What is the Conserving the Spiritin Taoism? 什么是啬神

It means being frugal. Applied to governing a state, it stands for thrift—strengthening the fundamental and economizing on expenditure; applied to nurturing life, it means conserving essence, treasuring it and not letting it leak away.

Dao De Jing states: "There is no better way to govern people and serve Heaven than to be frugal." It regards "frugality" as an important principle for both nurturing life and governing a state. Taoism absorbed this theory from Laozi. Heshang Gong’s Commentary on Laozi notes: "Frugality means cherishing. Those who cultivate their bodies should cherish their essence and qi and not let them indulge freely." To cherish essence and qi and prevent their dissipation is the way of "frugality".

What is the Conserving the Spiritin Taoism?

Tao Hongjing, in Records of Nurturing Nature and Extending Life, quotes Zhang Zhan’s Preface to the Collection of Nurturing Life: "The essential principles of nurturing life are three: first, cherishing the spirit; second, treasuring qi; third, nourishing the physical form." "Among all beings endowed with qi and spirit, humans alone are the most noble. What humans value most is life itself. Life is the foundation of the spirit, and the physical form is the vessel of the spirit. Overusing the spirit leads to its exhaustion; overstraining the body results in its demise." The spirit holds a dominant position in human life, so cherishing the spirit must take the foremost place. "Ordinary people cannot be free of desires, nor can they live without worldly affairs. Yet they should calm their minds, reduce idle thoughts, and practice tranquil contemplation, first abandoning things that disturb the spirit and violate one’s innate nature—this is one method of cherishing the spirit." The way of cherishing the spirit is also highly emphasized in Internal Alchemy.

Chen Jingyuan, in Collected Subtleties of the Dao De Jing from the Scripture Chamber, quotes Du Guangting: "A superior cultivator of the Dao cherishes the spirit to calm the body, accumulates qi to preserve complete harmony, fortifies the inner three passes and dispels all worries. All the spirits obey and follow in unison, with endless transformations and a long life span. They anchor their foundation in the realm of primordial chaos and root themselves deeply in the land of nothingness." This means that those who cultivate the Dao must nourish their essence, qi and spirit, and cast away desires and miscellaneous thoughts, so that the body's functions can operate normally and the goal of living a long and immortal life can be achieved.