Daoism Resource Ask

[SirenSon117]

I've been wanting to put Daoist elements in my worldbuilding for the longest time. I already implemented what little I do know, but if anyone could recommend free online scholarly resources to learn about the Dao and what it means I'd really appreciate it. Texts on Daoist medicine are also helpful.

 

[skip.knox]

try this as search strings

daoism bibliography site:edu
daoist medicine bibliography site:edu

 

[Rosemary Tea]

Here's one on chi nei tsang (a type of Daoist medicine): https://www.amazon.com/Chi-Nei-Tsang-Massage-Organs/dp/1594771057

I had great results with that when I saw a chi nei tsang practitioner for ongoing mysterious health issues. If I'm not mistaken, my practitioner had trained with the author of that book. If I am mistaken about that, he trained with someone else who was doing the same thing. Either way, I can testify to its effectiveness.

 

[SirenSon117]

try this as search strings

daoism bibliography site:edu
daoist medicine bibliography site:edu

The hecks a search string, and how would I go about performing one. When it comes to computers and stuff I'm worse than dear old granny

 

[skip.knox]

"search string" is a word or series of words you type into a search engine (like Google). It's the thing you are searching for.

Google (and other search engines) provide some special tools, one of which I use in my example. By putting "sIte:edu" as part of the string of words, you are telling Google to return only results in the .edu domain. Which restricts the results to mainly academic websites.

IOW, the examples I gave let you say you want to see bibliographies having to do with doaism, but only ones that are scholarly. It's not 100%, but it will filter out a good deal of the nonsense you would get if you searched just for "daoism"

 

[Karlin]

You can get the history of Daoism from The China History Podcast, but it's more history oriented than actual Daoism oriented. There's a cute book "The Tao of Pooh" that relates the philosophical side of Daoism. The China History Podcast: Ep. 50 | Daoism (Part 1)

Daoism and Daoists appear quite a lot in the Chinese Classic "The Journey to the West", even though the heroes themselves are Buddhists. I think the introduction to the book (Anthony C. Yu's translation), gives some serious background info on this. The Daoism in the book is more of a religion and a quest for immortality through alchemy. If you don't have a copy of The Journey- you should buy one! But you can see the book online here:
https://journeytothewestresearch.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/journey-to-the-west-vol.-1.pdf