The Search for Peace in Times of Chaos—Volume world operates and another governing how mankind should behave These are different parts of the same law, the same Tao All religion therefore, tries to realign mankind with the Tao, with the natural way man is supposed to act All problems, all ills, all evils, come from a distortion between the cosmic Tao and the human Tao To correct this imbalance is the main function of any religion.12 Basic Worship Service From the earliest times, Chinese religion consisted of the veneration of a pantheon of gods, plus ancestor worship The prevalent form of worship was ritual offering of food and wine The ancestor cults of the ruling houses of the Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty consisted of sacrificial ceremonies in clan ancestral halls, usually employing elaborate bronze vessels These sacrifices nourished the souls of clan ancestors and were regarded as essential to the continuance of a particular dynasty The Zhou Dynasty kings sacrificed both to their ancestors and to the lord of heaven, visualized in the abstract as Tian from which they conferred legitimacy on the rulers of vassal states, the so-called mandate of heaven The Han worship their ancestors, who act as intermediaries between the gods and humanity The vassal rulers and the common people sacrificed to their own ancestors and to local nature and agricultural deities Taoism added its own tradition of contemplative mysticism Breathing exercises and other activities resembling yoga are still practiced in Taiwan and elsewhere, following a theory of internal alchemy that supposedly can make the adept immortal Others involve a meditational search for the gods who dwell in the human body, which is held to be a miniature of the external world with the same deities presiding over corresponding parts of microcosm and macrocosm Sometimes aiming at a transcendent or mystical religious state, such exercises are more usually part of the same quest for immortality, which inspired some Taoists to develop early Chinese chemistry and poison themselves with spurious elixirs of life