Self-cultivation
Although self-cultivation may be practiced and implemented as a form of cognitive therapy in psychotherapy, it goes beyond healing and self-help to also encompass self-development, self-improvement and self realisation.
It is associated with attempts to go beyond and understand normal states of being, enhancing and polishing one's capacities and developing or uncovering innate human potential.
[2] Self-cultivation also alludes to philosophical models in Mohism, Confucianism, Taoism and other Chinese philosophies, as well as in Epicureanism, and is an essential component of well-established East-Asian ethical values.
Self-cultivation is a process that cultivates one's mind and body in an attempt to transcend ordinary habitual states of being, enhancing a person's coordination and integration of congruent thoughts, beliefs and actions.
Taoism interprets the fortune or misfortune in one's life in terms of one's destiny (命), which is determined by the person's birth date and time.
By avoiding the interference of personal desires and by relating everything to the system of the opposing elements of yin and yang, the cosmology of Taoism aims to keep individuals and everything in the harmonious balance.
The explanation of self-cultivation in Taoism also corresponds to the equilibrium of the Five Transformative Phases (五行 Wu Xing): metal (金), wood (木), water (水), fire (火), and earth (土).
Self-cultivation in Chinese is an abbreviation of "xiū-xīn yǎng-xìng" (修心养性), which literally translates to "rectifying one’s mind and nurturing one’s character (in particular through art, music and philosophy)".
The cohering key concept is 'intellectual intuition', which is explained as a direct insight and cognition of present knowledge of reality, with no inference of bias toward discernment or logical reasoning.
Confucius takes something of a blank slate perspective: "all human beings are alike at birth" (Analects 17.2), but eventually "the profound person understands what is moral.
The following passages from the Analects point out the pathway towards self-cultivation that Confucius taught, with the ultimate goal of becoming the jūnzǐ:"The Master's Way is nothing but other-regard and self-reflection.
""From the age of fifteen on, I have been intent upon learning; from thirty on, I have established myself; from forty on, I have not been confused; from fifty on, I have known the mandate of Heaven; from sixty on, my ear has been attuned; from seventy on, I have followed my heart's desire without transgressing what is right.
To help students and the younger generation understand the meaning of being a person, philosophers (mostly scholars) tried to explain their definitions of self with various theoretical approaches.
Young people were taught that it was shameful to become a "petty person" (小人, xiǎo rén), as that was the exact opposite to "sage" (圣人, shèngrén).
However, as both Confucian and Daoist philosophers adopted the term shèngrén, there has been divergence that led to differences in educational concepts and practices.
Nevertheless, the East Asian descendants and followers of Confucius still consider an ideal human being essential for their life-time education, with their cultural heritage deeply influenced by radical Confucian values.
Hegel (1770–1831) established a view of self-consciousness in which, by observation, our subject-object consciousness stimulates our rationale and reasoning, which then guides human behaviour.
Similar to Morita therapy, naikan requires subordination to a carefully structured period of "retreat" that is compassionately supervised by the practitioner.
Contrary to Morita, naikan is shorter (seven days) and utilizes long, regulated periods of daily meditation in which introspection is directed toward the resolution of contemporary conflicts and problems.
"In contrast to Western psychoanalytic psychotherapy, both naikan and Morita tend to keep transference issues simplified and positive, while resistance is dealt with procedurally rather than interpretively.
The first field of practice shares semantic roots with and is related to the Hellenistic philosophical concept of "epimeleia heauton" (self-care), which involves methods of self-cultivation.
"I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my own activity"(HL 2:1) "It follows therefore that he must conceive eternal recurrence among other things as a practice that stimulates self-cultivation.
