Xing (性): The Inborn Nature
Xing 性 — the nature a being is born with: what the Daoist sources do with the term, and its career as the 'nature' half of the nature-and-life pair (xingming).
Direct answer: Xing (性) is the nature a thing is born with — what it is by itself, before cultivation adds or society imposes. In the Zhuangzi it anchors the argument that the inborn is not a defect to be corrected: the duck’s short legs and the crane’s long ones are both whole as they are. In later internal alchemy, xing becomes one half of the central pair xingming (性命, “nature and life”) — the inside of the person (mind, nature) paired with the outside (body, vitality), both to be cultivated together.
What the sources say
- The Zhuangzi’s defense of the inborn: chapter 8’s webbed-toes argument is a defense of 性 — the inborn constitution is not a flaw to be surgically corrected; what must be corrected is the imposition on it.
- The pair xingming: in Quanzhen and later alchemical usage, 性 (nature) is the mind’s inborn character and 命 (life/vitality) is the body’s allotted force — and the tradition’s characteristic claim is that the two are cultivated together (xingming shuangxiu, “joint cultivation of nature and life”), not one at the expense of the other.
The distinction that matters
- Xing vs. de: de is the nature’s power and character in action — what the inborn nature becomes as it expresses itself. Xing is the seed; de is what the seed does. The two are close enough that commentaries often gloss each by the other.
- Xing vs. ziran: ziran (“so-of-itself”) is the spontaneity of the inborn nature; xing is the nature itself. A thing’s xing acts ziran — the terms are the noun and the adverb of the same claim.
The practice connection
In sitting practice, xing enters through the tradition’s claim that stillness lets the inborn nature surface — the imposed layers settle, and what remains is what was always there. The zuowang page’s “forgetting” is, in this vocabulary, the removal of what was imposed on xing.
The companion half of the pair is ming.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 8 (Pianmu): 'what is long is not too long; what is short is not too short' — the webbed-toes chapter's defense of the inborn against the imposed (性 argument)
- The Zhuangzi's usage of 性 for the inborn nature of things, developed by Guo Xiang's commentary, as summarized on the ziran page