Reddit mentions of Taoism: The Road to Immortality

John Blofeld’s book Taoism: The Road To Immortality has a good overview of important Taoists books over the centuries and the differences between the schools from a Western perspective.

hey man
i have plenty of stuff to stay. i'm in love with taoism.
i followed taoism for a year and a half now. thank's to that culture i discovered meditation , and many other thoughts on life which healed me on many ways . i recommend you this book : https://www.amazon.com/Taoism-Road-Immortality-John-Blofeld/dp/1570625891

some taoist consider semen precious. you can keep it; but you have to make specific things to transform it in chi. otherwise , it just stays in the region of the penis and doesn't flow in the body. sorry i have specefic words for this but only in french. so there are specifics meditation techiques that you have to do in order to get energy from abstinence. they say that if you don't do those techniques , the energy will go out of your body , even if you don't ejaculate. the technique is called "transmutation"
however , not all taoist were for abstinence. taoism doesn't follow any dogma, undlike budhism for exemple.

i translated a part of the book for you:

> in fact, taoist are usually against all kind of extreme. they know that strict abstinence is something almost impossible to achieve. the philosophist Sun szû-mo gave the following advice:
"at 20 the man can allow himself one semen emission every 4 days, at 30 one every 8 days, at 40 one every 16 days, at 50 one every 21 days. past 60, it should be none.[...] at this age the thought of sexual act should have dissapeared for a long time, and abstinence should'nt cause any problems."

take in mind that taoist want to preserve semen in order to reach immortality. and with that you have to do millions of other things to reach immortality. i don't think they advise abstinence just to have a good life, it's one of the things you have to do, so you can live your body when your die , jump on a flying dragon and go to the celestial palace. i swear that's what they're saying. reaching immortality is no joke for sure haha. read the book, or another one , and you'll get the full package of taoism. it's a really interesting culture and i'm happy to find people getting interest in it ! cheers