Abstract

In this collection, Harold Roth brings together the pivotal essays representing both the innovation and expertise that have marked his scholarship on Daoism for roughly the last twenty-five years. It is Roth's position that the foundations of classical Daoism rest upon a distinctive set of contemplative practices that he calls "inner training," which can be found in the Neiye, Laozi, and Zhuangzi, but also in a number of other classical texts of mixed traditions, including the Lushi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 and the Huainanzi 淮南子. The traces of these actual practices are evident linguistically in a recurring family of concepts appearing in these texts including wuwei, wuxing...