Abstract
As a religious tradition, Taoism came down from very early times indeed, from the times of oracle bones and divination. Taoist priests are heirs to a past society where the diviners and shamans (wu) were venerated for their ability to communicate with the spiritual world — the world of the Lord-on-high, and of the other gods and spirits — to bring down rain to the dry earth and to heal the sick. This does not mean Taoism is identical to ancient religion, but it does highlight its difference from the philosophical Taoism of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, through which the ancient religion was partially eclipsed by a process of rationalisation and philosophical speculation.
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References
Consult Fukui Kōjun, ed., Dōkyō to wa nanika (What is Taoism?), vol. 1 of Dōkyō (Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1984).
Henri Maspéro, Taoism and Chinese Religion. Translated by Frank A. Kierman, Jr. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), especially pp. 309–430.
See Kristofer Schipper, he Corps taoïste: Corps mystique, corps social (Paris: Payard, 1982), pp. 22–25;
John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan, 1987).
Ilza Veith, trans., The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (First published, 1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 97–98.
English translation adapted from Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954–86), vol. 5, part 2, p. 113.
See Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: the Chinese Quest for Immortality (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979), chs 1–2.
Ssu-ma’s name in pinyin is Sima Chengzhen. Consult Livia Kohn, ‘Taoist Insight Meditation: The T’ang Practice of neiguan’, in Livia Kohn, ed., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1989) Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, vol. 61, p. 199.
Livia Kohn, Seven Steps to the Tao: Sima Chengzhen’s Zuowanlun, Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, 20 (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1987).
See Pao-p’u-tzu, ch. 18. Consult the English translation by James Ware, Alchemy, Medicine, Religion in the China of A.D. 320: The nei-p’ien of Ko Hung (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966), pp. 303–4.
Quoted by C. G. Jung in his commentary on Richard Wilhelm’s translated text, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Translated by Cary F. Baynes (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1931), p. 104. Richard Wilhelm himself suggests a possible Zoroastrian origin through Nestorian connections with the origins of such Taoist meditation on light. See p. 10.
See the Lao-tzu pien-hua ching, (The Classic of the Transformations of Lao-tzu), a manuscript discovered at Tun-huang (Dunhuang); see also Anna Seidel, La Divinisation de Lao-tseu dans le Taoïsme de Han (Paris, École Franchise d’Extrême-Orient, 1969), pp. 59–128.
Anna K. Seidel, ‘The Image of a Perfect Ruler in Early Taoist Messianism: Lao-Tzu and Li Hung’, History of Religions, vol. 9 (1969–70), pp. 216–47.
Ernst Bloch, Thomas Miinzer als Theologe der Revolution (München: K. Wolff, 1921; reissued Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1960). Müntzer has been honoured as a precursor of Marxist revolutionaries.
See Julia Ching, ‘The Idea of God in Nakae Tōju’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 11 (December 1984), 299–301.
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© 1993 Julia Ching
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Ching, J. (1993). Immortality and Mysticism: Taoism as Salvation Religion. In: Chinese Religions. Themes in Comparative Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22904-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22904-8_7
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