"Then," said Yen Hui, "I am without resource, and venture to ask for a method."
Confucius said, "FAST.... Let me explain. You have a method, but it is difficult to practise. Those which are easy are not from God."
"Well," replied Yen Hui, "my family is poor, and for many months we have tasted neither wine nor flesh. Is not that fasting?"
"The fasting of religious observance it is," answered Confucius, "but not the fasting of the heart."
"And may I ask," said Yen Hui, "in what consists the fasting of the heart?"
"Cultivate unity," replied Confucius.
Make of the mind as it were an undivided indivisible ONE.
"You hear not with the ears, but with the mind; not with the mind, but with your soul.
The vital fluid which informs your whole being; in fact, "with your whole self."
But let hearing stop with the ears. Let the working of the mind stop with itself. Then the soul will be a negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only Tao can abide. And that negative state is the fasting of the heart."