| 英文摘要 |
Qi (氣) is a term broadly used in Chinese and Eastern Asian societies to indicate a kind of experience, characteristic, and/or phenomena related to bodies, be it of Nature or human. Neither modern scientific theories from biology and physiology nor traditional Chinese discourses of qi (氣論), however, can provide much comprehensive understanding of the qi experienced in human body. Withdrawing from what has already been said in traditional discourses and returning to the process of experiential unfolding would be the primary task to understand qi. The present study was thus aimed at disclosing the bodily experience of qi. To avoid hackneyed assertions, three novices were invited to talk about their experience of practicing qi. A phenomenological method of analysis was applied to the descriptions of qi experience and a general structure was thus obtained. There are 8 essential themes: (1) qi as postulated and anticipated in relating to bodily feelings, (2) from linguistic comprehension to embodiment via visualizing and mimicking as the path to obtain the experiential state of qi, (3) spontaneous sensational upraising rendering both the sense of autonomy of the body and the experience of a hovering conscious agent attending to the body, (4) the postulated qi embodied and the emergence of intracorporeal space, (5) the surrounding sensory inputs and the qi-body process intertwined, (6) experiencing the transformation of the surrounding space as a shift of state, (7) relinking the qi-body process into volitional operation, and (8) the intercorporeal link experienced in the practice of qi as a way of taking care of others. Put the 8 themes into an integrative framework, Qi is thus presented as the experience of bodily manifestation in perceiving the changing space. That is to say, unlike ordinary perception that takes objects in space as the perceived, qi as a perceiving mode is that to which space is the perceived and in which come the experiential changes in bodily sensation. The significance of this finding was then put in dialogue with both Zhuangzi’s discourse of qi and the modes of spatial perception in modern psychology in order to elaborate its significance as well as build the bridge between the traditional qi discourse and modern paradigm in study human experiences. In Zhuangzi, one can find that the experience of qi is portrayed as a mode of perceiving:“If you merge all your intentions into a singularity, you will come to hear with the mind rather than with the ears. Further, you will come to hear with qi rather than with the mind. For the ears are halted at what they hear. The mind is halted at whatever verifies its preconceptions. But qi is an emptiness, a waiting for the presence of beings. The Tao (道) alone is what gathers in this emptiness. And it is this emptiness that is the fasting of the mind (心齋)”(Zhuangzi, The human world). According to this paragraph, the perceiving mode of qi is for one to be empty for receiving. That is,“to hear with qi”indicates the practice of being empty, the practice of“the fasting of the mind”. The experience of being empty thus can be described as the experience of having containing space. Furthermore, the perceived in the perceiving mode of qi is Tao (道)。That is to say, when qi experience manifests itself as a mode of perceiving, Tao as the perceived shows in itself the character of containing space for all things.“It is the Tao that overspreads and sustains all things”(Zhuangzi, Heaven and Earth). Tao is, however, not a substantial thing but that which upholds things in their own manifestation. It, then, coincides with what was found in this study of the experience of qi, i.e., the experience of perceiving the changing nature of space. In addition, the phenomena of hovering conscious agent that witnesses the bodily manifestation in qi experience is in accordance with what is described as wandering (遊), an altered state of consciousness that witnesses freely, in Zhuangzi. In this view, what is installed at the experience of qi is the perceiver“I”in the state of wandering and the qi-stated body, and the existence of the perceived space. Regarding the modern psychological science, the understanding of qi as a mode of spatial perception can provide new perspective to that in cognitive and neuro psychology. In the researches on spatial perception, there are two ways for human beings to live in space. One is called egocentric frame of reference, indicating the preceptor as the center in getting the spatial relations with surrounding objects and obtaining body-centric space. The other is allocentric frame of reference, taking a detached point of view, e.g., bird’s eye view, to draw the spatial position of oneself and obtaining world- or body-centric space. These understandings show that space in human experience is constructed by perception. Furthermore, these two modes of spatial perception correspond with two ways of building up the sense of one’own body, i.e., sensorimotor body schema and configurally coded body image. The body-centric space/ body schema and the world-centric space/ body image can be impaired in either one, according to the study on deafferented patients. With this understanding, the experience of qi can be viewed as a non-pathological moment of the separation of the two modes of spatial perception, and thus a moment of the separation of the cooperation of body image and body schema in sensing one’s own body. The qi experience thus involves (1) the conscious agent with allocentric perspective turns toward the body and takes the latter into related spatial aspects; this is the phenomena of the hovering conscious agent. And (2) the spontaneous sensational upraising that separates the volitional consciousness and the bodily process. This study thus demonstrates that the phenomenological approach to the phenomena of qi can be a bridge that brings traditional discourse of qi and modern psychological science together into a dialogue on the ground of human experience. |
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