Daoist Views on Diet and the Practice of Bigu, or Grain Abstention

Unlike Buddhism's vegetarian logic of abstaining from killing to protect life, Daoist dietary restraint springs more from the pursuit of health and longevity. Daoist texts hold that while grains can fill the stomach, they also tend to leave turbid residue in the body that impedes spiritual cultivation. Out of this concern grew a whole theory of dietary cultivation built around stilling the mind, eating little and often, and even bigu, or grain abstention.

Bigu Does Not Mean Starvation

Bigu is often popularly understood as eating nothing at all, but within the traditional Daoist system of cultivation, its more accurate meaning is reducing or abstaining from grains specifically, while sustaining the body's functions instead through breath cultivation and small amounts of specific medicinal substances. It is a cultivation technique with its own concrete methodology and risks, not a simple starvation therapy.

Convergence With, and Divergence From, Vegetarian Culture

Daoist views on health and vegetarian culture overlap in places, while remaining fundamentally distinct in others:

• Daoism does not prohibit meat as universally as Buddhism does; its strictness varies considerably by school
• The theory of bigu influenced later health movements' embrace of intermittent fasting
• Ascetic practitioners living in Daoist temples generally ate a light diet that, in practice, came close to vegetarianism
• Daoist ideas about health cultivation fed substantially into the traditions of medicinal cuisine and food therapy

Understanding Daoist views on diet helps us see that Chinese vegetarian culture did not spring from a single source, but rather emerged from Buddhism and Daoism, each starting from a different philosophical foundation, continually influencing and blending with one another.