ExerciseAttested · Zhuangzi
The fasting of the heart-mind (xinzhai)
Drawn from the Zhuangzi, the is not abstaining from food but lightening the inner self: loosening the grip of fixed judgments, preferences and calculations until you become as available as a mirror. Far from blanking the mind by force, the point is to stop filtering everything in advance so as to respond more aptly to what comes. Today this exercise helps you meet a situation, a person, or a decision without bending it straightaway to what you expected.
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- Attention and diversion · Recollection
- Interiority · The examined life
Source: Zhuangzi
Appears in
- Reclaiming attention — Faced with devices designed to capture it, can we really reclaim our attention by working at it, withdrawing, fasting from the feed, returning to the present, or do such techniques only paper over a trouble far larger than us?