ABSTRACT
Daoists developed five major types of community, all geared toward an all-encompassing universal state of harmony known as Great Peace. The earliest is a simple, contained sedentary settlement of small villages where everybody knows everybody and all consumer items are produced locally, not unlike utopian settlements in other parts of the world. The second and third are larger, more formally structured communities as established by the early religious organizations, matching millennial cult-type organizations. They insist on minimal hierarchies in combination with fluid, open administrative structures. Next, under the impact of Buddhism, Daoists developed monastic communities with a core focus on spiritual cultivation, quite similar to monasteries in Christianity. Last but not least, Daoists also institutionalized the wandering hermit life, manifest among ancient immortals, medieval alchemists, and later mendicants as well as followers of Complete Perfection, echoing comparative patterns of eremitism and reclusion.
