Scripture study.

Reading as a practice, not as research

Sitting without reading tends to drift. Reading without sitting stays theoretical. So study here is contemplative rather than academic: a short passage, read slowly, held against what the body has just been doing, and returned to over months rather than finished in an evening.

Nobody is examined and nobody needs Chinese. Passages are given in English with the original alongside, so that anyone who wants to look at the characters can, and anyone who does not is not excluded.

The touchstone: Neiye 內業

"Inward Training", also written Nei-yeh — one of the earliest Daoist cultivation manuals, and the root of the clarity-and-stillness practice we work from. Two of its lines run through the whole of what we do:

能正能靜，然後能定 Only when one is aligned and still can one become settled.

That is not a poetic flourish; it is the order of the curriculum. Alignment, then stillness, then settling. Attempting the third without the first two is the commonest way to waste years.

The working set

We work from Handbooks for Daoist Practice 修道手冊, with the Dàodé jīng 道德經 — the Tao Te Ching, in the older spelling — and the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子, sometimes written Zhuangzi or Chuang Tzu, assumed alongside, and later contemplative and alchemical literature brought in as it becomes relevant to what is being practised.

Translation as part of the study

Ongoing translation work on Mǐn Yīdé 閔一得 and the Gu Shuyinlou Cangshu 古書隱樓藏書 feeds directly into the sessions. A term that will not translate cleanly is usually pointing at something the practice has not yet reached — which makes translation a diagnostic as well as a service to the text. See study and texts.

Holding claims carefully

Traditional material contains claims that are difficult to verify. We keep four things apart: what is tradition, what is documented history, what is direct experience, and what remains uncertain. Saying "this is what the tradition says" is a complete and respectable answer.