The Lieh-tzu is a collection of stories and philosophical musings of a sage of the same name who lived around the fourth century BCE. The subjects of Lieh-tzu's teachings range from the origin and purpose of life, the Taoist view of reality, and the nature of enlightenment to questions about training the body and mind, communication and understanding, and the importance of personal freedom.

This distinctive translation presents Lieh-tzu as a friendly, intimate companion speaking directly to the reader in a contemporary voice about life and death, fortune and misfortune, gain and loss, and questions to problems that we want to solve in our everyday lives. By providing answers to these practical questions, Lieh-tzu builds the foundations that are necessary for the higher levels of Taoist training.

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.

Latin American Christianity is too often presented as a unified story appended to the end of larger western narratives. And yet the stories of Christianity in Latin America are as varied and diverse as the lands and the peoples who live there. The unique political, ecclesial, social, and historical realities of each nation inevitably shaped a variety of Christian expressions in each. Now, for the first time, a resource exists to help students and scholars understand the histories of Latin American Christianity. An ideal resource, this handbook is designed as an accompaniment to reading and research in the field. After a generous overview to the history and theology of the region, the text moves nation-by-nation, providing timelines, outlines, and substantial introductions to the politics, people, movements, and relevant facts of Christianity as experienced in that nation. The result is an informative and eye-opening introduction to a kaleidoscope of efforts to articulate the meanings and implications of Christianity in the context of Latin America.

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.

Composed more than 2,000 years ago during a turbulent period of Chinese history, the Dao de jing set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Daoism, as this subtle but enduring philosophy came to be known, offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary. Now in this luminous new translation, based on the recently discovered ancient bamboo scrolls, China scholars Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the Dao de jing into our contemporary world.

Though attributed to Laozi, “the Old Master,” the Dao de jing is, in fact, of unknown authorship and may well have originated in an oral tradition four hundred years before the time of Christ. Eschewing philosophical dogma, the Dao de jing set forth a series of maxims that outlined a new perspective on reality and invited readers to embark on a regimen of self-cultivation. In the Daoist world view, each particular element in our experience sends out an endless series of ripples throughout the cosmos. The unstated goal of the Dao de jing is self-transformation–the attainment of personal excellence that flows from the world and back into it. Responding to the teachings of Confucius, the Dao de jing revitalizes moral behavior by recommending a spontaneity made possible by the cultivated “habits” of the individual.

In this elegant volume, Ames and Hall feature the original Chinese texts of the Dao de jing and translate them into crisp, chiseled English that reads like poetry. Each of the eighty-one brief chapters is followed by clear, thought-provoking commentary exploring the layers of meaning in the text. The book’s extensive introduction is a model of accessible scholarship in which Ames and Hall consider the origin of the text, place the emergence of Daoist philosophy in its historical and political context, and outline its central tenets.

The Dao de jing is a work of timeless wisdom and beauty, as vital today as it was in ancient China. This new version will stand as both a compelling introduction to the complexities of Daoist thought and as the classic modern English translation.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also (albeit incidentally) with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces ofliterature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays presented here constitute an attempt by a distinguished community of international scholars to provide a variety of exegeses of one of the Zhuangzi's most frequently rehearsed anecdotes, often referred to as "the Happy Fish debate." The editors have brought together essays from the broadest possible compass of scholarship, offering interpretations that range from formal logic to alternative epistemologies to transcendental mysticism. Many were commissioned by the editors and appear for the first time. Some of them have been available in other languages-Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish-and were translated especially for this anthology. And several older essays were chosen for the quality and variety of their arguments, formulated over years of engagement by their authors. All, however, demonstrate that the Zhuangzi as a text and as a philosophy is never one thing; indeed, it has always been and continues to be, many different things to many different people.

"I simply needed to know I was wanted" "I simply needed to know I was wanted," Kenny Loggins once said. This comes from a man who knew how much people loved him and adored his songs, from a man who has been probably more productive in his life than ninety nine percent of the population, from a man who lived his life discovering His Way, His Tao, and never stopped. There's a lesson to be learned here, the lesson that the great thinkers of the ages, from Laozi (Lao Tzu), Buddha and Christ, to "enlightened" era philosophers like Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer, to the modern spiritual leaders and thinkers of our age have been pondering and yet still do not have the answer to - "Can A Man Reach Perfection, the Spirit, the Divine, if you will?" Or perhaps there's no need to actually reach perfection and it is indeed the Way, the Tao that is our lives, that matters the most? Are we drifting aimlessly in a sea of change or are we looking for a beacon to guide us? For Kenny Loggins, that connection to the spiritual has always been his ability to, as he put it, " Stop and listen to the song playing in my head." This for him was the light, the love, the sense of Interconnectedness of the world as a whole and his songs are the records of what the Spirit imparted to him when he would allow himself to listen. For the man who was so connected to his inner self and to the spiritual around him, Kenny Loggins to this day is still discovering his Tao and that idea of never stop "listening to the songs that are playing in our heads," is, perhaps, his greatest gift to us. I hope you will embark on this journey with Kenny Loggins and me and we will all emerge wiser, better, and filled with the Love that is easy to find if we just stop and listen. After reading Kenny Loggins book, The Unimaginable Life, It was obvious he had underwent a major shift in his awareness to the innerconnectiveness, truth, and love of the universal divine love. Through his music he was able to demonstrate these new principles. With the release of the album "Leap of Faith" in 1991, Loggins brought forth his joy of this awakening and desired to share the incredible sense of love and belonging he had discovered. Even though by his own admission, his music had always had a deep spiritualness to it, it was with this album that he knew he was awakened to it and truly felt it. He was singing from his soul. He was singing an universal truth that has been here since the beginning of time. With Leap of Faith, his music took on a new higher level of spiritualness that reminded me of the same type of awareness that is in Zen and in Taoism. The principles of Truth, Love, and the Innerconnectiveness is essentially the same with Kenny Loggins as with Lao Tzu. Let's take a look at Kenny Loggins music from a Zen perspective. According to Osho, "Zen is like a telegram. It believes in the very essentials. It has no nonsense around it, no rituals, no chanting, no mantras, no scriptures- just small anecdotes. If you have the right awareness, they hit you directly in the heart. It is a very condensed and crystallized teaching, but it needs the person to be prepared for it. And the only preparation is meditative awareness. Zen and the Tao are very fragmentary, like telegrams, urgent, immediate, not giving you any explanation, but simply giving you the very essence, the perfume of thousand of flowers. You just have to be alert enough to absorb them. I'm trying to give a context, the right background, because I am talking to people who are not born in the Zen-Taoist tradition." Examples of these "telegrams" are throughout the lyrics of Loggins music. Like "Conviction of the Heart," this is a song that I believe that Lao Tzu could have written if he were alive today. This "telegram" drives home the very essence of the message with crystal clarity, "With any Conviction of the Heart, One with the earth, with the sky, One with everything in life, I believe that we'll survive, If we only try..."

Thousands of years ago the immortals, known as the Shining Ones, shipwrecked on the Chinese coast. Passing their shamanic practices - such as ecstatic flight and how to find power animals and spirit guides - on to the indigenous people, they, also, taught them the wisdom of the Medicine Wheel. From the Taoist Medicine Wheel came the principles of Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, the Eight Forces, the Chinese zodiac and the I Ching. The Taoist Medicine Wheel can, also, be found at the foundation of traditional Chinese medicine and the esoteric sexual practices of Taoist Alchemy. In the TAOIST SHAMAN, Master Mantak Chia and Kris Deva North explain the shamanic principles of the Taoist Medicine Wheel, how it is oriented on the Five Elements rather than the Four Directions, how it relates to the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac and the trigrams of the I Ching and how it aligns with the Eight Forces of the Pakua. Through illustrated teaching stories, the authors show how the energetic principles of each of the Eight Forces are reflected in the Eight Immortals. Revealing the wheel's application to sacred sexuality, they offer exercises from the "Wheel of Love" to strengthen and deepen relationships as well as providing a means to access the Tao of Ecstasy. . Explains the principles of the Taoist Medicine Wheel, including the five Elements, the animals of the Chinese zodiac, and the trigrams of the I Ching . Includes exercises from the "Wheel of love" to access the Tao of Ecstasy . Contains illustrated teaching stories about the Eight Immortals

Darkly you sweep on, Eternal Fugitive, round whose bodiless rush stagnant space frets into eddying bubbles of light. Is your heart lost to the Lover calling you across his immeasurable loneliness? Is the aching urgency of your haste the sole reason why your tangled tresses break into stormy riot and pearls of fire roll along your path as from a broken necklace? Your fleeting steps kiss the dust of this world into sweetness, sweeping aside all waste; the storm centred with your dancing limbs shakes the sacred shower of death over life and freshens her growth.

The Te of Piglet . . . in which a good deal of Taoist wisdom is revealed through the character and actions of A. A. Milne's Piglet. Piglet? Yes, Piglet. For the better than impulsive Tigger? or the gloomy Eeyore? or the intellectual Owl? or even the lovable Pooh? Piglet herein demonstrates a very important principle of Taoism: The Te--a Chinese word meaning Virtue--of the Small.

The Tao Te Ching whose authorship has been attributed to Lao Tzu, a record-keeper at the Zhou Dynasty court is a Chinese classic text. The text's true authorship and date of composition are still debated, although the oldest excavated text dates back to the late 4th century BC. The text is fundamental to the Philosophical Taoism and strongly influenced other schools, such as Legalism and Neo-Confucianism. This ancient book is also central in Chinese religion, not only for Religious Taoism but Chinese Buddhism, which when first introduced into China was largely interpreted through the use of Daoist words and concepts. Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, and even gardeners have used the book as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside East Asia, and is amongst the most translated works in world literature.

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.

THE Yin Chih Wen is a religio-ethical tract, which, in spite of its popularity all over the Middle Kingdom, has not as yet, so far as we know, been translated into any Western language. Next to the Kan-Ying P'ien it is read and studied and taught both in schools and at the home, and there is probably no family in China without it; but its contents are very little known in the. Western world, and we have only once met with references to it by Professor Douglas in his Confucianism and Taouism under the title of "Book of Secret Blessings."

According to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote the eighty-one short chapters of his Tao Te Ching around the sixth to fourth centuries B.C.E. It became the foundational philosophical work of Taoism, significantly inspired early masters of Zen Buddhism, and, for more than a century, has been widely embraced in the West as an astounding work of universal truths. Through deceptively simple imagery, Lao Tzu gave us a guide to life, both spiritual and physical, that is no less valid today than when it was written more than 2,500 years ago. Claire Sit, the author of The Lord's Prayer: An Eastern Perspective, brings us her translation of the Tao Te Ching and, through her deep study and understanding of that text, examines each chapter and places it in the light of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. In the process, she shows how-although the path of Tao and that of Anthroposophy seem quite different-they complement each other and share many qualities and, in many ways, illumine the hidden truths each has to offer. As in Anthroposophy, on the path of Tao one looks within to know the world and into the world to know one's self. Just as we can learn much about ourselves by looking outward to the world and to others, we can also better understand the depths of Anthroposophy by penetrating wisdom traditions beyond our own path. Indeed, Lao Tzu and Anthroposophy will generate much food for reflection and meditation for the reader. According to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote the eighty-one short chapters of his Tao Te Ching around the sixth to fourth centuries B.C.E. It became the foundational philosophical work of Taoism, significantly inspired early masters of Zen Buddhism, and, for more than a century, has been widely embraced in the West as an astounding work of universal truths. Through deceptively simple imagery, Lao Tzu gave us a guide to life, both spiritual and physical, that is no less valid today than when it was written more than 2,500 years ago. Claire Sit, the author of The Lord's Prayer: An Eastern Perspective, brings us her translation of the Tao Te Ching and, through her deep study and understanding of that text, examines each chapter and places it in the light of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. In the process, she shows how-although the path of Tao and that of Anthroposophy seem quite different-they complement each other and share many qualities and, in many ways, illumine the hidden truths each has to offer. As in Anthroposophy, on the path of Tao one looks within to know the world and into the world to know one's self. Just as we can learn much about ourselves by looking outward to the world and to others, we can also better understand the depths of Anthroposophy by penetrating wisdom traditions beyond our own path. Indeed, Lao Tzu and Anthroposophy will generate much food for reflection and meditation for the reader.

Varvann er rent i en smaragdstrom manelyset hvitt pa Frostfjell tanker tier og anden blir klar tomhet i sikte og verden blir taus Diktene til Hanshan, Shih-te og Feng-kan kan leses pa mange ulike niva, som zen-refleksjoner over utfordringer langs Veien, som livet til en politisk flyktning som har forlatt alt til fordel for et liv i fjellheimen, eller som en menneskelig lengsel etter et enklere liv i harmoni med naturen. Hanshan ble kjent i Vesten gjennom beat-generasjonens skribenter. Gary Snyder oversatte et utvalg av diktene og pa engelsk ble Hanshan kjent som Cold Mountain. Videre dedikerte Jack Kerouacs Dharma Bums til denne hemmelighetsfulle dikterens minne. Siden etterkrigstiden har Cold Mountain eller Frostfjell fasinert og inspirert zennister, taoister, terapeuter, bohemer og fjellentusiaster i Europa og Amerika med sine gatefulle og innsiktsfulle dikt. I denne boken utgis alle diktene for forste gang pa norsk.

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 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.