Names and variants
- Simplified
- 精气神
- Traditional
- 精氣神
- Other names
- Jing Qi Shen, Jing, Qi, Shen, essence, qi and spirit
- Pinyin
- Jīng qì shén
- English
- Jing, Qi and Shen
Overview
Jing concerns the refined basis and nourishment of life; qi concerns the processes that sustain life in the person and connect it with the wider cosmos; shen concerns awareness and the ordering of living activity. Reading them together explains their relationship, while the individual entries clarify the wider range of each term.
Internal-alchemical accounts distinguish primordial jing, qi and shen from forms associated with bodily generation, breathing and ordinary thought. The same word can therefore carry different emphases within a single discussion. A reference to qi is not automatically a reference only to inhaled air, just as shen is not limited to a passing thought.
Neidan treats the three as related resources within its account of transformation and return to an original condition. Its descriptions of mutual support and unity explain a religious model of cultivation. They are not laboratory measurements or a guarantee of longevity, and the conceptual relationship can be studied without turning it into a set of bodily instructions.
References
- [1]Dictionary of Daoism