Early Daoist Dietary Practices
eBook - ePub

Early Daoist Dietary Practices

Examining Ways to Health and Longevity

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Early Daoist Dietary Practices

Examining Ways to Health and Longevity

About this book

Much as the modern Western world is concerned with diets, health, and anti-aging remedies, many early medieval Chinese Daoists also actively sought to improve their health and increase their longevity through specialized ascetic dietary practices. Focusing on a fifth-century manual of herbal-based, immortality-oriented recipes—the Lingbao Wufuxu (The Preface to the Five Lingbao Talismans of Numinous Treasure)—Shawn Arthur investigates the diets, their ingredients, and their expected range of natural and supernatural benefits. Analyzing the ways that early Daoists systematically synthesized religion, Chinese medicine, and cosmological correlative logic, this study offers new understandings of important Daoist ideas regarding the body's composition and mutability, health and disease, grain avoidance (bigu) diets, the parasitic Three Worms, interacting with the spirit realm, and immortality. This work also employs a range of cross-disciplinary scientific and medical research to analyze the healing properties of Daoist self-cultivation diets and to consider some natural explanations for better understanding Daoist asceticism and its underlying world view.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
  • Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
  • Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Both plans are available with monthly, semester, or annual billing cycles.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Early Daoist Dietary Practices by Shawn Arthur in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Nutrition, Dietics & Bariatrics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. List of Figures
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
  4. CHAPTER 2 THE WUFUXU’S RECIPE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
  5. CHAPTER 3 DIETARY REGIMENS: FROM HERBS TO QI
  6. CHAPTER 4 HEALING AND IMPROVING THE PHYSICAL BODY
  7. CHAPTER 5 BEYOND PHYSICAL HEALTH: THE WUFUXU’S EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS
  8. CHAPTER 6 DAOIST GRAIN AVOIDANCE TODAY
  9. CHAPTER 7 THE WUFUXU’S INGREDIENTS AND FASTING
  10. CHAPTER 8 ANALYZING DIETARY IDEALS AND PRACTICES
  11. CHAPTER 9 CONCLUSION
  12. APPENDIX 1 WUFUXU RECIPE TITLE LIST
  13. APPENDIX 2 LIST OF THE WUFUXU’S PROPOSED BENEFITS
  14. APPENDIX 3 WUFUXU INGREDIENT LIST
  15. APPENDIX 4 A SELECTION OF WUFUXU RECIPES
  16. BIBLIOGRAPHY
  17. About the Author