Women are the creators, the endless possibilities and origins of life. The Tao reveals the ways in which women can utilize their innate power, resulting in a simplified life of higher quality. In 1950, a secret woman's writing was discovered near Hunan, China. "The perfect example of how women have always found ways to communicate their wisdom." - Norma Libmun, Chicago Tribune "I'm ordering copies of this book for all the women in my life; it deeply touched my heart." - NAPRA Review

The Tao is said to be one yang and one yin in dynamic balance. The balancing of man and woman is not just their coming together; but also their staying separate. The process is two contradictory things happening at the same time. The difference and sameness of man and woman must be simultaneously maintained. Maintaining the paradox is the mystic's art and the lover's art. This is the contention of The Tao of Relationships. The art is practiced by balancing the physical with the mental, the primal with the cultivated, the wanton with the aesthetic. The Tao of Relationships is about this balancing and achieving the "extra-ordinary ordinary."

Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses, which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of our existence. The classic text of these 81 verses, called the Tao Te Ching or the Great Way, offers advice and guidance that is balanced, moral, spiritual, and always concerned with working for the good. In this book, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer has reviewed hundreds of translations of the Tao Te Ching and has written 81 distinct essays on how to apply the ancient wisdom of Lao-tzu to today's modern world. This work contains the entire 81 verses of the Tao, compiled from Wayne's researching of 10 of the most well-respected translations of text that have survived for more than 25 centuries. Each chapter is designed for actually living the Tao or the Great Way today. Some of the chapter titles are "Living with Flexibility," "Living Without Enemies," and "Living by Letting Go." Each of the 81 brief chapters focuses on living the Tao and concludes with a section called "Doing the Tao Now." Wayne spent one entire year reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu's messages, practicing them each day and ultimately writing down these essays as he felt Lao-tzu wanted you to know them. This is a work to be read slowly, one essay a day. As Wayne says, "This is a book that will forever change the way you look at your life, and the result will be that you'll live in a new world aligned with nature. Writing this book changed me forever, too. I now live in accord with the natural world and feel the greatest sense of peace I've ever experienced. I'm so proud to present this interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, and offer the same opportunity for change that it has brought me."

"The way that can be told is not the eternal Way; the name that can be named is not the eternal Name." So begins the first verse of the mysterious "Dao De Jing," foundation text of the ancient Chinese religion of Daoism. Often attributed to semi-mythical sage Laozi, the origins of this enigmatic document--which probably came into being in the third century BCE--are actually unknown. But the tenets of Daoism laid down in the "Dao De Jing," and in later texts like the "Yi Jing" (or "Book of Changes"), continue to exert considerable fascination, particularly in the West, where in recent years they have been popularized by writers such as the novelist Ursula K LeGuin. In this fresh and engaging introduction to Daoism, Ronnie L. Littlejohn discusses the central facets of a tradition which can sometimes seem as elusive as the slippery notion of "Dao" itself. The author shows that fundamental to Daoism is the notion of "Wu-wei," or non-action: a paradoxical idea emphasising alignment of the self with the harmony of the universe, a universe in continual flux and change. This flux is expressed by the famous symbol of Dao, the "taiji" representing yin and yang eternally correlating in the form of a harmonious circle. Exploring the great subtleties of this ancient religion, Littlejohn traces its development and encounters with Buddhism, its expression in art and literature, its fight for survival during the Cultural Revolution, and its manifestations in modern-day China and beyond.

This book brings together the studies of Jeaneane Fowler in Taoism, Chinese popular religion and the broader canvas of Chinese cosmogony, and those of Merv Fowler in Confucianism, Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism. 'Chinese Religions' requires no previous knowledge and thereby serves as an introduction to the religions of China, and places it in the wider context of Chinese history and philosophy. The facets of Chinese religions are as broad, multilayered and varied as the geographical vastness of China itself, yet so many Chinese beliefs have found their way into the West -- the theory of yin and yang, the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching are good examples. One of the greatest characteristics of Chinese religions is that they encompass virtually every avenue of religious thought throughout the long span of Chinese pre-historic and historical pathways.

This first Western-language translation of one of the great books of the Daoist religious tradition, the "Taiping jing', or "Scripture on Great Peace," documents early Chinese medieval thought and lays the groundwork for a more complete understanding of Daoism's origins. Barbara Hendrischke, a leading expert on the Taiping jing in the West, has spent twenty-five years on this magisterial translation, which includes notes that contextualize the scripture's political and religious significance. Virtually unknown to scholars until the 1970s, the "Taiping jing" raises the hope for salvation in a practical manner by instructing men and women how to appease heaven and satisfy earth and thereby reverse the fate that thousands of years of human wrongdoing has brought about. The scripture stems from the beginnings of the Daoist religious movement, when ideas contained in the ancient Laoziwere spread with missionary fervor among the population at large. "The Taiping jing" demonstrates how early Chinese medieval thought arose from the breakdown of the old imperial order and replaced it with a vision of a new, more diverse and fair society that would integrate outsiders - in particular women and people of a non-Chinese background.

At the time of his death in 1991, Angus C. Graham was one of the world's premier authorities on classical Chinese philosophy. Of particular significance is his corpus of publications on Taoism, the most important of which was his groundbreaking translation of more than three-fourths of the Chuang Tzu, first published in 1981 and, until recently, out of print for almost a decade. The current volume gathers together for the first time Graham's writings on the textual criticism and philosophy of the Chuang Tzu, most of which have heretofore been published in obscure sources. The most important of these are the textual notes that Graham wrote for publication with his original Chuang Tzu translation but which were never included therein. They were published by the School of Oriental and African Studies in a typescript of very limited circulation and have long been sought by devotees of Graham's translation. In this volume, Harold Roth presents an edited version of these notes along with other essays on the text, philosophy, and translation of this beloved Taoist classic. A chapter on the significance of Graham's work introduces the volume.

Using a combination of newly mined Sung sources and modern ethnography, Robert Hymes addresses questions that have perplexed China scholars in recent years. Were Chinese gods celestial officials, governing the fate and fortunes of their worshippers as China's own bureaucracy governed their worldly lives? Or were they personal beings, patrons or parents or guardians, offering protection in exchange for reverence and sacrifice?
To answer these questions Hymes examines the professional exorcist sects and rising Immortals' cults of the Sung dynasty alongside ritual practices in contemporary Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as miracle tales, liturgies, spirit law codes, devotional poetry, and sacred geographies of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. Drawing upon historical and anthropological evidence, he argues that two contrasting and contending models informed how the Chinese saw and see their gods. These models were used separately or in creative combination to articulate widely varying religious standpoints and competing ideas of both secular and divine power. Whether gods were bureaucrats or personal protectors depended, and still depends, says Hymes, on who worships them, in what setting, and for what purposes.

The essential Taoist book and one of a triad that make up the most influential religious and philosophical writings of Chinese tradition, the "Tao-te Ching" is the subject of hundreds of new interpretive studies each year. As Taoism emerges as one of the East Asian philosophies most interesting to Westerners, an accessible new edition of this great work -- written for English-language readers, yet rendered with an eye toward Chinese understanding -- has been much needed by scholars and general readers.

Richard John Lynn, whose recent translation of the "I Ching" was hailed by the "Times Literary Supplement" as "the best "I Ching" that has so far appeared," presents here another fine translation. Like his "I Ching, " this volume includes the interpretive commentary of the third-century scholar Wang Bi (226-249), who wrote the first and most sophisticated commentary on the "Tao-te Ching."

Lynn's introduction explores the centrality of Wang's commentaries in Chinese thought, the position of the "Tao-te Ching" in East Asian tradition, Wang's short but brilliant life, and the era in which he lived. The text consists of eighty-one short, aphoristic sections presenting a complete view of how the sage rules in accordance with the spontaneous ways of the natural world. Although the "Tao-te Ching" was originally designed to provide advice to the ruler, the Chinese regard its teachings as living and self-cultivation tools applicable to anyone. Wang Bi's commentaries, following each statement, flesh out the text so that it speaks to the modern Western reader as it has to Asians for more than seventeen centuries.

Here is a rich and varied selection from the most popular classics of ancient Taoism, including the TAO-TE CHING, CHUANG-TZU, HUAI-NAN-TZU, and WEN-TZU. Also translated are wonderful Taoist fables and stories from the "Tales of Inner Meaning" and a selection of short teachings of the famed Taoist patriarch Ancestor Lu, one of the great figures of early Taoism.

This book is a translation of a concise Taoist alchemical manual known as the Dragon-Tiger Classic, along with its two most important commentaries. The classic, written in ancient times by an unknown author and published during the fifteenth century CE, is regarded by contemporary Taoist practitioners as the most complete guide to spiritual transformation. It covers the three forms of Taoist practice: external alchemy, concerned with the ingestion of minerals, herbs, and other substances to attain health, longevity, and immortality; sexual alchemy, in which the practitioner uses the energy of a sexual partner to cultivate his or her own energy; and internal alchemy, the practice of meditation, calisthenics, and yogic postures to cultivate mind and body. An extensive introduction by the translator and the inclusion of two commentaries by traditional Chinese authors aid the reader in understanding this concise, symbolic text.

The ancient Chinese regarded the written word as a transformative force able to move heaven and earth and unite the reader with the source of all things, the Tao. The power of writing, especially poetry, is celebrated here in four short texts that present both practical instruction and spiritual insight. 10 b&w calligraphies.

In Chinese, Tao means simply way or path, and the mysticism of the early Taoists grew out of the longing and search for union with an eternal "Way." To attune oneself to the rhythms of nature rather than to conform to the artificialities of man-made institutions (embodied in the rigid hierarchies of orthodox Confucianism) became the goal of Taoist masters such as Chuang-tzu, who refused high office so that he could, like the turtle, "drag his tail in the mud." As the British authority on early Chinese religion, D. Howard Smith, expresses it in his lucid introduction to The Wisdom of the Taoists: "To seek and find that mysterious principle, to discover it within one's inmost being, to observe its workings in the great universe outside, and to become utterly engulfed in its serenity and quietude came to be the supreme goal of the Taoist mystics." In presenting the wide spectrum of Taoist thought and experience, Professor Smith has newly translated excerpts from a variety of mystical writings. He concentrates, however, on the two basic sources of Taoism, the humorous and satirical stories of Chuang-tzu (who lived in the fourth century B. C. in Honan) and the Tao-Te-Ching, a classic of mysticism attributed to Lao-tzu. Eventually, Taoism broadened into a magical folk religion, but the dedication to the inward path, the emptying of self, and the search for the nameless principle that could be apprehended only in quiet periods of ecstatic vision contributed to the Chinese form of Buddhism known as Ch'an--which we in the West know better by its Japanese name of Zen.

Daoism is a global religious and cultural phenomenon characterized by multiculturalism and ethnic diversity. "Daoism: A Guide for the Perplexed" offers a clear and thorough survey of this ancient and modern religious tradition. The book includes an overview of Daoist history, including key individuals and movements, translations of primary Daoist texts, and discussions of key dimensions of Daoist religiosity, covering primary concerns and defining characteristics of the religion.Specifically designed to meet the needs of students and general readers seeking a thorough understanding of the religion, this book is the ideal guide to studying and understanding Daoism as a lived and living religious community.

"Alan Cohen brings to life ancient wisdom for a new era deeply in need of enlightenment. Fresh insights, practical, easy entry, and immense delight!" - Chungliang Al Huang, president-director, Living Tao Foundation, and co-author with Alan Watts of Tao: The Watercourse Way May you live during interesting times: so goes an ancient Chinese blessing-or some say curse. That wish has come true for us. Now what? In this radically illuminating book, Alan Cohen delves into one of the world's most venerated wisdom texts for answers and brings the lofty and enigmatic concepts of the Tao Te Ching down to earth in fresh, easy-to-grasp language with practical, personal examples we can use to uplift our daily lives. Most other interpretations of the Tao march through the stanzas one by one. Here Alan Cohen calls forth the ancient verses around themes that are central to our modern lives -from love to work to the lessons we learn from pain. Then he brings each message to life in short vignettes where he imagines himself a student of Lao Tse and interacts with the master directly and intimately. He invites you to join the ancient sage and the contemporary seeker as they wend their way through the challenges and triumphs of the same journey you're taking yourself.

Compiled by Vinaya Master Shi Sengyou, these writings (by laypeople as well as scholar-monastics) were intended to protect the Buddha Dharma from criticisms by Confucians and Daoists and the political powers of the time. As noted in the Translator's Introduction, Sengyou believed that ""The Way is propagated by people, and the teaching is clarified by literature." The work is widely known as an invaluable source to examine the early development of Chinese Buddhism and how this foreign religion was accepted and adopted in Chinese society. A notable aspect of this work is that Buddhist tenets are explained using Confucian and Daoist terminology. While the Collection is a Buddhist work from chiefly the fourth and fifth centuries, it also serves well as a primary source for studies of contemporary Daoism. Volume 2 completes the translation with fascicles 8-14 of the source text; Volume I (available separately) comprises fascicles 1-7.

Throughout Chinese history, mountains have been integral components of the religious landscape. They have been considered divine or numinous sites, the abodes of deities, the preferred locations for temples and monasteries, and destinations for pilgrims. Early in Chinese history a set of five mountains were co-opted into the imperial cult and declared sacred peaks, yue, demarcating and protecting the boundaries of the Chinese imperium. The Southern Sacred Peak, or Nanyue, is of interest to scholars not the least because the title has been awarded to several different mountains over the years. The dynamic nature of Nanyue raises a significant theoretical issue of the mobility of sacred space and the nature of the struggles involved in such moves. Another facet of Nanyue is the multiple meanings assigned to this place, political, religious, and cultural. Of particular interest is the negotiation of this space by Daoists and Buddhists. The history of their interaction leads to questions about the nature of the divisions between these two religious traditions. James Robson's analysis of these topics demonstrates the value of local studies and the emerging field of Buddho-Daoist studies in research on Chinese religion.

When first published in 1958, "The Inward Morning" was ahead of its time. Boldly original, it blended East and West, nature and culture, the personal and the universal. The critical establishment, confounded, largely ignored the work. Readers, however, embraced Bugbee's lyrical philosophy of wilderness. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s this philosophical daybook enjoyed the status of an underground classic.

With this paperback reissue, "The Inward Morning" will be brought to the attention of a new generation. Henry Bugbee is increasingly recognized as the only truly American existentialist and an original philosopher of wilderness who is an inspiration to a growing number of contemporary philosophers.

Lao Tse did not found any school. Did not feel the need nor the desire to do so, because it did not intend to spread a doctrine. Saw the great universal connections, and poured difficulty is seen in words, while other spirits associated with the task of later times to follow their directions and to see for themselves the whole world and the truths he discovered. The truth is that in all times there have been thinkers able to raise their vision beyond the phenomenon of human life to the eternal meaning of the cosmic process, whose greatness defy conceptualization. This version of Tao Te King, faithfully translated and with commentary by Richard Wilhelm, makes the scope of the contemporary reader the timeless message of Lao Tse. Tao wants to find peace in it and the resulting relief of de-emphasizing the seriousness of life, one that seriously lacks essential intrinsic value.

Here, Taoist practitioner Eva Wong offers a colorful treatment of the history and evolution of Taoism, told through traditional teaching tales. These tales, which Wong first heard as a child growing up in Hong Kong, are gleaned from the local storytellers and the uncensored chronicles known as yeshi--the wild history of China, not monitored by the official imperial scholars and historians. The stories are by turns mysterious and intriguing, passionate and violent, and they are peppered with colorful characters, including hermits, politicians, social activists, revolutionaries, scholars, scientists, and mystics. Arranged chronologically from prehistory through the early twentieth century, these stories introduce the schools in the Taoist lineages, and capture the defeats and victories of Taoism, its periods of decadence and decay, and its renewal, maturation, and spiritual triumph. Wong puts these stories into context, and shows that Taoism is a dynamic spiritual tradition, constantly changing--and being influenced by--history.

In "Holding Yin, Embracing Yang," Eva Wong presents translations of three key texts containing the highest teachings of the Eastern and Western schools of Taoist internal alchemy--the discipline of cultivating health, longevity, and immortality by transforming the energetic structures of body and mind. The texts are primarily concerned with meditation, breathing practices, and sexual yoga with a partner--all as means for developing within ourselves the same life-giving energy that sustains and nourishes the universe. The texts in this collection offer a clear view of the physical, mental, and spiritual methods of Taoist practice, showing why they are important and how these methods all can work together in the cultivation of mental peace, radiant health, and longevity. This collection will provide inspiration and the essential foundation necessary to begin Taoist practice under the guidance of a teacher. The three classics translated here are: "Treatise on the Mysterious Orifice "by Xuanweilun (sixteenth century), "Discussion on the Cavity of the Tao" by Daojiaotan (nineteenth century), and "Secret Teachings on the Three Wheels "by Sanjubizhi (nineteenth century). Included is an introduction in which Wong discusses the various schools of internal alchemy, as well as their main practices.

A collection of accessible texts on the Taoist art of inner alchemy * Taoist inner alchemy: a theory and method for transforming and refining the mind through practices such as meditation, breath control, and calisthenics * Includes a classic of Chinese alchemy: as Four Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir Written by the founder of the Complete Reality School, the text is accompanied by the commentary of 19th century adept Liu I-ming