“It is not my ‘soul’ or even my ‘body’ that I ‘nourish’ but my ‘breath-energy’. In the end, my internal dynamism is the most important thing to nourish.” (François Jullien – Vital Nourishment – Departing from Happiness Chapter 7)
“Human life is a concentration of breath-energy (qi): life is the result of this concentration, death the result of its dissolution.”
Jullien is fond of engaging his inquiry by asking why is it that Western philosophy did not embrace views that Chinese readily espoused as most natural and rather obvious. The most basic of these would be that reality is “change,” which the West did see, but responded to by trying to solidify it into “being” to make it easier to grasp and manipulate! Jullien suggests that it is because Western philosophy “sees itself as an activity that questions itself radically and is capable of reopening every possibility because it seeks to work its way back to the origin of thought. Its classic ambition is to assume nothing.” The West’s distinction between soul and body had been the products of primordial cultural choices. But the West “cannot even imagine the degree to which it is dependent on those conceptions.” So, “Why did Chinese thought not sanction a similar dichotomy in its representation of the human? Because it was based on a unitary conception of the advent and constitution of the world and of man, a more global conception, namely, that of breath-energy, or qi. To judge by its ancient written forms, this Sinogram includes the element vapor above the sign for fire, thus representing its capacity for emanation and diffuse circulation. The formation of both men and things is to be taken as a condensation or coagulation of this continuous primal current, represented by an image that adequately expresses both the efficacy and the temporariness of the phenomenon: just as water condenses and ‘freezes into ice’, so, too, does qi ‘condense into man’, and just as ice, by melting, once again becomes water, man by dissolving at death, (re)joins a diffuse and invisible flow of energy that wends its way ceaselessly through the world, animating it as it goes … Human life is a concentration of breath-energy (qi): life is the result of this concentration, death the result of its dissolution … Thus it is said that what courses through the entire world and causes it to communicate is this unitary breath, yi qi.
Yi qi as unitary breath undermines the opposition of idealism and materialism
Jullien explains: “Such a statement could easily be described as materialist, in light of its thoroughgoing naturalism (nothing beyond, outside, or radically different from the order of phenomena is introduced).” But what we have here is not a “causalist” theory with congeals causing each other but “rather a processive cause of breath (energy) that is self-regulated by its ‘spiritual dimension’. Through this breath-energy, I am connected to the primordial current, the generous progenitor from which my life stems directly and permanently (as my life stems from God in the idealist vision). That is why ‘wisdom’ (or ‘morality’ or ‘spirituality’ or ‘values’: the differences among these terms vanish at this most fully de-ideologized point of the program) consists ‘solely’ (no metaphysical construct here) in returning to the primordial flow. This reincites my life … Wisdom is a matter of freeing myself from all internal obstructions and focalizations in order to recover the communicative aptitude of the qi that produces me. This aptitude can neither mature nor stagnate but must be kept alert. Zhuangzi puts it more eloquently: “That is why the sage values the one [of the breath energy].”
Qi’s ability to reincite my life is what Zhuangzi’s talk of the fantastic powers of the shaman alludes to
Jullien writes:“When Zhuangzi evokes the shaman’s fantastic powers to move through water without impediment and to walk on fire without being burned, the explanation of those powers exclusively in terms of the ability to manage the breath-energy transforms the ancient mythico-religious sources into elements of ‘logic’ (interpreted as logos). Indeed, I believe that this logic seizes upon vestiges of a more ancient way of thinking in order to elucidate.” I would think that it is the case for the recurrent evocation of the supernatural in all ancient religious writings. The supernatural spoke to our ancestors’ imagination at a time when this was at the heart of their approach to reality. Jullien invites us not to dwell on what seem fantastic, and therefore a priori doubtful in these tales.
In addition, Jullien brings us the solid historical commentary by Picasso on the story of the carpenter who built the marvelous bell stand worthy of a god. The carpenter had presented the preparation for his work as a need to abstain from wasting his breath-energy. Picasso wrote: “Every creature possesses the same quantity of energy. The average person wastes his in a thousand ways. I channel my strength in one direction: into painting, to which I sacrifice all the rest – you and everybody else, myself included. Anyone who intends to create an oeuvre should, I think, head this motto: one’s work requires one not to ‘waste’ one’s breath-energy.”
Thus it is not my “soul” or even my “body” that I “nourish” but my “breath-energy” in order to reconnect with the ceaseless processivity of heaven
Jullien concludes: “It seems to me that Chinese reflection allows us to shed more light on what makes all this coherent. The notion of qi reveals the way detachment (from both the ‘world’ and the ‘self’) and energetic concentration lead to the refinement-emancipation that makes my vital capacity alert and communicative, freeing it from organic encumbrances (stupidity and mental torpor) and leading to invention … The man who knows how to delve within himself by purifying and decanting his breath-energy – the one who knows how to achieve a more alert and nimble stage stage of existence rather than allow himself to become bogged down in the opacifying coagulation of his physical being – can recover his freely and ‘purely’ evolutive capacity and thus reconnect with the ceaseless processivity of heaven … Thus it is not my ‘soul’ or even my ‘body’ that I ‘nourish’ but my ‘breath-energy’.” In the end, my internal dynamism is the most important thing to nourish.
Source:
François Jullien – Vital Nourishment, Departing from Happiness (2007)