It is useful to be aware of the fact that many of the Daoist texts discussed below, now collected into the “Daoist Canon” or Daozang (道藏), were written or compiled at various times by different authors and were made for audiences of various levels of literacy and social and cultural background.4 The authors of the texts were of varied literary ability; thus, the messages that come across in the texts might not necessarily be totally coherent. Different emphases could have been given at different locations, different times, for different purposes and audiences. It is important to remember these different possibilities, whenever we can, and not insist on trying to find a coherent interpretation for all the texts.