 Some Confucian debate in the Song-Ming period concerned the role of meditation in achieving mental stability and insight. The most popular form for Confucians was known as “quiet sitting” (jingzuo 靜坐), which many recommended as a way to achieve a state of quietude or tranquility (jing 靜). Some Daoxue Confucians thought that we discover our virtuous inherent nature when the heartmind is in this state of tranquility, a view most notably held by Yang Shi (1053–1135), a student of the Cheng brothers. Zhu Xi rejected this conception of meditation’s role in self-cultivation, maintaining that we cannot experience or perceive our virtuous nature directly but only indirectly through its responses to worldly events, requiring a state of activity and responsiveness which isn’t meditative (Angle &amp; Tiwald 2017: 147–149). Nevertheless, Zhu thought quiet sitting played important supporting roles in developing one’s capacities of mental discipline. He believed it an important complement to study and reflection and suggested that for some people with particularly unruly heartminds it could be the most productive path to self-improvement (Chan 1989: 255–270).