Riyong Miao Jing: Classics for Everyday
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The classic we are going to discuss is the ‘Riyong Miao Jing’, whose full title is: Taishang Laojun Nei Riyong Miaojing, ‘The Classic of Wonders for the Daily Use of the Most High Lord Lao (Lao Zi)’.
This text belongs to that rare category of texts that do not seek to describe the Way conceptually, but to make it immediately perceptible in everyday life. It presents neither complex metaphysics, nor doctrinal speculation, nor elaborate rituals; it speaks directly to the heart of human experience, to that intimate space where desires are born, emotions are formed, perception is coloured, and the clarity of shén is lost or found. Its apparent brevity conceals exceptional depth, for each sentence condenses a subtle understanding of the human mind, its drifts and its possibilities for transformation.
Through simple and unadorned language, the text offers a teaching of radical precision: inner turmoil does not come from the world, but from our own movement of pursuit. External things appear and disappear, sounds come and go, forms pass through our field of vision, but it is only when the heart pursues them that emotion, desire, distraction and suffering arise. This manual teaches that the origin of agitation lies neither in objects nor in situations, but in the tiny movement by which the mind leaves its centre to project itself towards what attracts or repels it.
The text is addressed to a reader who seeks not to accumulate knowledge, but to rediscover the simplicity of presence. It shows them that shén, the clear mind, has never ceased to be present; it is only veiled by the turmoil of the heart. When this turmoil calms down, clarity appears of its own accord, without constraint, without effort, like a mirror regaining its natural ability to reflect what is. The Way, from this perspective, is not something to be conquered, but something to be allowed to emerge by ceasing to disturb what is already there.
The intention of this presentation is to reveal the inner structure of this manual, to unfold its living logic, and to make perceptible the deep coherence that connects its various passages. The text is not a series of independent pieces of advice, but a precise description of a process of reduction, lightening, and return. It accompanies the reader in the movement from emotional confusion to the clarity of shén, from desire to tranquillity, from agitation to harmony with the Dao. It describes a journey in which each stage depends on the previous one and prepares for the next, until the body, heart and mind come together in a stability that supports the continuity of inner life.
Understanding this manual is not just about grasping its ideas, but savouring its subtle logic. It means recognising in its teaching a method of transformation that does not involve effort or construction, but rather the dissolution of what disperses. The mind does not become clear: it reveals itself when desire is silenced. Peace is not achieved: it appears when agitation ceases. The Dao is not acquired: it resides naturally when nothing disturbs the shén.
The teaching begins with a distinction that most human beings are unaware of: what they take to be their mind is in reality only the agitated surface of their emotions. What we spontaneously attain are always the movements of qíng, those emotional impulses that arise in response to the world, change from moment to moment, are coloured by circumstances and draw the individual into the flow of reactions. What we cannot reach, until our practice has matured, is shén, that inner clarity that is not clouded, not coloured, and does not depend on any external circumstances.The text states bluntly that ordinary humans live in a space limited to their emotions. They confuse the momentary vibration of their desires, fears, sudden enthusiasms, or disappointments with consciousness itself. From this confusion arises an endless cycle: with each perception comes an emotion, with each emotion comes a desire, and each desire reinforces the veil that obscures the light of shen. Human beings believe they know their minds because they feel intensely the movements that pass through them; in truth, they know only the reactions of their sensitivity, never the background that receives them.
It is this fundamental misunderstanding that the sages seek first to dispel. Qíng is not shén; it is a deviation from it when it projects itself towards objects. Emotion arises at the exact moment when the clarity of shén fixes itself on something, when the natural light leaves its repose to attach itself to a form, a sound, a thought, a hope, an apprehension. As soon as this fixation occurs, shén takes a direction, and from this directional movement emotion arises. The text then says that emotion is the “desire of shén”: not that shén actually desires anything, but that when it turns towards an object, an impulse appears, a movement of grasping or rejecting, and this movement is what we call emotion.
The foundation of all internal practice is to recognise this subtle mechanism. As long as emotional movements seem natural and inevitable, access to shen remains closed. As long as we believe that the excitement of thought, the rising of joy or the tightening of anxiety are expressions of our true nature, the Way remains hidden. Practice begins the moment we see that these movements are not the mind, but what obscures the mind. It progresses when we discover that shén remains undisturbed, even when everything within us seems to be in turmoil. It matures when we begin to feel the silent presence that remains behind the emotional impulses.
This first chapter thus establishes a principle that no technique can replace: the distinction between the luminous background and the waves that pass through it. Shen is tranquil, spacious, stable, luminous; emotion is mobile, contracted, directed. Shen has no direction; emotion is always directed. Shen pursues nothing; emotion always pursues something. Shen has always been clear; emotion appears and disappears constantly.
Internal Taoist practice begins precisely when this distinction becomes alive. Then the practitioner ceases to be hypnotised by their reactions and opens up to what sees them. They cease to be guided by their desires and discover what remains when they calm down. They cease to take the movements for the source, and begin to feel the source behind the movements. This understanding is not intellectual: it settles in the body, it transforms the breath, it broadens perception, it calms the chest, it gathers presence.
Recognising the difference between shén and emotions is to enter the Way. No longer confusing the clear with the turbulent is to lay the first stone of the return to the origin. The text thus inaugurates the entire manual: the true mind is not what is agitated, but what remains. Those who see this truly begin to practise.
Once the confusion between shén and emotions has been brought to light, the text immediately sets out what constitutes the sole focus of the entire practice: the reduction of desire. The entire manual is based on this pivot. At this stage, there are no subtle exercises, visualisations or sophisticated technical methods. There is only this simple truth: it is desire that troubles the heart, and it is the troubled heart that prevents the clarity of shén from appearing.
Desire is not limited to great passions or obvious attachments; it is the tension that creeps into every directed thought, every impulse to grasp, every internal movement that seeks to obtain, repel or improve something. It is that small, instantaneous tightening that causes the mind to turn to an object even before it is aware of it. As long as this movement exists, the heart-mind has no rest. As long as it has no rest, shen cannot reveal itself.
The text states that nothing precedes the reduction of desire in daily practice. This means that any emotional disturbance, any relaxation of inner calm, any mental agitation, even the slightest, has its root in a movement of greed, aversion or expectation. The heart-mind can only settle when this movement ceases. When desire diminishes, there is no manufactured calm, constructed by the will, but a soothing that occurs of its own accord. The heart stops racing, like an animal that, once the call of the world is withdrawn, lies down in the dust and finally breathes at its own pace.
The tranquillity of the heart is therefore not a state that is imposed, but a state that reveals itself when the causes of agitation are removed. The text emphasises that when the heart calms down, the shén becomes clear. This clarity is not an extraordinary phenomenon: it is the very nature of the shén, but it cannot be perceived as long as it is covered by internal turmoil. Calmness is what allows the light of the mind to appear, not because it was absent, but because agitation simply prevented it from being seen.
In the internal tradition, reducing desire is equivalent to releasing the tension that pulls the shen out of its centre. When this tension disappears, the shen no longer projects itself towards objects, and consciousness ceases to scatter. Breathing deepens, the organs cease to vibrate in response to stimuli, the chest opens, the abdomen softens, and the body ceases to participate in the movement of pursuit. The resulting calm is not an absence, but a denser, more integrated, more complete presence.
The text then presents the natural consequence of this calming: a clear shén reveals the Dao. This is not a sudden enlightenment, but a gradual adjustment where life begins to unfold without the distortion caused by desires. It is not a state in which one ‘understands’ the Dao, but a state in which one ceases to oppose it. When nothing disturbs the shén, situations become clear on their own, decisions are made without internal conflict, and existence regains its natural axis.
From this clarity flows what the text calls Virtue, which should be understood not as morality, but as the rightness of being, inner stability, the cohesion of all the forces that make up the person. Virtue is not added to the practitioner: it reveals itself when agitation has ceased to disunite its aspects. When this cohesion appears, the body itself calms down and realigns itself; life becomes more stable, longer, less exposed to unnecessary energy losses, and the whole being is strengthened.
Thus, the reduction of desire is not asceticism, nor a renunciation of the world, but a method for rediscovering the true nature of the heart-mind. It is not a constraint, but a return. The text shows that the entire Way unfolds from this single point: it is by diminishing what draws the mind outward that the heart regains its rest, and it is by regaining this rest that the clarity of shén can finally shine without being disturbed. This chapter thus establishes the guiding principle of the entire manual: nothing has more transformative power than the abandonment of futile pursuits, for it is only in this abandonment that the being can find itself.
When the heart-mind truly calms down and the light of shén regains its natural clarity, the resulting effects are not extraordinary phenomena arising from outside, but spontaneous manifestations of the restored internal order. The text teaches that when shén is clear, the Dao is born. This does not mean that the Dao appears when it was absent; the Dao has never ceased to be present. What happens is that as the inner disturbance ceases to obscure perception, the being regains deep harmony with that which sustains and permeates all things.
The Dao is not a concept to be grasped, nor a force to be invoked; it is the evidence that manifests itself when the mind is no longer agitated. In this newfound clarity, things show themselves in their natural rightness. Internal conflicts dissolve, decisions align themselves, and existence ceases to be a struggle against what is. The Dao is recognised by the simplicity it instils: thought becomes less cluttered, action less hesitant, and life less fragmented. Nothing is added to the individual; something opens up, something is revealed, something that has always been there.
From this coincidence with the Dao arises what the text calls De, ‘Virtue’, a term that must be understood in its original sense: the inherent power of being, its internal cohesion, its natural ability to act without contradiction. Virtue is the quality of being aligned with oneself, not through moral decision, but through the absence of dispersion. When the Dao is felt in the clear mind, each capacity finds its rightful place, each force connects with the others, and energy ceases to flee into futile pursuits. Virtue settles in the being as stability, continuity, tranquillity that expects nothing and lacks nothing.
When this inner stability takes hold, it naturally descends into the body. The text then says that when Virtue remains, the body is at peace. This peace of the body is not only the absence of muscular tension; it is a profound reorganisation in which the organs cease to vibrate under the influence of emotions, where breathing settles into its natural depth, where the internal systems regain their own rhythm, uninfluenced by the fluctuations of the outside world. A body at peace is a body that no longer wastes its strength, that is no longer pulled in all directions by the contradictory impulses of a troubled heart. It is a body that no longer interferes with the mind, but supports it.
In this state of physical and mental calm, life itself is prolonged, not only in terms of years, but above all in the quality of its continuity. The text teaches that when the body is at peace, longevity becomes possible. This longevity should be understood in two ways: a longer life because energy expenditure is reduced, but also a continuity of presence, an inner duration, a feeling of being less fragmented, less scattered, less subject to the ruptures generated by unstable desires and emotions. This longevity is the expression of an existence where every moment is carried by the same clarity, where shén is no longer lost in the fluctuations of the world.
This chapter shows that the fruits of practice are not acquisitions, but returns. Nothing is added to the practitioner; everything is realigned. The Dao is not “obtained”, Virtue is not acquired, peace of body is not manufactured: all this appears when the causes of confusion disappear. The Way is therefore not an effort that strives for a result, but a process of lightening where the being gradually regains its natural centre. Thus, the clarity of shén opens the door to the Dao, the Dao stabilises Virtue, Virtue calms the body, and the calmed body prolongs life. The chapter reveals the subtle dynamic by which internal harmonisation radiates into all dimensions of existence.
The Taishang Laojun Nei Riyong Miaojing unfolds as a practice of great simplicity and precision. Nothing is superfluous, nothing is intellectual ornamentation. The text traces the Way with the clarity of a thread stretched between two poles: on one side, emotional agitation, pursuit, dispersion; on the other, the tranquillity of shén, the presence of the Dao, the continuity of inner life. Between these two poles, the entirety of human practice unfolds.
The beginning of the manual names the original confusion: taking emotions for the mind, allowing oneself to be guided by impulses that arise constantly, believing that reactions are our true nature. This confusion causes a fragmented inner world, obscured by reactivity, unable to perceive the shen behind the waves that cover it. The entire internal tradition begins when this confusion is seen and recognised, for it is only by distinguishing the background from what passes through it that the Way can open up.
Based on this recognition, the text proposes only one principle, but it proposes it as a single root: reducing desire. Everything that disturbs the being comes from desire, not the manifest desire of great passions, but the subtle desire that creeps into the gaze, the listening, the speech and the thought. This desire is a tiny but constant tension that pulls the shén out of its rest. Reducing desire does not mean depriving oneself, but giving up the pursuit. This renunciation is not asceticism, but a relaxation, a return to an uncontracted state of mind.
When this movement ceases, the heart calms itself. No effort is required, for tranquillity is not a state that the will can produce: it is the natural expression of the mind when it is no longer torn from itself. In this repose, the light of shén appears, not as a phenomenon, but as the living presence that sustains all experience. This clarity is the condition for the Dao to manifest itself in existence, not as an idea, but as a rightness, a simplicity, an absence of inner conflict.
From this encounter between clear shen and the Dao arises the deep cohesion of being, what the text calls De, Virtue, that is, the silent stability that unites all dimensions of the person. Virtue is not a reward, but the form that existence takes when it is no longer torn by contradictory pursuits. It descends into the body and instils a real peace, a structural relaxation that transforms breathing, organs and perceptions. The body then becomes an ally, a support for presence, a stable vessel for shén.
In this state of coherence, life expands and deepens. The longevity evoked by the text is not only biological duration, but inner continuity, the ability to remain oneself from one moment to the next without losing oneself in dispersion. It is a longevity of clarity, an endurance of presence, a way of being where each moment is carried by the same luminous background.
Thus, the entire manual describes the Way as a movement of return: the return of shén to its clarity, the return of the heart to its peace, the return of the body to its unity, the return of being to its source. This return requires neither complicated techniques nor philosophical speculation. It requires recognising what troubles the mind, letting go of pursuit, abandoning attachments and returning to what is already there.
The wisdom of this text lies in the fact that it promises nothing but reveals everything: clarity is already present, the Dao is already accessible, stability is already possible. All that is needed is for dispersion to cease for order to reveal itself. The entire manual tirelessly reminds us that the Way is not acquired, but is revealed as soon as the being encounters its own silence. In this silence, shén rests, the Dao resides, and life continues according to its own nature.
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