Zuòwàng Lùn: Practical Treatise on Meditation
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Written during the Tang dynasty by Sima Chengzhen, master of the Shangqing Taoist tradition, (647–735), it seeks neither to convince nor to impress. It does not describe complicated doctrines or abstract metaphysical systems. It speaks to the human heart, to its weariness, its torments, its simplest aspiration:
to find a space where it can exist without agitation.This text begins where we all are: with a scattered mind, a cluttered life, a heart torn between desires and fears. Then, with gentle firmness, it unfolds a path of simplification and clarity. Step by step, chapter by chapter, the reader is invited to let go of their certainties, attachments and illusions, until inner silence becomes a natural companion.
The Zuòwàng Lùn teaches that true vision does not come from intellectual effort, but from tranquillity of heart. It shows how desires and aversions colour the world, how fears constrict it, how thoughts fill it to the point of making us forget our true nature. As we read, something within us calms down: we recognise the truth of these words not because we understand them, but because we recognise them.
The art of “sitting and forgetting” does not mean turning away from the world, but letting go of what within us clings to it unnecessarily. It is not a matter of wandering in a colourless void, but of returning to the simplicity of an open, uncluttered, living heart. The text reminds us that the Dao is not to be conquered: it appears when we stop looking for it. Peace is not to be created: it reveals itself when our agitation ceases.
Reading the Zuòwàng Lùn is like entering a silent room where we learn, without complicated discourse, to become whole again. It is discovering that wisdom is not an unattainable summit, but the natural state of a mind that has finally returned home.
The Zuòwàng Lùn begins its journey with a gentle truth: to enter the Way, the heart must first open. Nothing spectacular, nothing imposed; simply an inner disposition that accepts, without struggle, that another relationship with oneself is possible. Before any meditation technique, before seeking calm or clarity, there must be a fundamental trust, something like an intimate acquiescence. This is what the text calls faith.This faith is not blind belief. Rather, it resembles that simple intuition that whispers that inner turmoil is not everything, that a vaster space awaits us if we make ourselves available to it. It is a quality of the heart, not an idea of the mind. It opens, it softens, it prepares.
The respect referred to here is not ceremonial. It is not external. It refers to inner seriousness, the right way to stand before this path: with simplicity, with sincerity, with that silent modesty that paves the way for all true transformation. To respect the Way is to respect oneself in one's deepest being.
Thus, this first chapter does not ask us to act, but to be. It tells us that nothing can begin unless we offer the Way a heart that is willing to be touched. Faith then becomes the root; respect, the stem from which everything can grow. Without them, meditation is merely a mechanical exercise. With them, the slightest moment of silence becomes an encounter.
Reading this chapter is like gently entering the atmosphere of the Zuòwàng Lùn. It is understanding that the path does not begin with effort, but with a form of disarming simplicity. The Way is not conquered: it is welcomed. And the first door to welcome it is that peaceful heart that simply says, ‘I am ready.’ "
After establishing faith and respect as its foundation, Zuòwàng Lùn leads us to a decisive step: learning to free ourselves from what distracts the heart. This chapter is not about renouncing the world or isolating ourselves in solitude. It is about a much more subtle inner gesture: recognising what pulls us out of ourselves and prevents us from accessing calm.
The attachments in question are not only material. They are above all those invisible bonds that hold us back: the expectations of others, the obligations we impose on ourselves, social habits, the roles we play without believing in them, the ambitions that distance us from who we really are. The text invites us to see them, not to reject them outright, but to stop giving them the power to disturb our minds.
Cutting ties, in the spirit of the treatise, does not mean breaking with people or giving up on everyday life. It means learning to no longer be carried away by what, in truth, does not nourish our hearts. It means lightening our lives of what clutters them, reducing what distracts us, recognising what disperses our energy every day. It is a purification, not of the external, but of the relationship we have with it.
This chapter is a call for clarity. It reminds us that simplicity is not a luxury, but a necessity for those who want to advance on the Path. As long as we remain tied to a thousand little things, as long as we respond too quickly to what the world demands of us, as long as we confuse agitation with existence, the heart cannot gather itself together.
Reading this chapter means accepting to look at one's life with honesty. It means feeling that peace requires space, and that this space comes not so much from external silence as from a certain inner simplicity. Cutting ties means surrendering to oneself. It means beginning to walk lighter, freer, closer to what really matters to us.
Once the external ties have been loosened, the Zuòwàng Lùn leads us to a more intimate terrain: that of the heart itself. For even when life becomes simpler, even when demands diminish, inner turmoil often continues to swirl. Thoughts return, emotions arise, memories pull us back, desires propel us forward. The outside world calms down, but the inner world does not fall silent so quickly.
It is at this precise moment that the real practice begins.
The text invites us to gather the heart, not by force, but by a new way of looking at what is happening within us. It is not a question of fighting against thoughts, nor of pushing them away, nor of controlling them. It is about learning to no longer follow them. To see them arise and dissolve, like traces of wind on the surface of a lake.
Gathering the heart means bringing the scattered mind back to its source, like gently calling back a child who has strayed. It is a practice of gentleness, almost tenderness towards oneself. We do not seek to silence the mind: we simply stop responding to it. Little by little, something calms down. Stability arises not because we have created it, but because we have stopped feeding the turmoil.
This chapter also teaches us to recognise the pitfalls of the practice: forced emptiness, torpor, escape into inaction, rigid fixation. It shows that the heart must be both relaxed and vigilant, silent but alert. A living stability, not a dead closure. It is an art, and this art requires patience, lucidity, and above all sincerity.
To read this chapter is to enter into true inner work.
We discover that peace is not a state to be attained, but a movement to be accompanied. That calm is not found in struggle, but in relaxation. And that to gather the heart, ultimately, is to cease to scatter it.After learning to bring the heart back to itself, the Zuòwàng Lùn reminds us that inner life can only flourish if outer life leaves it space. There is no point in seeking calm in meditation if, as soon as we get up, we plunge back into a whirlwind of obligations, demands and agitations that saturate the mind. Serenity is built as much in the way we live as in the way we meditate.
This chapter teaches us the discreet art of simplifying our lives. Not by removing everything, nor by withdrawing from the world, but by learning to distinguish the essential from the superfluous. Some things truly nourish life; others are merely burdens, habits and distractions that disperse energy and cloud the clarity of the heart. The text invites us to sort through these things, not with severity, but with intelligence: only what lightens our load opens the way to peace.
Simplifying our affairs means lightening our daily lives in the same way we have already lightened our inner lives. It means learning to stop responding to everything, to not get caught up in situations that don't really require our presence, to not take on more commitments out of fear of missing out or disappointing others. It means rediscovering the flavour of a life where every gesture has space, where every moment breathes, where the heart is no longer pulled in a thousand directions.
The text insists: a heart cluttered with too many things cannot see clearly or settle down for long. Simplicity is therefore not an aesthetic option, but a necessity for those who truly want to progress on the Path. It is by reducing external noise that inner vision can open up.
Reading this chapter is like feeling encouraged to lighten one's existence. To give back time, air and silence to the things that matter. To offer the heart a simple terrain, so that it can become clear. Simplicity then becomes a form of hospitality towards oneself: a way of preparing the inner life to deepen.
When life has been simplified and the heart has learned to return to itself, a deeper transformation can begin. This is what the Zuòwàng Lùn calls ‘true vision’. Not a mystical or spectacular vision, but a clear, uncluttered gaze that sees things as they are because it is no longer agitated by desires or fears.
With this chapter, the text takes us into a space where the mind ceases to be carried away by its projections. We then discover that what troubled us came less from the situations themselves than from the way our mind coloured them. The objects of desire lose their lustre, not through forced renunciation, but because we realise that they were only held together by the imagination we placed on them. Fears also disappear, because we understand that their strength came from attachment to an image of ourselves, and not from reality.
True vision brings new clarity. It allows us to recognise the movements that, until yesterday, carried us away without our seeing them. It illuminates the true nature of emotions, shows how aversion arises from our reaction rather than from the object itself, and reveals that suffering is fuelled above all by the idea we have of what is happening. Even death, which so many fear, appears in a different light: no longer as a catastrophe, but as a natural, inevitable transformation that the mind faces with serenity when it ceases to identify with the body.
This chapter is an introduction to a form of clarity that owes nothing to tension or control. It comes of its own accord when attachments are loosened, when the heart is freed from the illusions that weighed it down. It is a simple, naked, silent vision, but one that changes everything. It takes nothing away from the world; it only removes what we had added to it that was superfluous and prevented us from breathing.
Reading this chapter is to experience an inner shift. The world remains the same, but the gaze is no longer that of a mind caught in its own nets. True vision does not bring indifference, but freedom, a calm freedom that allows one to finally be present, without disturbance, at the very heart of life.
After the clarity of true vision, the Zuòwàng Lùn leads us to an even deeper state: great stability. This chapter does not describe an additional effort or a level to be conquered, but an inner transformation that occurs when the heart finally ceases to be displaced by phenomena.
The stability referred to here is not rigid immobility. It is neither tense nor heavy. It is a living, flexible tranquillity that remains intact even when the world around us is in turmoil. The text describes this state as a kind of natural light that reveals itself when the inner turmoil has ceased. This light does not come from elsewhere: it is the light of shen, the deep spirit, which becomes visible as soon as it is no longer obscured by habitual reactions.
In this state, the practitioner no longer needs to struggle against thoughts or protect themselves from emotions. Things come and go without leaving a trace. The heart is no longer attracted to what it desires or repelled by what it fears. It remains like the water of a windless lake: calm without effort, clear without intention. Stability becomes a nature, a way of being.
This chapter also shows that wisdom does not consist in accumulating knowledge, but in preserving this inner calm. Too much knowledge disperses; too many words tire. The text invites a sobriety of mind, which is not ignorance but maturity. What is profound does not need to express itself constantly. What is clear does not need to justify itself.
Great stability is the state in which one ceases to lose oneself definitively. One is no longer carried away by the world, nor anxious to resist it. One remains within oneself, tranquil, but open to everything. This chapter therefore marks a stage: one where practice no longer requires conscious vigilance, because it has become natural. Calm is no longer an activity, but a dwelling place.
Reading this chapter gives a glimpse of the gentleness of an existence where nothing disturbs the mind without its permission. An existence where inner silence is not a constraint, but a breath of fresh air. It is the moment when the Way ceases to be a path and becomes a way of being.
In this final chapter, the Zuòwàng Lùn leads us to the threshold of what it calls the realisation of the Dao. It is not a spectacular achievement, nor a mystical apotheosis. Rather, it is a silent completion, an inner maturity where practice ceases to be a quest, because what was sought has become natural.
The Zuòwàng Lùn is not just a Taoist treatise. It is an inner journey that accompanies us, step by step, from the turbulent shores of ordinary life to the peaceful heart of being. It begins in trust, continues in detachment, deepens in simplicity, and ends in a clear vision where nothing has the power to disturb the heart.
This text imposes nothing, commands nothing. It describes, with an almost timeless accuracy, what happens when we stop scattering our minds in a thousand directions and return to what has always been there: the quiet presence within ourselves. It shows how illusions fall away, not because we fight them, but because we learn to look at them without attaching ourselves to them. How desires lose their power when their root is clarified. How fear disappears when we stop confusing life with the body that carries it.
From chapter to chapter, the reader witnesses a stripping away. External life becomes simpler. The heart stops chasing after things. The mind learns to no longer lose itself in its own fabrications. Then comes a moment when clarity appears, like a discreet, natural light that requires no effort. This is true vision: seeing things as they are, not as our emotions paint them.
Finally, when calmness has become a way of being and not an exercise, the Way reveals itself. It is not far away, it is not something else, it is not reserved for a select few. It is what we discover when everything that obstructed it falls away. Realisation, as described in the treatise, is not a spectacular ascent: it is a return, a calming, an obviousness. An intimacy with oneself and with the world.
The Zuòwàng Lùn reminds us that spiritual practice is not an escape from reality, but a gentler way of being at the heart of it. It teaches that peace is not a refuge, but a presence. That wisdom is not knowledge, but lightness. And that freedom is nothing more than the end of the contractions of the heart.
This text is ancient, but it speaks to the modern reader with surprising freshness. It offers not ready-made answers, but perspectives that open up inner space. It shows a path that everyone can take: the path from dispersion to clarity, from turmoil to stability, from the anxious self to the simplicity of being.
