purpose of Ru meditation is not to be an escapist in any sense. Instead, it aims to confront, contemplate, and resolve tangible and touchy issues in ordinary human life without any cringe. For instances, when I need to write a term paper for a better grade in school, I meditate. When I need to complete the process of financing for purchasing my first home, I meditate. When I need to deal with the relationship among family members, colleagues, or anyones I met or will meet on my life journey, I meditate as well. During the process, the Ru meditation enables us to empathetically understand the perspectives of every involved human and cosmic being, and thus, try our best to find a way to harmonize all their needs, including our own.
(4) Therapy. Meditation understood in a Ruist term has its unsurpassable benefits in restoring our continually consumed body, and in certain cases, mitigating or curing diseases. The feeling of deep breath to permeate every nook and cranny of our body is just so therapeutic! The much lowered stress level will therefore create better opportunities to treat our diseases. In my life experience, the diseases that meditation helps to cure or mitigate include: the decade-long insomnia during my young adulthood, occasional seasonal asthma due to the mounting pressure and stress, toothache, and stomachache.
(5) Motivation. No matter how difficult one’s life situation could be, the tiny little spark of lucidity, warmth and energy that reemerge from the depth of our body during meditation will inexorably motivate us to try our every piece of strength to make the world, where we find ourselves live in, be better. This may start from caring our children, spouse, and parents, having kind conversations with our neighbors, and furthermore, fulfilling our duties in the workplaces or as a responsible global citizen. On the one hand, Ruists believe the universe renews itself in a daily basis, and hence, it provides an inexhaustible amount of energy necessary for all beings and creatures to grow and thrive. On the other hand, how these cosmic energies are utilized by human beings to build a better family, a more livable country, or a more fulfilled personal lifestyle entirely depend upon humans ourselves. In a Ruist term, the essential meaning of human life can be encapsulated into one singular, cryptic sentence said by Confucius: it is humans that can make the Way of the cosmos extended and enlarged, but it is not the Way of the cosmos that extends and enlarges human beings.
In a nutshell, these five approaches to Ru meditation can be paraphrased by five Ruist terms: meditation of attention is to enhance our capacity of Reverence (敬, jing). Meditation of empathy is to nurture our virtue of Humaneness (仁, ren). Meditation of problem-solving is to find appropriate Pattern (理, li) for us to deal with real issues in human world. And meditation of therapy and motivation provides (養, yang) us with a healthy body to enjoy the irreplaceable opportunity of cultivating ourselves to become fully human (成人, chengren).
Bin Song 