First Published in 1999. This ancient Chinese manual of spiritual alchemy was brought to the West in translation by missionary and theologian Richard Wilhelm who is assisted in this book by Carl Jung. Averse to the blind aping of oriental ways, Jung suggests that Eastern treasures are best used to enrich our understanding of the work we have to do on ourselves and our culture.

This book examines the ways in which Confucian political culture operates in contemporary Chinese politics and influences its development. The author argues that the authoritarian political culture performs functions similar to the democratic political culture, drawing on a wide range of data-surveys, interviews, archives, Public Hearing Meeting records, and the Party Congress Reports of the Chinese Communist Party-to substantiate and illustrate these arguments. In an authoritarian political system, the "legitimating values" of the authoritarian political culture persuade the public of their government's legitimacy and the "engaging values" equip individuals with a set of cultural dispositions, resources, and skills to acquire political resources and services from the state. In the context of Chinese politics, personal connections infused with affection and trust-the Social Capital in the Confucian culture-facilitate political engagement. Despite the country's continuous advocacy for the "rule of law," state and public perceptions of legal professionals and legal practices, such as mediation and lawyer-judge relations, are fundamentally moralized. A new "people ideology," which originated in the Confucian political culture, has been re-appropriated to legitimate the Party's hegemonic governing position and policies.

Japanese Religions on the Internet draws attention to how religion is being presented, represented and discussed on the Japanese Internet. Its intention is to contribute to wider discussions about religion and the Internet by providing an important example - based on one of the Internet's most prominent languages - of how new media technologies are being used and are impacting on religion in the East-Asian context, while also developing further our understandings of religion in a technologically advanced country. Scholars studying the relationship of religion and the Internet can no longer work on prevailing notions that have thus far characterised the field, such as the assumption that the Internet is a Western-centric phenomenon and that studies of English-language sites relating to religion can provide a viable model for wider analyses of the topic. Despite this growing amount of research on religion and the Internet, comparatively little has focused on non-Western cultures. The general field of study relating to religion and the Internet has paid scant attention to Asian contexts. The field needs a full-length and comprehensive study that focuses on the Japanese religious world and the Internet, not merely to redress the imbalances of the field thus far, but also because such studies will be central to the emerging field of the study of religion and the Internet in future. They will provide important means of developing new theories, constructing new paradigms and understanding the underlying dynamics of this new media form.

Confucian Reflections: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times is about the early Chinese Confucian classic the "Analects" Lunyu, attributed to the founder of the Confucian tradition, Kongzi (551-479 bce) and who is more commonly referred to as "Confucius" in the West. Philip J. Ivanhoe argues that the Analects is as relevant and important today as it has proven to be over the course of its more than 2000 year history, not only for the people who live in East Asian societies but for all human beings. The fact that this text has inspired so many talented people for so long, across a range of complex, creative, rich, and fascinating cultures offers a strong prima facie reason for thinking that the insights the Analects contains are not bound by either the particular time or cultural context in which the text took shape.

This volume investigates and presents the salient features of Shinto through a long history of development from its remote past up to the present. It is a historical study of Shinto from a scientific point of view, illustrating the higher aspects of the religion, compiled on strict lines of religious comparison.

Confucianism, Chinese History and Society is a collection of essays authored by world renowned scholars on Chinese studies, including Professor Ho Peng Yoke (Needham Research Institute), Professor Leo Ou-fan Lee (Harvard University), Professor Philip Y S Leung (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Professor Liu Ts'un-Yan (Australian National University), Professor Tu Wei-Ming (Harvard University), Professor Wang Gungwu (National University of Singapore) and Professor Yue Daiyun (Peking University). The volume covers many important themes and topics in Chinese Studies, including the Confucian perspective on human rights, Nationalism and Confucianism, Confucianism and the development of Science in China, crisis and innovation in contemporary Chinese cultures, plurality of cultures in the context of globalization, and comparative study of the city cultures in modern China. These essays were originally delivered at the Professor Wu Teh Yao Memorial Lectures. Wu Teh Yao (1917-1994) was an educator, political scientist, specialist in Confucianism and original drafter of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Neo-Confucianism was the major philosophical tradition in China for most of the past millennium. This Companion is the first volume to provide a comprehensive introduction, in accessible English, to the Neo-Confucian philosophical thought of representative Chinese thinkers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. It provides detailed insights into changing perspectives on key philosophical concepts and their relationship with one another.

Hagiographies or idealized biographies which recount the lives of saints, bodhisattvas and other charismatic figures have been the meeting place for myth and experience. In medieval Europe, the 'lives of saints' were read during liturgical celebrations and the texts themselves were treated as sacred objects. In Japan, it was believed that those who read the biographies of lofty monks would acquire merit. Since hagiographies were written or compiled by 'believers', the line between fantasy and reality was often obscured. This study of the bodhisattva Gyoki - regarded as the monk who started the largest social welfare movement in Japan - illustrates how Japanese Buddhist hagiographers chose to regard a single monk's charitable activities as a miraculous achievement that shaped the course of Japanese history.

Through a cultural analysis of the symbols of death - flesh, blood, bones, souls, time numbers, food and money - Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore throws light upon the Chinese perception of death and how they cope with its eventuality. In the seeming mass of religious rituals and beliefs, it suggests that there is an underlying logic to the rituals. This in turn leads Kiong to examine the interrelationship between death and the socioeconomic value system of China as a whole.

This unique book brings a fresh interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of ancient Chinese history, creating a historical model for the emergence of cultural mainstays by applying recent dramatic findings in the fields of neuroscience and cultural evolution. The centrality in Chinese culture of a deep reverence for the lives of preceding generations, filial piety, is conventionally attributed to Confucius (551-479 B.C.), who viewed hierarchical family relations as foundational for social order. Here, Porter argues that Confucian conceptions of filiality themselves evolved from a systemized set of behaviors and thoughts, a mental structure, which descended from a specific Neolithic mindset, and that this psychological structure was contoured by particular emotional conditions experienced by China's earliest farmers. Using case study analysis from Neolithic sky observers to the dynastic cultures of the Shang and Western Zhou, the book shows how filial piety evolved as a structure of feeling, a legacy of a cultural predisposition toward particular moods and emotions that were inherited from the ancestral past. Porter also brings new urgency to the topic of ecological grief, linking the distress central to the evolution of the filial structure to its catalyst in an environmental crisis. With a blended multidisciplinary approach combining social neuroscience, cultural evolution, cognitive archaeology, and historical analysis, this book is ideal for students and researchers in neuropsychology, religion, and Chinese culture and history.

At the core of Daoism are ancient ideas concerning the Way, the fundamental process of existence (the Dao). Humans, as individuals and as a society, should be aligned with the Dao in order to attain the fullness of life and its potential. This book presents the history of early Daoism, tracing the development of the tradition between the first and the fifth centuries CE. This was an era of political instability and social turmoil in China but it was also a period of cultural efflorescence, which saw the appearance of new forms of literature and the integration of Buddhism in Chinese society and culture. Several Daoist movements emerged during this period, the best known being the Celestial Masters in the second century. Other relatively well-known lineages include the Upper Clarity and the Numinous Treasure lineages that appeared in the fourth century. The labels applied to these lineages refer to either textual or ritual categories and are very difficult to determine socially, and they obscure the social reality of early medieval China. The author argues that these lineages should be understood not as schools but as narrowly defined associations of masters and disciples, and he describes these diverse social groupings as "communities of practice." Shedding new light on a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, the formation of Daoism as a new religion in early medieval China, this book presents a major step forward in Daoist Studies.

These are questions to which oriental thinkers have given a wide range of philosophical answers that are intellectually and imaginatively stimulating. Thirty-Five Oriental Philosophers is a succinctly informative introduction to the thought of thirty-five important figures in the Chinese, Indian, Arab, Japanese and Tibetan philosophical traditions. Thinkers covered include founders such as Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha and Muhammed, as well as influential modern figures such as Gandhi, Mao Tse-Tung, Suzuki and Nishida. The book is divided into sections, in which an introduction to the tradition it covers precedes the essays on its individual philosophers. Notes, further reading lists, and cross-references provide the student with a clear route to further study. There is a glossary of key terms at the end of the book.

Japan is one of the most urbanised and industrialised countries in the world. Yet the Japanese continue to practise a variety of religious rituals and ceremonies despite the high-tech, highly regimented nature of Japanese society. Ceremony and Ritual in Japan focuses on the traditional and religious aspects of Japanese society from an anthropological perspective, presenting new material and making cross-cultural comparisons. The chapters in this collection cover topics as diverse as funerals and mourning, sweeping, women's roles in ritual, the division of ceremonial foods into bitter and sweet, the history of a shrine, the playing of games, the exchange of towels and the relationship between ceremony and the workplace. The book provides an overview of the meaning of tradition, and looks at the way in which new ceremonies have sprung up in changing circumstances, while old ones have been preserved, or have developed new meanings.

Tao Te Ching is a classic Chinese text, probably from around the 6th century BC. While the authorship is still debated, most of the text is attributed to Lao-Tzu ("Old Master"), who was a court record keeper during the Zhou Dynasty. The text is considered an essential element of Taoist philosophy as well as having significant influences on Chinese religions, including Buddhism. This is a classic translation of the book by James Legge. Visit www.ArcManor.com for other, similar books.

This is the first work available in English which addresses Zhuangzi's thought as a whole. It presents an interpretation of the Zhuangzi, a book in thirty-three chapters that is the most important collection of Daoist texts in early China. The author introduces a complex reading that shows the unity of Zhuangzi's thought, in particular in his views of action, language, and ethics. By addressing methodological questions that arise in reading Zhuangzi, a hermeneutics is developed which makes understanding Zhuangzi's religious thought possible. A theoretical contribution to comparative philosophy and the cross-cultural study of religious traditions, the book serves as an introduction to Daoism for graduate students in religion, philosophy, and East Asian Studies.

Wisdom's Way is a collection of true stories from ancient China. Filled with palace intrigue, ambitious warlords, greedy swindlers, and justice-seeking wise men, each story evokes the legendary wisdom of the Far East. These delightful tales offer both historical lessons and insight into human relationships, from the grand maneuvering of emperors to a pair of tradesmen arguing over an old coat.

This thought-provoking work presents Confucianism as a living ethical tradition with contemporary relevance. Developing Confucian ethical ideas within a contemporary context, this book discusses the nature of virtue, the distinction between public and private, the value of spontaneity, and more.

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the Analects. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows whom he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him and the Analects' authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way why pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation.

The "Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy" will be part of the handbook series "Dao Companion to Chinese Philosophy," published by Springer. This series is being edited by Professor Huang Yong, Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown University and Editor of "Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy." This volume includes original essays by scholars from the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China, discussing important philosophical writings by Japanese Confucian philosophers. The main focus, historically, will be the early-modern period (1600-1868), when much original Confucian philosophizing occurred, and Confucianism in modern Japan.

The "Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy" makes a significant contribution to the Dao handbook series, and equally to the field of Japanese philosophy. This new volume including original philosophical studies will be a major contribution to the study of Confucianism generally and Japanese philosophy in particular.

This volume contains nine chapters of translation, by a range of leading scholars, focusing on core themes in the philosophy of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), one of the most influential Chinese thinkers of the later Confucian tradition. It includes an Introduction to Zhu's life and thought, a chronology of important events in his life, and a list of key terms of art. Zhu Xi's philosophy offers the most systematic and comprehensive expression of the Confucian tradition; he sought to explain and show the connections between the classics, relate them to a range of contemporary philosophical issues concerning the metaphysical underpinnings of the tradition, and defend Confucianism against competing traditions such as Daoism and Buddhism. He elevated the Four Books-i.e. the Analects, Mengzi, Great Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean-to a new and preeminent position within the Confucian canon and his edition and interpretation of these four texts was adopted as the basis for the Imperial Examination System, which served as the pathway to officialdom and success in traditional Chinese society. Zhu Xi's interpretation remained the orthodox tradition until the collapse of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and exerted a profound and enduring influence on how Confucianism was understood in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What enables women to hold firm in their beliefs in the face of long years of hostile persecution by the Communist party/state? How do women withstand daily discrimination and prolonged hardship under a Communist regime which held rejection of religious beliefs and practices as a patriotic duty? Through the use of archival and ethnographic sources and of rich life testimonies, this book provides a rare glimpse into how women came to find solace and happiness in the flourishing, female-dominated traditions of local Islamic women's mosques, Daoist nunneries and Catholic convents in China. These women passionately ? often against unimaginable odds ? defended sites of prayer, education and congregation as their spiritual home and their promise of heaven, but also as their rightful claim to equal entitlements with men.