The Tao Te Ching is one of China's ancient books of wisdom. This translation accurately reflects the original Chinese, so readers can learn what the Tao Te Ching really says. Beautiful black and white photographs of nature illustrate this book throughout.

Lao Tzu, who lived in China approximately 2600 years ago, tells us to seek that natural nameless state where there is peace and harmony. This book explores the way of Lao Tzu: the destination that Lao Tzu tells us to seek; the directions that Lao Tzu offers to help us to reach the destination; the problems that Lao Tzu tells us we will encounter trying to reach the destination; and finally the strategies that Lao Tzu offers to help us to overcome these problems and to successfully follow his directions. This book is part of the series 'Ways of the World' in which the ways of the founders of various religions and philosophies are explored. Each book follows the same format, exploring: the destination that we are told to seek; the directions offered to help us to reach that destination; problems that we are told will hinder us on our way; and finally strategies that are offered to help us to overcome these problems and to successfully follow the directions. This format not only helps to better understand the way, but also makes it easier to compare the various ways.

Tao Te Ching: The Ageless Book of Wisdom for Readers of All Ages brings the teachings of the legendary Taoist master, Lao-Tzu, to a wider, if not necessarily younger audience. In a departure from most other attempts, the book employs prose, rather than the poetic verse of the original manuscript. With brevity and clarity Villano captures Lao-Tzu's principal lessons: clues for welcoming the Tao into our lives, and for constructing a world of societal balance and harmony. Villano's prose is simple and breezy - a less-is-more literary style that appeals to younger readers and yet somehow seems enduringly consistent with Taoist philosophy.

Every journey is an adventure, but when a major earthquake strikes Japan, triggering cataclysmic events, the author's travels are cut short. What starts out as a quest to discover the sacred meanings of the native Shinto religion, becomes something much more profound. When all of the fail-safe mechanisms at Fukushima Daiichi are overrun, and thirty million lives in the greater Tokyo region are in peril, everyone is forced to confront the reality that nuclear energy is not the "clean alternative" they were led to believe. Japan is the only country to have suffered the horror of atomic bombs, and the Japanese commitment to global nuclear disarmament is well known. But somehow, the resolve to see the dismantling of the world's nuclear arsenals didn't extend to the nuclear power industry. In the frightful days immediately after March 11th, 2011, the world awoke to the realization that nuclear power stations might be even more deadly than atomic bombs. The author chronicles the events as they occur, and reveals the uniquely Japanese way of remaining optimistic in the face of multiple catastrophes.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Analects of Confucius, is the collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius and his contemporaries. Confucius believed that the welfare of a country depended on the moral cultivation of its people, beginning from the nation's leadership. He believed that individuals could begin to cultivate an all-encompassing sense of virtue through ren, and that the most basic step to cultivating ren was devotion to one's parents and older siblings. He taught that one's individual desires do not need to be suppressed, but that people should be educated to reconcile their desires via rituals and forms of propriety, through which people could demonstrate their respect for others and their responsible roles in society.

The present geopolitical rise of India and China evokes much interest in the comparative study of these two ancient Asian cultures. There are various studies comparing Western and Indian philosophies and religions, and there are similar works comparing Chinese and Western philosophy and religion. However, so far there is no systemic comparative study of Chinese and Indian philosophies and religions. Therefore there is a need to fill this gap. As such, Brahman and Dao: Comparative Studies of Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion is a pioneering volume in that it highlights possible bridges between these two great cultures and complex systems of thought, with seventeen chapters on various Indo-Chinese comparative topics. The book focuses on four themes: metaphysics and soteriology; ethics; body, health and spirituality; and language and culture.

This innovative work on Chinese concepts of the afterlife is the result of Stephen Bokenkamp's groundbreaking study of Chinese scripture and the incorporation of Indic concepts into the Chinese worldview. Here, he explores how Chinese authors, including Daoists and non-Buddhists, received and deployed ideas about rebirth from the third to the sixth centuries C.E. In tracing the antecedents of these scriptures, Bokenkamp uncovers a stunning array of non-Buddhist accounts that provide detail on the realms of the dead, their denizens, and human interactions with them. Bokenkamp demonstrates that the motive for the Daoist acceptance of Buddhist notions of rebirth lay not so much in the power of these ideas as in the work they could be made to do.

2012 Reprint of 1956 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The "Book of Tea" by Okakura Kakuz is a long essay linking the role of tea (Teaism) to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of Japanese life. Addressed to a western audience, it was originally written in English and is one of the great English Tea classics. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was proficient at communicating his thoughts to the Western mind. In his book, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuz argues that this tea-induced simplicity affected art and architecture, and he was a long-time student of the visual arts. He ends the book with a chapter on Tea Masters. This edition contains a new forward and a biographical sketch augmenting the original 1906 edition.

This book is intended to give the seeker of Truth a devotional practice that is designed to aid in the ultimate goal of union with God or the Divine. The Sai Krishna Premopasana assists the seeker to become aware of the divinity that is inherent within us all. When the act of love, the lover, and the object of love all become one, the individual disappears into Pure Being-into that which is eternal. The Sri Sai Krishna Mandalam-the Yantra of Sw ta Dweepam (Golokam)-was specifically prepared to help those interested in Sai Krishna Premopasana. This approach has seven steps and each step has its own mantra and tantra. The seventh step is the ultimate step representing the seat of Consciousness. Religions are many but the goal is one, and the language of love is the universal way to this realization.

The object of this little book is to show how the Mahayanistic view of life and of the world differs markedly from that of Hinayanism, which is generally taken as Buddhism by Westerners, to explain how the religion of Buddha has adapted itself to its environment in the Far East, and also to throw light on the existing state of the spiritual life of modern Japan.

A presentation of the "Mi Yingchan," a Daoist practice manual known as "Secret of the Shining Toad."

Imagine China, late Warring States circa 250 BCE. Loose-knit associations of spiritual virtuosi have emerged from the evenfall of unwritten history possessing an archetypal understanding of nature and human potential. Their influence is felt reverberating through many social spheres including religion, government, arts, literature, and ethics, and they are becoming renowned for their contributions to the sciences, especially medicine, cosmology, and natural correspondence. Inspiring this remarkable historic movement are masters and adepts of the Way revered as shenxian - spiritual transcendents whose acutely insightful culture stands at the genesis of Daoist aspirations. Interestingly however, these fascinating luminaries, many of whom will be remembered as legendary immortals, have somehow managed to step into history unnamed.

In this study, these ancestral wayfarers are referred to as Yin Hejia, or Silver River people. By meticulously piecing together their legacy from fragments of attestations scattered among classic literature such as "Zhuangzi," "Baopuzi," and "Shenxian zhuang" to name only a few, we discover clear precedence for a well-defined praxis. Not surprisingly however, the systematic approach through which they cultivated spiritual transcendency remains disorganized in modern perceptions, split up as it is among so many different sources. Organizing and empowering this knowledge is particularly important now, as indigenous constructions of Daoism are absorbed into a global context and diligence in practicing orthodox methods aimed at profound levels of attainment has become virtually unheard of.

Here, for the first time, is a complete cultivation manual addressed to contemporary practitioners who are interested in shenxian arts as recorded and handed down by great adepts from the past. Presented in traditional style and divided into a series of time-honored graduations, the text is fully annotated and set to a rigorous standard of scholarly range. Distinguished in terms of accessibility and utility, in all it conveys a powerful overture to venerating the Dao through accommodating exquisite dimensions of human potential.

First Edition released May 2014.

As China is rapidly reemerging as the world's dominant economic powerhouse that it had been until the mid-eighteenth century, interest in its religions and philosophies is on the rise. Just as the history and culture of Western civilizations can hardly be grasped without a measure of knowledge about Christianity, an understanding of Chinese civilization and its history seems impossible without some comprehension of Daoism. Though it has long been clear that modern Daoism has its roots in Daoist movements of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), research on premodern Daoism had been largely neglected. Published in six languages (Italian, French, English, German, Chinese, and Japanese), the pioneering studies by Monica Esposito (1962-2011) on Qing Daoism have been instrumental in kindling keen scholarly interest both in the West and in China and Japan. This book presents corrected and augmented versions of three of Dr Esposito's seminal articles that had originally been published in English ("Daoism in the Qing," "The Longmen School and its Controversial History," and "Longmen Daoism in Qing China: Doctrinal Ideal and Local Reality") along with English versions of two articles that had hitherto only been available in Japanese and Chinese: "Beheading the Red Dragon: The Heart of Feminine Alchemy" and "An Example of Daoist and Tantric Interaction during the Qing Dynasty: The Longmen xinzong." In addition, this volume contains a bibliography of all her publications and a detailed index.

Since the 1970s, the influence of oriental philosophy, in particular the Buddhist tradition, in the field of psychotherapy has been quite profound. Taoism has not had the same impact on modern psychotherapeutic models. Yet, as early as 1936, Alva LaSalle Kitselman who was, at that time, studying oriental languages at Stanford University, with a particular emphasis on Sanskrit, created his own version of the classic text of the Taoist tradition - the book of Lao Tzu entitled the Tao Teh King. His version of this classic was, as he said, a restatement rather than being a new translation from the ancient Chinese. After its publication, and through a chance encounter with one of the librarians at Stanford, he began to realise that Taoism and Taoist philosophy could be used as a form of therapy, specifically in the form he called 'non-directiveness' or 'non-directive therapy.' In the 1950s Kitsleman published an audio lecture on his early experiences using the Tao Teh King entitled 'An Ancient Therapy'. In the lecture he compared and contrasted his application of Taoist philosophy in psychotherapy with the 'client centred therapy' approach of Carl R. Rogers. This new publication of Kitselman's version of the Tao Teh King and the story of his discovery will hopefully ignite a real interest in combining the wisdom of this classic Taoist text with modern psychotherapeutic methodologies. A. L. 'Beau' Kitselman was a remarkable man, a genius whose interests ranged from mathematics, science and computer programming to exploring the potential of the human mind.

The Armor of Amaterasu Ohkami is a collection of essays on the advanced practices of Shinto Magic, according to the Art of Ninzuwu Tradition. The reader should have a working knowledge of the Art of Ninzuwu and its philosophy. This text is not for the beginner. It can, however, be used as a reference for those interested in Esoteric Shinto.

Confucianism is the guiding creed for a quarter of mankind, yet hardly anyone has explained it in plain terms - until now. Written in a style both intelligible and enjoyable for the global audience, The Great Equal Society distils the core ideas of the major Confucian classics and shows how their timeless wisdom can be applied to the modern world. It also introduces pragmatic suggestions emanating from Confucius and his followers for ensuring good governance, building a humane economy and educating moral leaders. The book's core message of inner morality, first expounded by Confucius millennia ago, will resonate on both sides of the Pacific, and its sweeping survey of the hot topics today - dysfunctional government, crony capitalism, and the erosion of ethics in both Wall Street and Main Street, among others - will breathe new life to Confucian teachings while providing much-needed answers to our urgent social problems. The Great Equal Society is written by Young-oak Kim, a Korean thinker whom Wikipedia describes as "the nation's leading philosopher dealing with public issues and explaining Oriental philosophy to the public," and Jung-kyu Kim, a talented trilingual writer who has published works in English, Japanese and Korean.