The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

by Karen Armstrong

Chinese meditation was based on the management of qi, a word that is difficult to translate. Qi was the raw material of life, its basic energy, and its primal spirit. It animated all beings and gave everything its distinctive shape and form. The dynamic, ceaselessly active substructure of reality, qi was not unlike the atoms of Democritus, except that it was more mystical. Under the guidance of the Way, the ultimate controlling force, it periodically accumulated in various combinations to form a rock, a plant, or a human being. But none of these creations was permanent. Eventually the qi would disperse: the person or plant would die, and the rock would disintegrate. But the qi was still alive; it would continue to roil in the cauldron of ceaseless change, and would eventually regroup and take on a different shape. Everything in the universe, therefore, shared the same life, albeit in different degrees of intensity.