Mencius – Chapter 14.35

Mencius said, “The best way to cultivate the mind is to minimize one’s desires. If a person has few desires, even if there are parts of their original good heart that are lost, they will be very few. If a person has many desires, even if there are parts of their original good heart that are preserved, they will be very few.”

Note

This passage from the Jin Xin II chapter of the Mencius is Mencius’ core discourse on “cultivation of the mind” and “desire management.” Drawing on historical context and Confucian classics, we can understand its underlying thought through the following dimensions:

• Revealing the Root Cause of the Loss of One’s Original Heart: The Opposition Between “Few Desires” and “Many Desires”
  Mencius believed that humans are innately endowed with an “original heart” of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom (the seeds of goodness), but often lose it in later life due to material and sensual temptations. He regarded “desire” as the greatest obstacle that obscures the original heart. “Minimizing desires” does not mean eradicating all normal physiological needs (as in some extreme asceticism of later generations), but rather restraining excessive, unprincipled greed. The fewer the desires, the less likely the mirror of the mind is to be clouded by dust.
• Establishing the Practice of “Preserving the Heart”: The Dialectic of “Preservation” and “Loss”
  Mencius explored the probabilistic relationship between the “preservation” and “loss” of the original good heart in human nature. He pointed out that the amount of desire is inversely proportional to the retention of the original heart. This is a highly practical rule for self-cultivation: cultivating oneself does not require seeking profound magic externally; it only requires doing “subtraction” in daily life. By continuously stripping away superfluous material desires, one’s innate moral conscience will naturally emerge and be preserved. This aligns perfectly with the logic in The Great Learning that “knowing when to stop leads to firmness.”
• A Remedy for the Ailments of the Era and Universal Value
  In the Warring States period, an era where social order had collapsed and both feudal lords and scholars were chasing fame, power, and profit, Mencius’ proposition that “the best way to cultivate the mind is to minimize desires” was undoubtedly a sobering remedy. He warned the world that external pursuits are endless and inevitably come at the cost of inner peace and morality. This thought not only laid the theoretical foundation for the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties (“preserve heavenly principles and eradicate human desires”) but also holds profound psychological value and practical significance in today’s modern society, which is characterized by extreme material abundance and where people easily fall into consumerism and spiritual burnout.

孟子曰：“养心莫善于寡欲。其为人也寡欲，虽有不存焉者，寡矣；其为人也多欲，虽有存焉者，寡矣。”