Living glossary

Keep the language precise enough to remain useful.

Traditional terms lose meaning when they are made exotic—and when they are flattened into modern scientific claims. This glossary offers a first orientation, then points back to context.

Use this page beside the books to understand how each term functions in context. Definitions give you a working orientation and note where different lineages may explain a term differently.

See the two books →

01CultivationReading orientation: Disciplined inner practice and transformation: a sustained way of training attention, conduct, body, and mind rather than collecting isolated techniques.
The word carries different meanings across Chinese and Buddhist traditions. Read it in context rather than treating it as a single scientific category.
02QiREBIRTH glossary: A traditional Chinese term used in REBIRTH for the vital processes worked with in embodied practice.
Qi is retained in pinyin. It is not presented here as a biomedical measurement or a claim of scientifically verified energy.
03JingChinese cultivation vocabulary: Often translated as essence. In the staged vocabulary of the first book, jing is named in the movement from foundational bodily life toward qi.
Translations are approximate; the term belongs to a traditional practice framework.
04ShenChinese cultivation vocabulary: Often translated as spirit or mind. REBIRTH uses it in a sequence that moves from jing to qi, from qi to shen, and from shen toward void.
It should not be confused with a clinical mental-health term.
05Lower Dan TianREBIRTH glossary: A traditional practice centre in the lower abdomen, described in the book as foundational to storing and working with vital energy.
The site presents this as practice language, not anatomical fact.
06Prenatal qiREBIRTH glossary: The book’s term for the inherited or primordial aspect of qi, distinguished from what is acquired after birth.
This distinction comes from a traditional model of life and practice.
07Postnatal qiREBIRTH glossary: The book’s term for qi continually supported through ordinary life, including nourishment after birth.
It is a traditional explanatory category rather than a laboratory classification.
08Focused awarenessREBIRTH glossary: The book’s English expression for awareness that becomes clearer as discursive thinking quiets.
It is used as a practical orientation, not a promised altered state.
09Nei DanREBIRTH glossary: Literally inner elixir. In internal cultivation traditions, it names a central process and symbol of inner transformation.
Descriptions of formation and development belong to that traditional framework and are not medical claims.
10Meditative stabilityREBIRTH conversations: The capacity to remain steady, attentive, and less driven by immediate grasping or rejection—during practice and amid ordinary affairs.
The conversations repeatedly bring this quality back into decisions, work, difficulty, and relationship.
11Middle WayBuddhist context: A Buddhist orientation that does not collapse into either extreme. In the books it becomes both a philosophical reference and a question of how the mind abides.
Its full meaning is richer than compromise or moderation in everyday English.
12Bodhisattva pathMahayana Buddhist context: The path of awakening joined to the vow to benefit beings. It forms a major stage in the second book’s structure.
It is a religious and soteriological term, not a wellness outcome or course certificate.