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his disciple Liezi and lets himself be analyzed by a fortune-telling shaman. The shaman comes repeatedly, seeing a
different personality or mind image each time. After coming for the third time, he exclaims in exasperation: “Your
master is never the same! I have no way to analyze him! If he tries to steady himself, I will come back and examine him
again.” The master, in contrast, is unfazed and explains: “Just now I appeared to him as the great vastness where nothing
wins out. He probably saw in me the workings of the balanced energies. Where the swirling waves gather there is an
abyss; where the still waters gather there is an abyss; where the running waters gather there is an abyss. The abyss has
nine names and I have shown him three. Try bringing him again.”
The next day, the shaman again joined Liezi to see the Gourd Master, but before he even came to halt before the
master, his wits left him and he fled—confronted by a vision of the pure Dao at the origins of creation or, as the text
says, “that which has not yet emerged from the source—totally empty, wriggling and turning, not knowing anything
about who or what, now dipping and bending, now flowing in waves.” (Watson 1968, 94-97).
The same distinction between a level of existence that is completely at one with the Dao and a more technical
approach to cosmic harmony is also made in the Book of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity (Baopuzi), an alchemical
classic of the fourth century C.E.. It notes that those who nourish life with herbal remedies, diets, breathing, and
gymnastics may deem themselves advanced practitioners of the Dao, but will never reach the higher levels, for which an
alchemical elixir has to be prepared and active communication with the gods be established. First, the text clearly
acknowledges the medical and long life benefits of the daoyin practices. But then it notes that while these methods may
help health, they will not reach to the higher spheres, and that the truly marvelous alchemical recipes can reach much
further, granting practitioners states of unlimited immortality and oneness with the Dao. The text has:
Man’s death ensues from losses, old age, illnesses, poisons, miasmas, and chills. Today people do
gymnastics and breathing exercises, revert their sperm to nourish the brain, follow dietary rules, regulate
their activity and rest, take medicines, give thought to their inner gods to maintain their integrity, undergo
prohibitions, wear amulets and seals from their belts, and keep at a distance all those who might harm their
lives. In this way they may avoid the six baneful things just listed that can cause death.
Physicians today have pills that activate and brighten the kidneys, powders that benefit the circulation,
roasted boxhorn from strengthening bone structure, and infusions of yellow hedysarum as a general tonic. .
. .Writings also assert that a certain Wu Pu received from Hua Tuo the Five Animals’ Frolic as a basic
form of gymnastics and managed to live to over a hundred. If such are the effects of the humblest of
medicines, just think what can be done by those that are truly marvelous! (Baopuzi 5.4a; Ware 1966, 103)
This position is radicalized further in organized Daoism, where the relationship to the Dao in the form of various
heavens and deities superseded all other concerns and health was the direct result of a pure and pious life. Communal
Daoists of the Celestial Masters, founded in the second century C.E., thus prohibited medical and health treatments in
favor of religious cultivation. For them, the world was populated by gods and demons—the latter appearing everywhere
and in every shape, from the lowly rabbit and the dirty rat to all sorts of natural and supernatural creatures. A list of such
demons has been excavated from a Han tomb, and several others are found in the earliest surviving texts of the Celestial
Masters. To combat them, members had to fortify their houses and bodies with talismans, learn to recognize the demons
and call them by their proper names, and visualize themselves as demon-conquering heroes
The same also holds true for the major medieval schools of Highest Clarity and Numinous Treasure, although their
followers were lay based and thus not prohibited from availing themselves of medical treatments. Still, their universe
was dominantly characterized by their relation to otherworldly entities with cultivation practices that involved
visualizations of gods, opening of divine palaces within the body, ecstatic excursions to the stars, and highly complex
ceremonies of communication, purification, confession, and the exoneration of ancestors.
Methods akin to gymnastics and breathing were used mainly as purification measures in the preparation of rituals.
Thus the Introductory Explanation to the Daode jing (Daode zhenjing xujue), a fifth-century texts on devotional
observances to Lord Lao discovered among manuscripts found at Dunhuang, instructs followers who wish to recite the
Daode jing to begin by burning incense and straightening their robes, then bowing to the ten directions. After this, while
20 Yang-Sheng (Nurturing Life) Volume 1, Issue No. 10