For the late Warring States Period Confucian Xun Zi, or Master Xun, however, xiushen is the work of taming one's qi and participating in ritual social activity (music, rites, etc).
In the next section I will contrast this with the cultic, ritual aspects of xiushen in Xun Zi's "self-cultivation" treatise.
This very brief survey of self-cultivation in pre-Qin thought serves as an important context if we are to understand xiushen in Xun Zi's (ca.
(Xun Zi 22, translation mine) Here Xun Zi adapts the earlier rhetoric of xiushen and primeval body discourse to describe a technique for strengthening the "heart's" resistance to emotional and/or sensory shock, but he also implies that self-transformation is an inherent, "deep" task of the Way.
(Xun Zi 27-28) The "feelings" (qing) of the Master are sometimes prone to moments of severe disorientation, so they must be pacified to allow him to speak the truth of the Rites (Li) and understand them in imitatio.
Xun Zi would only add to this that, it is to know oneself through the Rites that one must establish oneself in an "immobile fixity." What disturbs the ancient philosopher is the sense of internal flux, originating outside himself, which he cannot control or master.
[1] But in fact, his thirty selections in Antikchinesische Texte come from Lun yu (3 passages), Dao de jing (3), Li ji (4), Zhong yang (1), Da xue (1), [2] Meng zi (4), Han Fei zi (1), Zuo zhuan (6), Shi ji (1),
Xun zi (2), Mo zi (1), and--surprisingly--Shi jing (1), i.e., narrowing the focus very much to that of his two recent predecessors.
Yet this is a European, not Chinese story: the rites to which Saussy refers may be Christian rites shrouded in mystery, but they are not the rites discussed by Confucius, Mencius, or
Xun Zi, nor is the autotelic prince a Chinese ruler.