Cheng Yi: “holding to one” and “not going off elsewhere”

In plain language (author’s translation): What is called reverence is the mind’s holding to one; what is called “one” is the mind’s not going off elsewhere.

This is Cheng Yi’s (Yichuan’s) best-known definition of reverence. The author’s framework renders it as “holding to one is called reverence; not going off elsewhere is called one”, an abridgement: in the original, each clause is introduced by “what is called reverence” and “what is called one”. For Cheng Yi, reverence belongs to the practice of “nurturing” (hányǎng): keeping the mind gathered and respectful in every everyday act, so that stray thoughts do not carry it away. The “one” here is not concentration on a particular task but an overall state of the mind; shì means “to go towards”, so “not going off” means the mind does not scatter in all directions.

Zhu Xi: “holding to one without going off” and “gathering in body and mind”

In plain language (author’s translation): Reverence means holding to one without going off elsewhere. Only gather in body and mind, make them orderly and unified, and do not let yourself go like that: that is reverence. Reverence does not mean putting all affairs aside; it means only giving oneself wholly to each matter as it comes, being careful and in awe, and not letting oneself drift.

The four-character formula “holding to one without going off” is Zhu Xi’s combination of Cheng Yi’s two clauses. The author’s draft quoted “only gather in body and mind, orderly and unified, not darkened by selfish desire”; this does not match the Zhuzi yulei, juan 12, whose second half reads “not letting oneself go like that: that is reverence”. “Not darkened by selfish desire” is not part of this passage, and the book has corrected it to the original; if the author wishes to convey the idea of “not being obscured by selfish desire”, that is a paraphrase of Zhu Xi’s thought as a whole and should be marked as such.

Zhu Xi’s second remark deserves particular attention: “reverence does not mean putting all affairs aside; it means only giving oneself wholly to each matter as it comes”. Reverence is not shutting the door and sitting still doing nothing, but attending fully to whatever matter one is engaged in. The remark can be read as aimed at the error of taking reverence to mean sitting blankly gathering the mind; it insists that cultivation be carried out in everyday affairs.

Xunzi: empty, unified and still

In plain language (author’s translation): How do people know the Way? By the mind. How does the mind know? By being empty, unified and still. The mind is never without things stored in it, yet there is what is called emptiness; the mind never fails to hold two things at once, yet there is what is called unity; the mind is never without movement, yet there is what is called stillness. … Not letting what is already stored harm what is about to be received is called emptiness. … Not letting knowledge of that one thing harm knowledge of this one is called unity. … Not letting dreams and turbulent thoughts disturb knowing is called stillness.

The author’s draft had “已所臧” for “所已臧”; the received text reads “不以所已臧害所将受谓之虚”, and this has been corrected (zāng is read as cáng, “to store”). In the second sentence the received text reads “心未尝不满也，然而有所谓一”; commentators generally take 满 (“full”) as an error for 两 (“two”), matching “同时兼知之，两也” later in the passage, and the translation follows that reading. Some quotations print “心未尝不两也，然而有所谓壹”, which is the emended wording, not the received text. The theme of “Dispelling Obsession” is the removal of obscuration: Xunzi held that knowledge is often blocked by one-sided views, and being “empty, unified and still” is the condition under which the mind reaches “great clarity” and can know the Way. The passage concerns knowledge of the Way, with implications for political judgement and the assessment of people; it is not about “concentration” in the everyday sense.

Zhuangzi: “his will undivided, he was concentrated like a spirit”

In plain language (author’s translation): Confucius was on his way to Chu; coming out of a wood, he saw a hunchback catching cicadas with a pole, as easily as if he were picking them up off the ground. Confucius said: “How skilful you are! Is there a way to it?” “There is a way. … When I stand, my body is like a tree stump; when I hold out my arm, it is like a withered branch. Vast as heaven and earth are, many as the ten thousand things are, I know only cicada wings. I do not turn, I do not lean; I would not trade a cicada’s wing for all the ten thousand things. How could I fail?” Confucius turned to his disciples and said: “His will undivided, he was concentrated like a spirit: is that not what this old hunchback is about!”

The Liezi, in its chapter “The Yellow Emperor”, tells the same story, and there the line reads “用志不分，乃疑于神” (杨伯峻 撰 1979). The character yí (疑) is usually read as níng (凝, “concentrated”), though some take it as nǐ (拟), “close to a spirit”. This book quotes the Zhuangzi in the received reading níng and notes the variant.

Reading together: resemblances

Read beside the earlier chapters, these texts offer several points of comparison.

First, “giving oneself wholly to each matter” and task switching. Zhu Xi says reverence is “only giving oneself wholly to each matter as it comes”. Chapter 3 found that frequent switching has reliable costs, and that unfinished matters leave attention residue. Both point to “one thing at a time in the mind”. But Zhu Xi’s concern was the rightness of the mind, not efficiency; he would not have linked “giving oneself wholly to each matter” to reaction times.

Second, “not letting what is already stored harm what is about to be received” and schemas. Chapter 2 showed that schemas in long-term memory can compress many items into a few chunks, the source of experts’ advantage; but when material does not fit the schemas, old schemas can also block understanding of the new. Xunzi’s “emptiness” warns of exactly that second face: existing knowledge should not prevent the reception of new knowledge.

Third, “not letting that one harm this one” and interference. Xunzi grants that the mind “never fails to hold two things at once” (reading 两 for the received 满; see above), but requires that one piece of knowledge not harm another. This can be set beside the interference-control function of executive attention (the conflict score of Chapter 1), but Xunzi is discussing mutual obscuration between objects of knowledge, not flanker interference at the level of perception.

Fourth, the cicada catcher and flow. The hunchback’s skill came from long practice (the part of the passage omitted above describes how he practised balancing pellets on the tip of his pole, adding one at a time), and in action he “knows only cicada wings”, undistracted by anything else. This resembles the absorption of high challenge with high skill described in Chapter 6. But the main concern of “Mastering Life” is nourishing life and “forgetting”; the story is about a state of concentrated, self-forgetting accord with nature, not about raising productivity.

Reading together: boundaries

These resemblances must not be read as “the ancients already discovered modern science”. Three boundaries need stating.

First, different purposes. Reverence was a discipline of moral cultivation, bound up with “preserving the principle of Heaven” and “investigating things to extend knowledge”, and aimed at becoming an upright person; emptiness, unity and stillness were the conditions for knowing the Way; the undivided will describes a skill and a spiritual state. Modern research on attention and motivation aims to describe and explain psychological mechanisms. Treating reverence as a “method for improving concentration” demotes a discipline of self-cultivation to an efficiency tool and departs from what Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi meant.

Second, different kinds of statement. The classical texts are normative (how one ought to cultivate oneself); modern research is descriptive and empirical (what actually happens and why). “Holding to one” and “emptiness and unity” can be suggestive, but they are not evidence.

Third, interpretation has a tradition. The readings here are the author’s; commentators often differ, as the variant níng/yí shows.

Chapter summary

Cheng Yi defined reverence as “holding to one” and “not going off elsewhere”, and “holding to one without going off” is Zhu Xi’s summary; Zhu Xi also described reverence as “gathering in body and mind, orderly and unified, not letting oneself go”, and as “giving oneself wholly to each matter as it comes” rather than putting all affairs aside. The author’s quotation “not darkened by selfish desire” is not the text of the Zhuzi yulei, juan 12, and has been corrected. The Xunzi’s “empty, unified and still” concerns the conditions for knowing the Way, and the received text reads “所已臧”; the Zhuangzi’s cicada-catcher reads “乃凝于神”, the Liezi “乃疑于神”. These texts can be compared with task switching, schemas, interference and flow, but reverence was moral cultivation, not attention training, and normative teaching and empirical research cannot stand in for each other. The next chapter offers a checklist and a trial protocol.