During the Spring-Autumn period (722–420 BCE) and the time of the Warring States (480–222 CE), China was in great turmoil. Intellectuals and social reformers sifted through their wisdom and knowledge of China’s experiences up to then, attempting to find a solution to their situation. The Tao Te Ching, one of the foremost products of the era, is a metaphysical book, a source of the highest political thought. Many readers have found in it representations of the highest ideals of human endeavors. Yet given its likely oral origin and the technological limitations of its early textual transmission, the Tao Te Ching raises numerous questions related to authorship, date of origin, internal organization, textual coherence, and editorial history. Of the scores of translations of the Tao Te Ching, the great majority are based on the edition prepared by the third-century scholar Wang Pi. Wang’s profound commentary is itself a deeply influential text in the development of Taoist thought. Paul Lin presents the commentary, otherwise unavailable in English, in the form of footnotes accompanying his meticulous rendition of the Taoist classic.

During the Spring-Autumn period (722-420 BCE) and the time of the Warring States (480-222 CE), China was in great turmoil. Intellectuals and social reformers sifted through their wisdom and knowledge of China's experiences up to then, attempting to find a solution to their situation. The Tao Te Ching, one of the foremost products of the era, is a metaphysical book, a source of the highest political thought. Many readers have found in it representations of the highest ideals of human endeavors. Yet given its likely oral origin and the technological limitations of its early textual transmission, the Tao Te Ching raises numerous questions related to authorship, date of origin, internal organization, textual coherence, and editorial history. Of the scores of translations of the Tao Te Ching, the great majority are based on the edition prepared by the third-century scholar Wang Pi. Wang's profound commentary is itself a deeply influential text in the development of Taoist thought. Paul Lin presents the commentary, otherwise unavailable in English, in the form of footnotes accompanying his meticulous rendition of the Taoist classic.

During the Spring-Autumn period (722–420 BCE) and the time of the Warring States (480–222 CE), China was in great turmoil. Intellectuals and social reformers sifted through their wisdom and knowledge of China’s experiences up to then, attempting to find a solution to their situation. The Tao Te Ching, one of the foremost products of the era, is a metaphysical book, a source of the highest political thought. Many readers have found in it representations of the highest ideals of human endeavors. Yet given its likely oral origin and the technological limitations of its early textual transmission, the Tao Te Ching raises numerous questions related to authorship, date of origin, internal organization, textual coherence, and editorial history. Of the scores of translations of the Tao Te Ching, the great majority are based on the edition prepared by the third-century scholar Wang Pi. Wang’s profound commentary is itself a deeply influential text in the development of Taoist thought. Paul Lin presents the commentary, otherwise unavailable in English, in the form of footnotes accompanying his meticulous rendition of the Taoist classic.

A new translation of the Tao-te Ching of Laozi as interpreted by Wang Bi--whose commentaries following each statement flesh out the text so that it speaks to the modern Western reader as it has to Asians for centuries.

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.

Did Chinese mysticism vanish after its first appearance in ancient Taoist philosophy, to surface only after a thousand years had passed, when the Chinese had adapted Buddhism to their own culture? This first integrated survey of the mystical dimension of Taoism disputes the commonly accepted idea of such a hiatus. Covering the period from the Daode jing to the end of the Tang, Livia Kohn reveals an often misunderstood Chinese mystical tradition that continued through the ages. Influenced by but ultimately independent of Buddhism, it took forms more various than the quietistic withdrawal of Laozi or the sudden enlightenment of the Chan Buddhists. On the basis of a new theoretical evaluation of mysticism, this study analyzes the relationship between philosophical and religious Taoism and between Buddhism and the native Chinese tradition. Kohn shows how the quietistic and socially oriented Daode jing was combined with the ecstatic and individualistic mysticism of the Zhuangzi, with immortality beliefs and practices, and with Buddhist insight meditation, mind analysis, and doctrines of karma and retribution. She goes on to demonstrate that Chinese mysticism, a complex synthesis by the late Six Dynasties, reached its zenith in the Tang, laying the foundations for later developments in the Song traditions of Inner Alchemy, Chan Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism.

Ki emerged first and is the thread that runs through the millennia of Chinese philosophy. Ri was added later in Sung times and, together, ki and ri became the mainstay and core of Chinese beliefs in Sun (960-1279), Ming (1279-1644) and Ch’ing (1644-1911) times. In this remarkable and inspirational study, researched over many years, the author takes the view that ki can profitably be compared with European philosophy. In China, the ki thread appears as an original ‘primal ki’ (genki), which is the source of all things and affairs. The search is for the whole. In Greece, and later in Europe, the thinking goes in the opposite direction: it searches for the exact truth in the independent units of the cosmos, the atoms, the truth being found in the part. The study has three separate but interrelated parts. Part I delineates the ki and ri philosophy as it developed in China; Part II presents Confucian study and learning in Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868); Part III finishes with conclusions about things East and West and the situation in today’s world. From Taoism to Einstein will have wide appeal to students of Eastern religion and philosophy, as well as students of East Asian history and political science, and Chinese and Japanese studies in general.

The term ''mysticism'' has never been consistently defined or employed, either in religious traditions or in academic discourse. The essays in this volume offer ways of defining what mysticism is, as well as methods for grappling with its complexity in a classroom.This volume addresses the diverse literature surrounding mysticism in four interrelated parts. The first part includes essays on the tradition and context of mysticism, devoted to drawing out and examining the mystical element in many religious traditions. The second part engages traditions and religio-cultural strands in which ''mysticism'' is linked to other terms, such as shamanism, esotericism, and Gnosticism. The volume's third part focuses on methodological strategies for defining ''mysticism,'' with respect to varying social spaces. The final essays show how contemporary social issues and movements have impacted the meaning, study, and pedagogy of mysticism.Teaching Mysticism presents pedagogical reflections on how best to communicate mysticism from a variety of institutional spaces. It surveys the broad range of meanings of mysticism, its utilization in the traditions, the theories and methods that have been used to understand it, and provides critical insight into the resulting controversies.