Daoists pay close attention to all different modes and dimensions of time. They carefully observe the planetary movements in nature and set up detailed guidelines to match their course and follow the Chinese calendar with its various man-made divisions, such as the twenty-four solar periods, twenty-eight lunar stations, and the sexagenary cycle. Beyond this, Daoists activate the trigrams and hexagrams of the Yijing to designate phases of growth and decline and to mark certain temporal units with specific significance. Moving beyond this, they also work with time in the human body, linking certain features to stages of life and creating temporal rhythms by their own physical actions. They revert the flow of entropy within the body, establishing mastery over time, and transfigure their very physical constitution to subtler levels, opening ways to transcend time altogether. This volume brings together senior and junior scholars as well as practitioners to explore these various topics under three main headings: planetary, calendar, and body time. They cover the entire history of Daoism, from its precursors in the Han to its monastic and popular activation in the 21st century, as well as a plethora of different methods-social predictions, personal horoscopes, physigonomy, healing modalities, qigong, self-cultivation, internal alchemy, and more. Opening new ways of looking at time and expressing uniquely Daoist features, the volume is path-breaking and highly relevant today. A must for anyone interested in time studies, religious practice, and Chinese culture.

In the hills of China’s central Hunan province, an anxious young apprentice officiates over a Daoist ritual known as the Banner Rite to Summon Sire Yin. Before a crowd of masters, relatives, and villagers—and the entire pantheon of gods and deceased masters ritually invited to witness the event—he seeks to summon Celestial Lord Yin Jiao, the ferocious deity who supplies the exorcistic power to protect and heal bodies and spaces from illness and misfortune. If the apprentice cannot bring forth the deity, the rite is considered a failure and the ordination suspended: His entire professional career hangs in the balance before it even begins. This richly textured study asks how the Banner Rite works or fails to work in its own terms. How do the cosmological, theological, and anthropological assumptions ensconced in the ritual itself account for its own efficacy or inefficacy? Weaving together ethnography, textual analysis, photography, and film, David J. Mozina invites readers into the religious world of ritual masters in today’s south China. He shows that the efficacy of rituals like the Banner Rite is driven by the ability of a ritual master to form an intimate relationship with exorcistic deities like Yin Jiao, which is far from guaranteed. Mozina reveals the ways in which such ritual claims are rooted in the great liturgical movements of the Song and Yuan dynasties (960–1368) and how they are performed these days amid the social and economic pressures of rural life in the post-Mao era. Written for students and scholars of Daoism and Chinese religion, Knotting the Banner will also appeal to anthropologists and comparative religionists, especially those working on ritual.

Qigong Teacher and Daoist Priest Michael Rinaldini has written a book on the modern day practices of a Daoist. His book, A Daoist Practice Journal: Come Laugh With Me offers the cultivation methods for walking the Daoist path. The entries cover topics like zuowang meditation, scriptures, qigong, the value of silence and solitude, and Daoist, Buddhist and Catholic mysticism, tea drinking and more. Here are some samples of his entries, which provide a glimpse into the heart of his writings.2012 January 14Sky Farm HermitageSolitary RetreatIn silence and solitude I begin another retreat on Saturday afternoon, January 14, 2012. The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent un-packing and settling into a 6-day retreat. 6:15pm What does a Daoist eat while on retreat? Tonight, I made a soup with soba noodles and assorted vegetables. I forgot to bring ginger root.9:40pmI vow to practice ... in silence and solitude, until I realize Complete Perfection.January 158:30pmOne of my goals for this retreat is to write about the common practices between the Daoist and the Christian paths. I am specifically interested in the Daoist zuowang meditation method of sitting in forgetfulness or oblivion, and the Christian fourteenth-century mystical text, The Cloud of Unknowing. Both of these ways of meditation or contemplation feature an emphasis on placing the mind's activities into a state of forgetting or the cloud of forgetting. The Cloud, was written by an anonymous author, and it is speculated that the author was a Carthusian monk, and if not, possibly a Catholic priest living a hermetic lifestyle. And so what are the similarities, the common practices between zuowang meditation, and the contemplative practices as presented in The Cloud of Unknowing?January 162pmSitting in silence outside on the porch,The only sounds-birds singing,An occasional movement of the wind,And very faint voices from neighbors down the valley.Odd at how sound travels.And right now, there was the sound of a car, actually,What I heard was the sound of the road,A gritty gravel sound.My mind filled in the blanks,And I instantly labeled it, "a car driving nearby,"Though it could have been a truck.And now my sneezes and coughing,And blowing my nose, all disrupt the silenceA large crow just landed in my valley,Returning me to silence.January 17Sitting on the porch, all bundled up.Drinking Scottish Christmas tea and a banana, and one cookie.A large part of being in silence and solitude is simply listening.Even the wind down the valley.You can hear it as it makes it way up the hills,And now, I feel it against my body,It flaps the page of this journal book.And before you know it-It's gone, and the silence returns.Except for the birds, sound of distant dogs, chickens,And that same sound that cars/trucks make on the gravel road.12:30pmThe Cloud's author says:Forget what you know. Forget everything God made and everybody who exists and everything that's going on in the world, until your thoughts and emotions aren't focused on or reaching toward anything, not in a general way and not in any particular way. Let them be. For the moment, don't care about anything (11).And finally, why even bother to think? From the zuowang tradition:I forget the vastness even of Heaven and Earth,Never mind the minuteness of the hair in autumn.Resting in serenity and silence,I listen to Pure Harmony.Still, I am free, away from it all!Movement stilled, language silenced-Why ever think? (212).January 184:30 pmInspired from yesterday's research, and last full day of retreat.Forget everything,Put nothing, between myself,And the Great Emptiness of Ultimate Stillness.That's the nameless Dao!End of Retreat

This is the first book to examine extensively the religious aspects of Chinese alchemy. Its main focus is the relation of alchemy to the Daoist traditions of the early medieval period (third to sixth centuries). It shows how alchemy contributed to and was tightly integrated into the elaborate body of doctrines and practices that Daoists built at that time, from which Daoism as we know it today evolved. The book also clarifies the origins of Chinese alchemy and the respective roles of alchemy and meditation in self-cultivation practices. It contains full translations of three important medieval texts, all of them accompanied by running commentaries, making available for the first time in English the gist of the early Chinese alchemical corpus.

Time, literally, is of the essence. It is a key feature in all cultures, determining human thought, expectations, actions, and developments. The great master of time studies, J. T. Fraser, describes it in terms of six major temporalities that move at different speeds in unique environments. Matching the evolution of the universe, they include (1) the atemporal or timeless state of primordial chaos; (2) the prototemporal realm of quantum simultaneity; (3) the eotemporal long-term rhythms of the stars; (4) the biotemporal dimensions of living creatures; (5) the noötemporal phenomena of brain and mind; and (6) the sociotemporal world of clocks and calendars, history and society, analysis and philosophy. This book examines Daoist ways of working with time in terms of these six temporalities, beginning with language, the "architect of time," located at a cross-point between society and brain. It then moves through the six types in reverse order, beginning with myths and philosophical concepts and concluding with mystical oneness in cosmic timelessness. To place the Daoist notions in context, each chapter presents the modern scientific understanding of time as well as comparative perspectives from other cultures. Daoists, it turns out, often match science in terms of basic concepts, but offer different practices to reverse entropy, overcome limitations, and ultimately tame time by going beyond it. Taming Time is encyclopedic in scope and global in outlook. It challenges preconceived notions and raises new perspectives in the study of time as it expertly clarifies Daoist visions.

Originally written for Chinese readers, this book provides a clear description of the Taoist practice of Internal Alchemy, or Neidan. The author outlines the four stages of the alchemical practice and clarifies several relevant terms and notions, including Essence, Breath, and Spirit; the Cinnabar Fields; the "Fire Times"; and the Embryo. The book is based on the system of the Wuzhen pian (Awakening to Reality), one of the main sources of Internal Alchemy, and contains about two hundred quotations from original Taoist texts. Table of Contents Foreword, vii INTRODUCTION, 1 The Basis: Essence and Spirit, 3 STAGES OF THE ALCHEMICAL PRACTICE IN AWAKENING TO REALITY, 11 The Four Stages, 13 "Laying the Foundations," 15 Main Points in the Practice of "Laying the Foundations," 20 The Functions of Essence, Breath, and Spirit, 36 Terms Related to the "Coagulation of the Three Treasures," 52 Conclusion of the Stage of "Laying the Foundations," 63 "Refining Essence to Transmute it into Breath," 65 "Refining Breath to Transmute it into Spirit," 99 "Refining Spirit to Return to Emptiness," 109 CONCLUSION, 119 The "Arts of the Way," 121 Tables, 123 Glossary of Chinese Characters, 133

Daoist Body Cultivation is a comprehensive volume by a group of dedicated scholars and practitioners that covers the key practices of medical healing, breathing techniques, diets and fasting, healing exercises, sexual practices, Qigong, and Taiji quan. Each presentation places the practice in its historical and cultural context and relates its current application and efficaciousness. Ultimately aiming to energetically transform the person into a spiritual and trancendent being, Daoist cultivation techniques have proven beneficial for health time and again and can make an important contribution in the world today. Daoist Body Cultivation provides a deeper understanding of the practices in their cultural and historical contexts, bridging the gap between healing and religion and allowing both scholars and practitioner to reach a deeper understanding and appreciation. Contributors: Shawn Arthur, Bede Bidlack, Catherine Despeux, Stephen Jackowicz, Lonny Jarrett, Livia Kohn, Louis Komjathy, Michael Winn.