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Daoism Resource Ask

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

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
try this as search strings

daoism bibliography site:edu
daoist medicine bibliography site:edu
 
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.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
"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

Troubadour
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
 
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