Zuochi
Glossary: zuochi 坐驰, 'sitting while galloping' — the Zhuangzi's named failure state of meditation: the body sits, the mind races. The negative twin of zuowang.
Zuochi (坐驰, zuòchí) — “sitting while galloping”: the Zhuangzi’s named failure state of meditation. The body is seated; the mind runs. The term appears once, at the climax of the heart-fasting dialogue (ch. 4), as the negative of everything the passage has built: after “the empty room gives birth to brightness” and “auspicious things stop in the stopping,” the text names the opposite — if it does not keep stopping (夫且不止), that is zuochi, the seated gallop.
Usage note: zuochi is the perfect negative twin of zuowang (sitting in forgetting): same seat, opposite direction — one drops the mind’s traffic, the other is nothing but the traffic, wearing the posture of stillness. The tradition’s word for the gap this site documents in the drowsiness-vs-stillness and wandering-mind pages: the form of sitting is not the fact of it. This site renders it “sitting while galloping,” keeping the horse-image (驰) visible, because the classical term diagnoses precisely what modern practitioners report: the body still, the mind at full run.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 4 (Renjianshi), closing of the heart-fasting dialogue: 'gaze at that which is empty — in the empty room, brightness is born; auspicious things stop in the stopping. If it does not keep stopping, this is called zuochi' (瞻彼阕者，虚室生白，吉祥止止。夫且不止，是之谓坐驰)