In the Shadows of the Dao

In the Shadows of the Dao PDF Author: Thomas Michael
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438458991
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Challenges standard views of the origins of the Daodejing, revealing the work’s roots in a tradition of physical cultivation. Thomas Michael’s study of the early history of the Daodejing reveals that the work is grounded in a unique tradition of early Daoism, one unrelated to other early Chinese schools of thought and practice. The text is associated with a tradition of hermits committed to yangsheng, a particular practice of physical cultivation involving techniques of breath circulation in combination with specific bodily movements leading to a physical union with the Dao. Michael explores the ways in which the text systematically anchored these techniques to a Dao-centered worldview. Including a new translation of the Daodejing, In the Shadows of the Dao opens new approaches to understanding the early history of one of the world’s great religious texts and great religious traditions. Thomas Michael specializes in early Chinese religion, philosophy, and shamanism, and is the author of The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse, also published by SUNY Press.

In the Shadows of the Dao

In the Shadows of the Dao PDF Author: Thomas Michael
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438458991
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book

Book Description
Challenges standard views of the origins of the Daodejing, revealing the work’s roots in a tradition of physical cultivation. Thomas Michael’s study of the early history of the Daodejing reveals that the work is grounded in a unique tradition of early Daoism, one unrelated to other early Chinese schools of thought and practice. The text is associated with a tradition of hermits committed to yangsheng, a particular practice of physical cultivation involving techniques of breath circulation in combination with specific bodily movements leading to a physical union with the Dao. Michael explores the ways in which the text systematically anchored these techniques to a Dao-centered worldview. Including a new translation of the Daodejing, In the Shadows of the Dao opens new approaches to understanding the early history of one of the world’s great religious texts and great religious traditions. Thomas Michael specializes in early Chinese religion, philosophy, and shamanism, and is the author of The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse, also published by SUNY Press.

The Pristine Dao

The Pristine Dao PDF Author: Thomas Michael
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791483177
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
The Laozi (Daodejing) and the Zhuangzi have long been familiar to Western readers and have served as basic sources of knowledge about early Chinese Daoism. Modern translations and studies of these works have encouraged a perception of Daoism as a mystical philosophy heavy with political implications that advises kings to become one with the Dao. Breaking with this standard approach, The Pristine Dao argues that the Laozi and the Zhuangzi participated in a much wider tradition of metaphysical discourse that included a larger corpus of early Chinese writings. This book demonstrates that early Daoist discourse possessed a distinct, textually constituted coherence and a religious sensibility that starkly differed from the intellectual background of all other traditions of early China, including Confucianism. The author argues that this discourse is best analyzed through its emergence from the mythological imagination of early China, and that it was unified by a set of notions about the Dao that was shared by all of its participants. The author introduces certain categories from the Western religious and philosophical traditions in order to bring out the distinctive qualities constituting this discourse and to encourage its comparison with other religious and philosophical traditions.

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy PDF Author: Eric S. Nelson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429678223
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the myriad things, and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history.

Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought

Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought PDF Author: Alexus McLeod
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350082554
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Contemporary scholars of Chinese philosophy often presuppose that early China possessed a naturalistic worldview, devoid of any non-natural concepts, such as transcendence. Challenging this presupposition head-on, Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod argue that non-naturalism and transcendence have a robust and significant place in early Chinese thought. This book reveals that non-naturalist positions can be found in early Chinese texts, in topics including conceptions of the divine, cosmogony, and apophatic philosophy. Moreover, by closely examining a range of early Chinese texts, and providing comparative readings of a number of Western texts and thinkers, the book offers a way of reading early Chinese Philosophy as consistent with the religious philosophy of the East and West, including the Abrahamic and the Brahmanistic religions. Co-written by a philosopher and theologian, this book draws out unique insights into early Chinese thought, highlighting in particular new ways to consider a range of Chinese concepts, including tian, dao, li, and you/wu.

Prodigal of Martial Dao

Prodigal of Martial Dao PDF Author: Jin GuChuanQi
Publisher: Funstory
ISBN: 1649208723
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 677

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Book Description
He was a racketeering little beggar, yet he had inadvertently obtained a strange book on martial arts ... He was a chivalrous young master, but because of his father, he was despised by all martial artists ... The little beggar saved the young master of the rich family, and thus saved the lives of all the people in the world ... [Close]

The Old Master

The Old Master PDF Author: Hongkyung Kim
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438440138
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
This unique, highly contextualized translation of the Laozi is based on the earliest known edition of the work, Text A of the Mawangdui Laozi, written before 202 BCE. No other editions are comparable to this text in its antiquity. Hongkyung Kim also incorporates the recent archaeological discovery of Laozi-related documents disentombed in 1993 in Guodian, seeing these documents as proto-materials for compilation of the Laozi and revealing clues for disentangling the work from complicated exegetical contentions. Kim makes extensive use of Chinese commentaries on the Laozi and also examines the classic Chinese texts closely associated with the formation of the work to illuminate the intellectual and historical context of Laozi's philosophy. Kim offers several original and thought-provoking arguments on the Laozi, including that the work was compiled during the Qin, which has traditionally been viewed as typical of Legalist states, and that the Laozi should be recognized as a syncretic text before being labeled a Daoist one.

The Dao of Madness

The Dao of Madness PDF Author: Alexus McLeod
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197505910
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
"Chapter One lays out the dominant views of self, agency, and moral responsibility in early Chinese Philosophy. The reason for this is that these views inform the ways early Chinese thinkers approach mental illness, as well as the role they see it playing in self-cultivation as a whole (whether they view it as problematic or beneficial, for example). In this chapter I offer a view of a number of dominant conceptions of mind, body, and agency in early Chinese thought, through a number of philosophical and medical texts"--

The Conceited Soldier King In City

The Conceited Soldier King In City PDF Author: Lao PaoEr
Publisher: Funstory
ISBN: 1636894828
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 859

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Book Description
A generation of weapons specialists returned to the city to find their childhood sweetheart, only to find out that her girlfriend was already someone else's. After going through so many humiliations, Qin Hao met the foreman at night. Elder sister, don't be afraid, come with me. Big brother Hao was powerful and domineering. Qin Hao began his new life.

The Mirror: Broken Wish

The Mirror: Broken Wish PDF Author: Julie C. Dao
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content
ISBN: 1368065147
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Sixteen-year-old Elva has a secret. She has visions and strange powers that she will do anything to hide. She knows the warnings about what happens to witches in their small village of Hanau. She's heard the terrible things people say about the Witch of the North Woods, and the malicious hunts that follow. But when Elva accidentally witnesses a devastating vision of the future, she decides she has to do everything she can to prevent it. Tapping into her powers for the first time, Elva discovers a magical mirror and its owner-none other than the Witch of the North Woods herself. As Elva learns more about her burgeoning magic, and the lines between hero and villain start to blur, she must find a way to right past wrongs before it's too late. The Mirror: Broken Wish marks the first book in an innovative four-book fairy-tale series written by Julie C. Dao, Dhonielle Clayton, Jennifer Cervantes, and L. L. McKinney, following one family over several generations, and the curse that plagues it.

The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism

The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism PDF Author: Harold D. Roth
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482728
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
In The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism, Harold D. Roth explores the origins and nature of the Daoist tradition, arguing that its creators and innovators were not abstract philosophers but, rather, mystics engaged in self-exploration and self-cultivation, which in turn provided the insights embodied in such famed works as the Daodejing and Zhuangzi. In this compilation of essays and chapters representing nearly thirty years of scholarship, Roth examines the historical and intellectual origins of Daoism and demonstrates how this distinctive philosophy emerged directly from practices that were essentially contemplative in nature. In the first part of the book, Roth applies text-critical methods to derive the hidden contemplative dimensions of classical Daoism. In the second part, he applies a "contemplative hermeneutic" to explore the relationship between contemplative practices and classical Daoist philosophy and, in so doing, brings early Daoist writings into conversation with contemporary contemplative studies. To this he adds an introduction in which he reflects on the arc and influence on the field of early Chinese thought of this rich vein of scholarship and an afterword in which he applies both interpretive methods to the vexing question of the authorship of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi. The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism brings to fruition the cumulative investigations and observations of a leading figure in the emerging field of contemplative studies as they pertain to a core component of early Chinese thought.