Introduction to Daoism

Scripture on the Way and Virtue 道德經¹

• Conceptual foundations of Daoism: Dao 道, Virtue 德 (political power, charisma), non-action 無為, spontaneity 自然, the sage 聖
• Only a hint of practice: “embracing Unity”抱一(?)
• Innumerable commentaries. Among the most influential:
  • Wang Bi 王弼 commentary (4th cent. Arcane Learning 玄學 Dao-Confucianism)
  • Heshang gong 河上公 (Riverside Elder) commentary (1st cent., /fangshi /hermit, biospiritual practices)
  • Xiang'er 想爾 (“Thinking of You” commentary (end of 2nd cent., Celestial Masters)
• i put the Ryden translation here but the Ziporyn one is out now so check that out

Book of Master Zhuang 莊子 (Ziporyn or Watson)²

• More eremitic, mystical takes on Dao, non-action, spontaneity.
• The political sphere is discounted (tied to Confucian artifice)
• The sage is supplanted (?) by the Perfected 真人, who are uninterested in worldly matters; more divine, supernatural (?)
• Very importantly, early meditation practices (齋心; 坐忘；守一)

1）The “Inner Work”內業 of the Guanzi 管子

• Self-divinization, self-cultivation-> self-perfectibility
• inward gaze/contemplation towards physical and spiritual well-being (執一; 守一 運氣)
• Rickett, The Guanzi, “Inward Training” Roth, “Original Tao”

2.1) Masters of Methods 方士

• Blend of health, spiritual, and political foci
• Interface between elite and popular self-cultivation currents
• DeWoskin, Doctors, Diviners and Magicians of Ancient China: Biographies of Fang-shih)

2.2) Huang Lao 黃老

• Veneration of Yellow Emperor and, more importantly, Laozi as divine figures
• Medico-spirituo-political in scope (elite, established /fangshi /movement)
• Draws on /Daode jing /for metaphysics
• Poorly understood tradition, but see Huainanzi 淮南子, Guanzi 管子, Shiji 史記 for remnants
• Yates, Five Lost Classics⁵

2.3) Correlative Cosmology

• Combination of earlier Yin Yang 陰陽 school and Five Agents 五行 theory
• Common to Masters of Methods
• Formalized in 2nd cent. BCE with Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (see Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋繁露; and the “Treatise on the Five Agents”五行論 in the History of the Han 漢書)
• Harper, “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought”

2.4 ) “Confucian Apocrypha” Prophetic Wefts 讖緯 or Weft Texts 緯書

• Esoteric commentaries on Confucian Canon and on the /Book of Changes /周易
• Unclear, but probably elite authors tied to Masters of Methods at courts
• Read hidden knowledge in classics from which prophecies were derived
• Replete with imperial symbolism; used for legitimation
• Seidel “Taoist Roots in the Apocrypha”[article]

Immortality Cults 仙/僊

• Organized around Masters of Methods at the local, level; more popular or vernacular; no ties to the state, policy, governance
• Primarily focused on achieving long life (“immortality” and health, which are equated with spiritual accomplishment
• Ubiquitous, but loosely organized and independent. No shared conceptual bedrock or specific textual sources
• Practices however, revolved around Nourishing Life 養生 disciplines.
• Campany, Making Transcendents⁶; Raz, Emergence of Daoism⁷ [ch. 1]

3.1) Nourishing Life 養生

• Applied methods/techniques practiced by immortality cults and Masters of Methods
• Usually organized into 5 categories or disciplines:
  • Medicines 藥; sometimes includes early forms of alchemy (lit. “elixirs”丹), but usually the latter is considered a separate, fully fleshed-out tradition
  • Circulating breath 行氣 (breath control)
  • “Guiding and Pulling”導引 (physical exercises combined with breathing)
  • “Avoiding Grains”避穀 or Dietetics (macrobiotic diet of unprocessed, uncooked foods)
  • Arts of the Bedchamber 房中術 (sexual practices largely revolving around coitus interruptus)
• Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, translation of Biographies of Divine Immortals⁸; see also the earlier Biographies of Arrayed Immortals 列仙專)
  • this is actually from the third century!! it really fits down with the Baopuzi neipian and external alchemy stuff below, but is placed here due to the nourishing-life lore it records

Great Peace 太平

• Unclear textual history; various versions/layers dated from 1st to 6th centuries
• Egalitarian utopia of harmony with Heaven
• Millenarian; eschatological; world-renewal/revolutionary themes
• Certain sections tied to /fangshi /and huanglao
• Pronounced moral/ethical dimension
• Influential for early Celestial Masters
• Also spawned numerous eschatological movements →e.g. Yellow Turbans 黃巾
• Hendrischke, The Way of Great Peace⁹)

The Divinization of Laozi as “Lord Lao”老君

• Laozi inscription 老子銘 dated to 166 CE
• One of earliest written records of Laozi's divinization;
• seen as incarnation of the Dao and a messianic figure who materializes periodically to teach humans about the Way
• Also warns them of an impending cataclysm and heralds the advent of the Great Peace 太平
• Scripture on the Transformations of Laozi 老子變化經
• Other early, this time scriptural evidence of Laozi's divinization. Dunhhuang ms. 2295 based on narrative dated to 155 CE, itself based on likely earlier (oral) sources derivative of Han-dynasty Laozi cults
• Text describes the figure's divine origins, his multiple manifestations throughout the ages as a “teacher of dynasties,”and series of devotional or visualization practices related to him
• Some content seems to draw on or be inspired from early medieval Chinese understandings of Buddhism and/or the Buddha. The perceived identity between Lord Lao, the divinized Laozi and the Buddha is confirmed in iconography (Northern Wei steles and statuary) or manuscripts (太上靈寶老子化胡經) from the 4th or 5th centuries, where they appear side by side, as twin manifestations of the same principles.
• Seidel, La divinisation de Lao-tseu; or Seidel, “Le soutra merveilleux du Ling-pao suprême” and Abe, “Northern Wei Daoist Sculpture from Shaanxi Province”

I) Celestial Masters 天師

• First instance of institutionalized, organized, formal Daoist religious tradition. Sometimes called “Way of the Celestial Masters”天師道, other times “Way of Orthodox/Correct Unity”正一道, other times, “Way of the Five Bushels of Rice”五斗米道 (or, more pejoratively “Rice Bandits”米賊)
• Dated to 142 CE, when Zhang Daoling 張道陵 received revelations from Lord Lao
• Originated in present-day Szechuan (巴蜀), but spread to North China around/after fall of the Han.
• Formed parallel autonomous network of communities (“parishes”治) on the model of the Han administration/bureaucracy that sometimes directly challenged state authority.
• Highly organized; elaborate ordination rituals and complex hierarchy (but egalitarian–based primarily on seniority, not gender, class, ethnicity)
• Communal rituals (including libations and sexual rites to produce “seed people”種民), confession/penance and healing rituals (to exorcise demonic causes of affliction), talismanic rites, etc.
• Communicate with deities of the bureaucratic pantheon through petitions that are burned in the censer and sent up to the heavens. (in the form of smoke). Writing is a crucial part of TSD ritual functions.
• Strict moral code (inspired by the Scripture of Great Peace), and biospiritual purification rituals 齋, including chanting, meditation, and moral introspection→performed in isolation in the “oratory”or “quiet room”靜室; a small sensory deprivation chamber for solitary communion with the spirit world that eventually became a hallmark of Daoism (only an incense burner, [psychotropic] incense, a petition stand, and a writing implement were allowed in the chamber)
• Kleeman, Celestial Masters

II) The Master Who Embraces Simplicity 抱朴子

• Dated to 323 CE, an essential source for early Daoism
• Detailed overview of practices and immortal lore tied to the fangshi of the Wu (222–80) court.
• Practices and lore inherited by elite families of the South (Jiangnan), including the Ge clan to which the author, Ge Hong 葛洪 (283–43) belonged.
• Practices and lore served as basis for all later forms of Daoism (Taiqing/Waidan, Sanhuang wen, Shangqing, Lingbao)
• Ware, The Inner Chapters of Ko Hung
• Ware's translation is notoriously questionable and i would recommend instead checking out Campany's translation of Ge Hong's other work, Biographies of Divine Immortals, and Pregadio's Great Clarity.

II.1) External Alchemy: the Great Clarity Tradition 太清¹⁰

• Tradition of external alchemy or Waidan 外丹; laboratory alchemy; operative alchemy, i.e. (proto-)chemistry whose purposes was to compound the Golden Elixir 金丹 argely on the basis of mercury, sulfur and mercury sulfide (or “cinnabar”丹 whose character also denotes the Elixir). Gold was also important.
• The Golden Elixir, along with a number of other alchemical products, were believed to grant immortality more expeditiously than other methods available in the spiritual marketplace at the time.
• Great Clarity refers to the highest Heaven in Daoism, where the corpus of alchemical writings was revealed.
• While grounded in chemical reactions and empirically-verified transmutation processes, the tradition of external alchemy was highly ritualized, involving incantations, the use of talismans, sacrificial offerings, prayers to and worship of gods.
• On account of the highly technical and elaborate nature of its alchemical operations and the difficulty (as well as significant cost) of obtain primary materials, some scholars, primarily Joseph Needham, have argued that External Alchemy was also (only?) practiced internally, as a series of complex visualizations involving the transformation of matter/chemical substances.
• Some nevertheless were successful in compounding its medicines, the prolonged ingestion of which usually resulted in death (or “elixir poisoning”. Given the toxicity of the alchemical work's basic ingredients, this is hardly surprising. Still, alchemists explained physical death as a necessary step in achieving true immortality of the spirit.
• External Alchemy grew out of/in parallel with other esoteric traditions of the South ca. the 200s. Interest in the tradition peaked between the 300s and 600s-700s, rapidly declining thereafter.
• Pregadio, Great Clarity)

II.2) Divination/Exorcism, Alchemy, and Meditation: the /Writ of the Three Sovereigns 三皇文¹¹

III) Supreme Clarity 上清¹²

• Ch. 5 from Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion + Robinet Taoist Meditation
• Based on dream revelations experienced by Yang Xi 楊羲, the medium of the Xu 許 clan, between 364 and 370. Yang Xi wrote them down in manuscript form. These were later compiled in the /Declarations of the Perfected /真誥, the core Shangqing source, in 499. Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (456–36), a massively influential Daoist, Shangqing patriarch, physician, and court official, edited the text.
• The revelations were from a new category of immortals, the Perfected 真人 who reside in the (new) highest Daoist heaven, the Heaven of Supreme Clarity 上清, hence the name of the corpus. It is sometimes also refered to as the Maoshan 茅山 corpus in reference to the mountain close to which the Xu clan lived (in Jurong) and where they had their oratories 靜室
• Supreme Clarity/Shangqing practices are variegated, but their hallmark remains highly-technical and complex meditative practices. Thus, the focus is on individual salvation.
• Much of the early Shangqing scriptures also discuss Xu family matters, including marriages between Perfected and family members.
• More importantly, early Shangqing scriptures also bore the imprint of Buddhism, which had, by the time that the manuscripts were organized into texts, been present in Jiangnan/the South for roughly a hundred years.
• While the Buddhist imprint remains in the few existing Dunhuang versions of SQ texts, it has been carefully excised from canonical SQ materials.
• SQ materials came to constitute the Cavern of Perfection 洞真, the highest ranking repository (out of 3) of sources in the Daoist Canon.
• check out Bokenkamp's translation¹³ of Declarations of the Perfected 真誥 zheng'gao, of which currently the first volume is out.

IV) Numinous Treasure 靈寶

• While the SQ manuscripts were circulating among the Xu clan and their associates, the Ge clan, led by Ge Chaofu 葛巢甫 (fl. 390s), Ge Hong's grand nephew, “rediscovered”some scriptures in the family library that dated back to Ge Xuan 葛玄 (164–44)–legendary immortal, court advisor/fangshi, and granduncle to Ge Hong.
• Lingbao sources draw on /Writ of the Three Sovereigns /practices (especially with respect to meditations and talismans; the foundational /Preface to the Five Talismans of the Numinous Treasure /靈寶五符序 is essentially a Cavern of Divinity source.
• These documents borrowed much from the SQ manuscripts, to which Ge Chaofu also had access, so there is some overlap in terms of core notions and practices.
• But they are most striking in how: 1) they liberally take over the Celestial Master ritual structure. And for good reason, since CM priests were, by the this time, the chief officiants and ritual specialists in the South, having supplanted the mediums of yore.
• And in how: 2) they copy paste from Buddhism, especially with respect to cosmology, deities (Buddhas and bodhisattvas), and most importantly, karma and merit, both of which have a collective dimension (as regards the bodhisattva vow/universal salvation)
• Thus Lingbao's contribution to Daoism primarily concerns 1) communal ritual and 2) communal salvation, for the collectivity of Daoists–in contrast to the individuality of SQ concerns. /Writ of the Three Sovereigns /materials were, by comparison, intended for very broad usage among initials on account of their simplicity.
• We have here the basic structure of the early Daoist canon, with “Three Caverns”三洞, i.e., three repositories of corpora that correspond to increasingly higher levels of difficulty and initiation. While SHW/the Cavern of the Spirit 洞神 lies at the base of Daoist materials (with an intended audience of all initiates), Lingbao scriptures or the Cavern of Mystery 洞玄 occupies the middle rung (destined for more restricted use, but still communal in scope), and Shanqing or Cavern of Perfection 洞真 scriptures at the very top (aimed towards the smaller number of elite self-cultivators).
• Ch.6 from Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion¹⁴ + Bokenkamp, “Lingbao”
• i would rec Bokenkamp's monograph Ancestors and Anxiety¹⁵ on shangqing+lingbao and rebirth

Sima Chengzhen 司馬承禎 and Du Guangting 杜光庭 (Kohn, Sitting in Oblivion)¹⁷

• Virtulent court debates. Buddhists and Daoists debate philosophical and theological issues in front of the emperor for supremacy and sponsorship, e.g. Double Mystery 重玄 school (relies on Buddhist logic and argumentative techniques)

Double Mystery 重玄 (Assandri, Beyond the Daode jing: Twofold Mystery)

• Lots of animus at between Buddhists and Daoists at the elite level, but lots of interaction and a blurring of boundaries (as there always was) at the local level.
• also see: Assandri's translation of Cheng Xuanying's DDJ commentary¹⁸ and Sharf's translation of the Treasure Store Treatise¹⁹ from the buddhist side
• this is highly abstruse philosophical stuff that came out of Tang court debates in which buddhists and daoists played the tetralemma and the Laozi against each other

Buddhism and Daoism (Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face)²⁰

study of piracy and pastiche between buddhist and daoist scriptures

Inner Alchemy 內丹 (Pregadio and Skar “Inner Alchemy [Neidan]”[article] + Pregadio, Taoist Alchemy: A Historical Overview²¹)

• Major current that is institutionally Daoist but heavily draws on Buddhism (especially Chan), Confucianism, and the Book of Changes 易經.
• Develops from a combination of internalized principles of laboratory alchemy (Taiqing alchemy) on one hand and meditations on gods of the inner landscape on the other.
• Highly esoteric hermetic tradition. Uses three broad coded registers in talking about the supreme principle. 1) alchemical. Adepts produce the Internal Elixir 內丹 within their body; 2) reproductive. Adepts produce an embryo 胎 or “Red Child”赤子 within their body; 3) trigram-based. Adepts produce Perfect Yang 真陽 ☰ within their body.
• All practices are based on the reversion 逆 of cosmognic processes; and a refinement of essence 精 into vital breath 氣, which is then refined into spirit 神. In a last step, spirit, which is equated with the Elixir, the embryo/true self, and with Perfect Yang merges with Vacuity 虛, in other words, with the Dao.
• The main source of Inner Alchemy in the Tang (when it emerges as a distinct tradition) is the /Token on the Agreement of the Three in Accordance with the Book of Changes / 周易參同契

(Schipper, The Taoist Body)²²

The Southern Celestial Masters

• In the Tang, Emperor Xuanzong canonizes Zhang Daoling (the 2nd cent. CE founder of the Celestial Master lineage) and Longhu shan in Jiangnan (!), where Zhang Daoling received revelations, becomes a center of what is now officially called the Zhengyi dao 正一道, Way of Orthodox Unity, (the term was also in use among Han and Six-Dynasties Tianshi dao 天師道 adepts).
• The Zhengyi Dao's influence spreads during the Song, and they absorb, Shangqing, Lingbao, and Sanhuang corpora as well as their practitioners.
• Meanwhile, new grassroots forms of religious practice emerge; local, vernacular cults proliferate (buttressed by the rise of the printing press and literacy rates) and gain increasing legitimacy among institutional religions.
• Red-capped 紅頭 vernacular ritual masters 法師 are powerful local ritualists who come to constitute the principal agents of “unofficial”Daoism. Their rites are highly performative, spectacular, dynamic and primarily exorcistic →e.g “summoning and interrogating”招考, or explosive “thunder rites”雷法, trance, mediums, and spirit-writing.
• They form a counterweight to the Black-capped 黑頭 orthodox Daoist masters 道師, who represent the “official”institutional Daoist clergy. More static, concerned with merit making, healing rites, and orthodoxy. Seen as aloof, elite, and concerned with political power among the populace, so ritual masters are locally dominant and dictate what Daoism is/becomes.
• Institutional Daoism has no choice but to absorb and incorporate ritual-master derived practices and texts in order to retain some control over the tradition.
• The creation/incorporation of:
  • the Orthodox Rites of the Heart of Heaven 天心正法,
  • the Great Rites of the Numinous Treasure 靈寶大法
  • Divine Empyrean Rites 神宵法
  • Among others, are expressions of this process. All of them fall under the aegis of the Zhengyi Dao.
• They lead to a Daoist renaissance in the Song that is defined by 1) the massive imprint of local/vernacular traditions (embodied in the figure of the ritual master); 2) the emphasis on exorcistic and mediumistic practices; 3) cross-fertilization with certain elements of Tantric Buddhism (ritual, iconographic, pantheonic, etc.).
• Goossaert, Heavenly Masters²³
• institutional history of the Celestial Master patriarchate/papacy that began in the Song—it claims legitimacy from the original Celestial Masters movement, but they must be distinguished

Orthodox Rites of the Heart of Heaven 天心正法 (Davis, Society and the Supernatural)²⁴

Great Rites of the Numinous Treasure 靈寶大法 (Hymes, Way and Byway)²⁵

Divine Empyrean Rites 神宵法 (Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature)

Complete Perfection 全真

Dragon Gate School 龍門派

Daoism in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong

Euro-American Daoism