The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit

The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit PDF Author: Cynthia Joanne Brokaw
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400861942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The ledgers of merit and demerit were a type of morality book that achieved sudden and widespread popularity in China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consisting of lists of good and bad deeds, each assigned a certain number of merit or demerit points, the ledgers offered the hope of divine reward to users "good" enough to accumulate a substantial sum of merits. By examining the uses of the ledgers during the late Ming and early Qing periods, Cynthia Brokaw throws new light on the intellectual and social history of the late imperial era. The ledgers originally functioned as guides to salvation for twelfth-century Taoists and Buddhists, but Brokaw shows how the literati of turbulent sixteenth-century China began to use them as aids in the struggle for official status through civil service examinations. The author describes how the responses of some Confucian thinkers to the popularity of the ledgers not only refined the orthodox Neo-Confucian method of self-cultivation but also revealed the serious ambiguity of the classic Confucian understanding of the relationship between fate and human action. Finally, she demonstrates that by the end of the seventeenth century the ledgers were used not so much to facilitate upward mobility as to promote social stability by prescribing standards that encouraged people to keep to their social places. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit

The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit PDF Author: Cynthia Joanne Brokaw
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400861942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
The ledgers of merit and demerit were a type of morality book that achieved sudden and widespread popularity in China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consisting of lists of good and bad deeds, each assigned a certain number of merit or demerit points, the ledgers offered the hope of divine reward to users "good" enough to accumulate a substantial sum of merits. By examining the uses of the ledgers during the late Ming and early Qing periods, Cynthia Brokaw throws new light on the intellectual and social history of the late imperial era. The ledgers originally functioned as guides to salvation for twelfth-century Taoists and Buddhists, but Brokaw shows how the literati of turbulent sixteenth-century China began to use them as aids in the struggle for official status through civil service examinations. The author describes how the responses of some Confucian thinkers to the popularity of the ledgers not only refined the orthodox Neo-Confucian method of self-cultivation but also revealed the serious ambiguity of the classic Confucian understanding of the relationship between fate and human action. Finally, she demonstrates that by the end of the seventeenth century the ledgers were used not so much to facilitate upward mobility as to promote social stability by prescribing standards that encouraged people to keep to their social places. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Living in the Balance of Grace and Faith

Living in the Balance of Grace and Faith PDF Author: Andrew Wommack
Publisher: Destiny Image Publishers
ISBN: 1680313967
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Popular Bible teacher and host of the Gospel Truth broadcast, Andrew Wommack takes on one of the biggest controversies of the church, the freedom of God's grace verses the faith of the believer. Wommack reveals that God's power is not released from only grace or only faith. God's blessings come through a balance of both grace and...

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work PDF Author: Alain De Botton
Publisher: Emblem Editions
ISBN: 0771026323
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
From the international bestselling author of The Architecture of Happiness and How Proust Can Change Your Life comes this lyrical, erudite look at our world of work. We spend most of our time at work, but what we do there rarely gets discussed in the sort of lyrical and descriptive prose our efforts surely deserve. Determined to correct this lapse, armed with a poetic perspective and his trademark philosophical sharpness, Alain de Botton heads out into the world of offices and factories, ready to take in the beauty, interest, and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace. De Botton spends time in and around some less familiar work environments, including warehouses, container ports, rocket launch pads, and power stations, and follows scientists, landscape painters, accountants, cookie manufacturers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and aircraft salesmen as they do their jobs. Along the way, de Botton tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can pose about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? To what end do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also our planet? Equally intrigued by work’s pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton offers a characteristically lucid and witty tour of the working day and night, in a book sure to inspire a range of life-changing and wise thoughts.

A Brief History of the Relationship Between Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism

A Brief History of the Relationship Between Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism PDF Author: Zhongjian Mou
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811972060
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description
Chinese traditions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism have a profoundly philosophical dimension. The three traditions are frequently referred to as three paths of moral teachings. In this book, Mou provides a clear account of the textual corpus that emerges to define each of these traditions and how this canonical axis was augmented by a continuing commentarial tradition as each generation reauthorized the written core for their own time and place. In his careful exegesis, Mou lays out the differences between the more religious reading of these traditions with their defining practices that punctuate the human journey through life, and the more intellectual and philosophical treatment of the texts that has and continues to produce a first-order culture of annotation that become integral to the traditions themselves. At the center of the alternative religious experience reflected throughout the teachings of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism is the project of personal cultivation as it comes to be expressed as robust growth in family and communal relations. For Mou, these three highly distinctive and yet complementary ways of thinking and living constitute a kind of moral ecology, wherein each of them complements the others as they stand in service to a different dimension of the human need for an educated spirituality.

Daoism

Daoism PDF Author: Ronnie L. Littlejohn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857738178
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
'The way that can be told is not the eternal Way; the name that can be named is not the eternal Name.' So begins the first verse of the mysterious "Dao De Jing", foundation text of the ancient Chinese religion of Daoism. Often attributed to semi-mythical sage Laozi, the origins of this enigmatic document - which probably came into being in the third century BCE - are actually unknown. But the tenets of Daoism laid down in the "Dao De Jing", and in later texts like the "Yi Jing" (or "Book of Changes"), continue to exert considerable fascination, particularly in the West, where in recent years they have been popularized by writers such as the novelist Ursula K LeGuin. In this fresh and engaging introduction to Daoism, Ronnie L Littlejohn discusses the central facets of a tradition which can sometimes seem as elusive as the slippery notion of 'Dao' itself. The author shows that fundamental to Daoism is the notion of 'Wu-wei', or non-action: a paradoxical idea emphasizing alignment of the self with the harmony of the universe, a universe in continual flux and change. This flux is expressed by the famous symbol of Dao, the 'taiji' representing yin and yang eternally correlating in the form of a harmonious circle. Exploring the great subtleties of this ancient religion, Littlejohn traces its development and encounters with Buddhism; its expression in art and literature; its fight for survival during the Cultural Revolution; and its manifestations in modern-day China and beyond.

Ghost Road Blues

Ghost Road Blues PDF Author: Jonathan Maberry
Publisher: Kensington
ISBN: 1496705394
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
"This is horror on a grand scale, reminiscent of Stephen King." --Publishers Weekly The book that launched the Pine Deep trilogy Thirty years ago, a blues musician called the Bone Man killed the devil at the crossroads, only to be beaten and hung like a scarecrow in a cornfield--or so the story goes. Today, the people of Pine Deep celebrate their town's grisly past by luring tourists to the famous haunted hayride, full of chills and scares. But this year, "The Spookiest Town in America" will learn the true meaning of fear. Its residents will see the real face of evil lurking behind the masks of ordinary people. They will feel it--in their hearts, in their bones, in their nightmares. Because evil never dies. It only grows stronger… "Jonathan Maberry's horror is rich and visceral. It's close to the heart…and close to the jugular." --Kevin J. Anderson "Maberry has the chops to craft stories at once intimate, epic, real, and horrific." --Bentley Little "Maberry spins great stories. His (Pine Deep) vampire novels are unique and masterful." --Richard Matheson "Maberry's works will be read for many, many years to come." --Ray Bradbury

Dead Right

Dead Right PDF Author: C. R. Caldwell
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0615171524
Category : Frontier and pioneer life
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description


Funding Evil

Funding Evil PDF Author: Rachel Ehrenfeld
Publisher: Bonus Books, Inc.
ISBN: 9781566252317
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A noted expert on terrorism uncovers the clandestine and sinister ways that Islamic terrorist groups finance their global network. Dr. Ehrenfeld's investigation also details how undected billions of dollars are spent to bring about chaos and destabilization.

The Voice of Public Theology

The Voice of Public Theology PDF Author: Ted Peters
Publisher: ATF Press
ISBN: 1922737674
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 850

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Book Description
Public theologians are already thundering like prophets at climate change and racial injustice. But the gale force winds of natural science blow through society as well. The public theologian should be on storm watch.

Blue Horse Dreaming

Blue Horse Dreaming PDF Author: Melanie Wallace
Publisher: MP Publishing
ISBN: 1596928727
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
'Blue Horse Dreaming' is the riveting story of Abigail Buwell, who is kidnapped by a Native American tribe and later redeemed by U.S. military troops. Distraught at being returned, Abigail views her redemption as yet another captivity with freedom still agonizingly out of reach. Ultimately, she remains a captive on many levels — in the shackles of otherness, language, physical confinement, womanhood, and motherhood. 'Blue Horse Dreaming' is also the story of Major Robert Cutter, the man into whose hands Abigail is delivered. Through his tormented eyes, we see a vividly compelling portrayal of life on a far-flung military outpost in the aftermath of the Civil War where troops and civilians suffered from crushing poverty, famine, and illness, just beyond the traces of an emigrant trail whose way is marked by gravesites. This is a novel of hauntings and of the haunted, in which the ghosts of the past, both beloved and despised, raise their heads to compete for the souls of the living left behind.