Page 448 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

FANGZHONG SHU 409

of spirit transcendence, medicine, and alchemy initially used by Jangshi found
their way into later Taoist practice.
Mark CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

ID Chen Guofu 1963, 258-59; Chen Pan 1948; Csikszentmihalyi 2000; De-
Wo skin 1981; DeWoskin 1983; DeWoskin 1986; Harper 1999; Li Ling 2000a;
Li Ling 2000b; Lin Yuping 1995; Ngo 1976; Robinet 1997b, 37-39; Roth 1987a;
Yamada Toshiaki 1988b
~ Jangji

Jangzhong shu

"arts of the bedchamber"; sexual techniques

The termJangzhong shu (lit., "techniques for inside the [bed-]chamber") gener-
ally refers to intimate practices shared within a couple's marital bed. Modern
writers, in China and the West alike, have frequently exoticized them as "sexual
alchemy" or "sexual yoga," and have explained them as "Taoist." Others have
examined such interpretations and found them unfounded or exaggerated. The
question is not whether Chinese people practiced, or wrote about, activities
that involved sexuality, but whether such activities were in any meaningful
sense Taoist (Strickmann 1974, 1044-45; Schipper 1993, 144-55).
Some of the modern confusion results from anachronistic interpretations.
In late imperial times, for instance, *jing (vital essence) was the standard term
for male reproductive fluids. And certain texts from earlier periods show that
certain writers assumed that conservation of such fluids would help protect
a man from debilitation, illness, and premature death. The problem lies in the
fact that the term jing is also used in many historical texts, including Taoist
texts, in contexts that clearly preclude such meanings. For instance, the *Neiye's
opening lines read:

The vital essence (jing) of all things-
This is what makes life come into being:
Below, it generates the five grains,
Above, it brings about the constellated stars.
When it flows in the interstices of Heaven and Earth,
It is called "spiritual beings" (guishen *;f$);
When it is stored up inside [a person's] chest,
He / she is called "a sage" (*shengren).