Taiping Jing: Shouyi and the Exit Conditions (Eastern Han)
The Taiping Jing 太平经 records the earliest sustained shouyi (guarding the One) teaching, including the instruction to stop sitting when restless.
Event: The Taiping Jing (Scripture of Great Peace), compiled in the Eastern Han, transmits the earliest sustained teaching on shouyi — guarding the One — defined as keeping jing, qi, and shen united within. Its practical passages include explicit exit conditions: if agitation arises during practice, leave the room rather than force the sitting.
Evidence class: received scripture with layered compositional history; Han material at the core (scholarly consensus), later accretions possible.
Why it matters here: this is the oldest documented account of a seated, non-forcing contemplative discipline with safety language built in — the ancestor of the later zuowang manuals and the anchor of this site’s shouyi and restlessness pages.
Sources
- Taiping Jing (received recension, Ming Daozang); e.g., 'Baoyi' and room-practice passages