ABSTRACT
Human existence may be divided into two aspects: natural and non-natural. These are not two existences but two aspects of the same one existence. Human existence is a process of changing nature and creating culture. Culture, in the broadest sense, is all the activities (and their results) of human beings in their nonnatural existence. The activities of human beings in their natural existence are physiological activities. Breathing, for example, is an activity of human beings in their natural existence and, hence, not a cultural activity. But research into breathing, through exercises such as “exhaling and inhaling, getting rid of the old and assimilating the new” (Zhuang-zi, chapter 15, in Giles, 1980:152) in the art of “Daoist breathing exercises” (dao yin), is an activity of human beings in their nonnatural existence and, hence, a cultural activity.
