'quiet sitting', from Sanskrit pratisaṃlīna) refers to the Neo-Confucian meditation practice advocated by Zhu Xi and Wang Yang-ming.
Jing zuo can also be described as a form of spiritual self-cultivation that helps a person achieve a more fulfilling life ("6-Great Traditions").
The collocation soon acquired more specific meanings, referring to methods of quiet sitting that were practiced for medical or spiritual purposes.
In modern Western parlance, it often refers specifically to Neo-Confucian forms of meditation, but it is also used for other religious and non-religious practices.
At this time Buddhism and Daoism had begun to expand into China and started to influence some aspects of Chinese culture.
There is a fundamental difference between Neo-Confucian and Buddhist or Daoist meditation, in respect to Jing zuo (quiet sitting).
Furthermore, "Neo-Confucian scholars take quiet sitting (Jing zuo) to be only a way to help understand one's gain in self-cultivation and they do not see it as a means to isolate oneself from human affairs.
"According to this understanding, spiritual meditation is like a circular journey of tranquility and activity, or of preserving the mind and investigating the principle, or of knowledge and action."
For Zhu Xi, Jing zuo "does not mean to 'sit still like a blockhead, with the ear hearing nothing, the eye seeing nothing, and the mind thinking of nothing.
It is said that those who practice Jing zuo can "perceive the pristine ethical basis of human nature" and also be able to "grasp the essential emptiness of everything."
It allows Confucians to practice veneration for the basic human nature and it allows them to "nourish the seeds of moral virtue" (Berthrong 1998).
They can clear and settle the heart-mind completely and are then able to assess their knowledge in an open-minded and unbiased manner (Wilson 1991): "The Master said, 'Hui is capable of occupying his whole mind for three months on end with no thought but that of Goodness.
The others can do so, some for a day, some even for a month, but that is all.`` (Analects 6.5) Jing zuo is said to be the "complement to prayer" (Wilson 1991) because "While prayer directs the heart to Ultimate Reality as a transcendent object, meditation cleanses the heart of all finite objects which obscure Reality so that its ultimate point may be found within."
Jing zuo is understood to complement Zhu Xi's dictum to "investigate things" (to penetrate the principle (li) of the cosmos): Choose what is good and firmly hold onto it.
Confucius himself advised against spending too much time sitting quietly and reflecting, stressing the fact that Confucians should find a balance in their lives where they would study and reflect upon what one studies equally (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d.): "'He who learns but does not think is lost.
Qigong "is a process of training the mind, body, and spirit with the aim of guiding ones thoughts so that they can prepare for further development.
This form of Confucian meditation is "important because it teaches the practitioner many things to do with one's self: self-awareness, self-enhancement, self-discipline, and self-actualization as well as learning how to find the truth and create social change".
The "mental processes aim to rejuvenate internal virtue that leads to the insight of real self-awareness and universal energy interconnection".