Ge Hong · Baopuzi Inner Chapters

Ge Hong's Baopuzi Inner Chapters (c. 317 CE) — the most ambitious and most cautionary text in the history of Daoist cultivation. Ge Hong declared that one's fate rests with oneself rather than with Heaven, held that cultivation takes not-injuring as its root, catalogued the small cumulative harms that wear a life away, and made conduct and a settled conscience conditions of long life. His practices that depend on nothing external — breath cultivation and guarding the One — became the source of later internal alchemy. This series does not avoid the lethal half: the doctrine of the golden elixir rested on a false analogy and produced a succession of avoidable deaths from Qin Shi Huang to the Yongzheng Emperor, presented in module six through the history of science and modern toxicology. Eight modules — bilingual (Chinese lectures + English teaching), with Chinese MP3 narration. (Mineral alchemy is historical material; preparations containing mercury, lead, arsenic or cinnabar are acutely toxic and must never be ingested. No formulas or dosages appear anywhere in this series.)