Hardcover and dust jacket, as pictured; author signed, "The best and may God bless you, Jackie '99"; not inscribed to anyone (chr)

Heaven's Thunder

Jacquelyn Thrash

Three Pines Press

A long-awaited textbook that introduces the major schools, teachings, and practices of Daoism, this work presents a chronological survey that is thematically divided into four parts: Ancient Thought, Religious Communities, Spiritual Practices, and Modernity. The work offers an integrated vision of the Daoist tradition in its historical and cultural context, establishing connections with relevant information on Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism, popular religion, and political developments. It also places Daoism into a larger theoretical and comparative framework, relating it to mysticism, millenarianism, forms of religious organization, ritual, meditation, and modernity. The book makes ample use of original materials and provides references to further readings and original sources in translation. It is a powerful resource for teaching and studying alike.

Daoism and Chinese Culture

History

Kohn, Livia

Asia

Book by Catherine Despeux, Livia Kohn

Women in Daoism

Catherine Despeux

Livia Kohn

The common view of Daoism is that it encourages people to live with detachment and calm, resting in nonaction and smiling at the vicissitudes of the world. Most people assume that Daoists are separate from the human community, not antisocial or asocial but rather supra-social and often simply different. Daoists neither criticize society nor support it by working for social change, but go along with the flow of the cosmos as it moves through them. They are not much concerned with rules and the proprieties of conduct, which they leave to the Confucians in the Chinese tradition. Contrary to this common view, Daoists through the ages have developed various forms of community and proposed numerous sets of behavioral guidelines and texts on ethical considerations. Beyond the ancient philosophers, who are well-known for the moral dimension of their teachings, religious Daoist rules cover both ethics―the personal values of the individual―and morality―the communal norms and social values of the organization. They range from basic moral rules against killing, stealing, lying, and sexual misconduct through suggestions for altruistic thinking and models of social interaction to behavioral details on how to bow, eat, and wash, as well as to the unfolding of universal ethics that teach people to think like the Dao itself. About eighty texts in the Daoist canon and its supplements describe such guidelines and present the ethical and communal principles of the Daoist religion. They document just to what degree Daoist realization is based on how one lives one’s life in interaction with the community―family, religious group, monastery, state, and cosmos. Ethics and morality, as well as the creation of community, emerge as central in the Daoist religion. A major new initiative in Daoist Studies, Cosmos and Community is the first major English study of Daoist religious ethics. Based on original translations of primary sources, this is required reading for anyone interested in Daoism, comparative ethics, or Chinese history.

Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Health and Long Life: The Chinese Way brings together the wide variety of Chinese medical and spiritual methods in one integrated volume. It provides not only a basic description, but also discusses the relationship of Chinese healing to contemporary Western science and religious Daoism. Easy to read, with numerous charts and illustrations, and enriched by exercises that encourage readers to examine their own practices and attitudes, Health and Long Life is a great resource for anyone interested in Chinese healing.

Health and Long Life: The Chinese Way

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Alternative Medicine

Divine Traces of the Daoist Sisterhood presents unique materials on the lives and religious quests of Daoist women in medieval China. Translating and discussing religious women’s biographies, the book explores the social context, ideals, and specific techniques of their practice, relating the stories to overall Daoist themes and contemporaneous political events. It elucidates the underlying threads of women’s divine careers and brings out both the deep human interest and humor of the stories. Through Suzanne Cahill’s efforts, the women of medieval Daoism receive a new and clear voice, to be heard across cultures and millennia.

Divine Traces of the Daoist Sisterhood: Records of the Assembled Transcendents of the Fortified Walled City by Du Guangling (850–933)

Cahill, Professor Suzanne

Daoist Body Cultivation is a comprehensive volume by a group of dedicated scholars and practitioners that covers the key practices of medical healing, breathing techniques, diets and fasting, healing exercises, sexual practices, Qigong, and Taiji quan. Each presentation places the practice in its historical and cultural context and relates its current application and efficaciousness. Ultimately aiming to energetically transform the person into a spiritual and trancendent being, Daoist cultivation techniques have proven beneficial for health time and again and can make an important contribution in the world today. Daoist Body Cultivation provides a deeper understanding of the practices in their cultural and historical contexts, bridging the gap between healing and religion and allowing both scholars and practitioner to reach a deeper understanding and appreciation. Contributors: Shawn Arthur, Bede Bidlack, Catherine Despeux, Stephen Jackowicz, Lonny Jarrett, Livia Kohn, Louis Komjathy, Michael Winn.

Daoist Body Cultivation

Religion & Spirituality

Livia Kohn presents the first Western introduction to this aspect of traditional Chinese religious and culture. Through her careful textual study and fully annotated translation of the Scripture of Western Ascension, she delineates the history, structure, and contents of what mystical thought meant within the Daoist religion. She also discusses the religious background of the text and provides detailed analyses of philosophical concepts in chapters called "The Physical Universe," "Mind, Knowledge, Language," and "The Way of the Sage."

Daoist Mystical Philosophy

The Xiaodao lun (Laughing at the Dao) is an important document of the debates among Buddhists and Daoists in sixth-century China. These debates contributed to the process of cultural adaptation of Buddhism, which had to accommodate itself to the worldview of the Confucian elite, the Chinese sense of ethnic superiority, and China's indigenous religion of Daoism. Written by the Daoist renegade Zhen Luan in the year 570, the text aims to expose inconsistencies in Daoist doctrine, cosmology, ritual, and religious practice. In this effort it presents many aspects of Daoist doctrine and practice, providing ample citations from numerous Daoist sources often otherwise lost. In a complete and fully annotated translation of the Xiaodao lun based closely on the work of Japanese scholars, Livia Kohn places the work within the context of the debates and exposes the political schemes behind the apparently religious disputes. The translation is carefully framed by a thorough introduction on the history of the debates as well as by two appendixes: one summarizes materials of both earlier and later debates; the other analyzes the Daoist sources cited in the Xiaodao lun. Richly informed and highly relevant to an understanding of medieval China, Kohn's work greatly enhances the study of medieval Buddhist and Daoist myth, rhetoric, and ideology.

Laughing at the Dao: Debates among Buddhists and Daoists in Medieval China

Meditation is the inward focus of attention in a state of mind where ego-related concerns and critical evaluations are suspended in favor of perceiving a deeper, subtler, and possibly divine flow of consciousness. Usually accompanied by muscle relaxation, it has an overall beneficial and often healing effect. As such, it has made major inroads in Western society, aiding in stress relief, pain management, and various psychiatric conditions. Research in meditation tends to focus on the concrete healing effects of the practice, working either with a single form or using an indeterminate mixture of practices. So far studies work with minimal typologies often poorly defined and tend to neglect historical and cultural aspects. Meditation Works remedies this shortcoming. Based on extensive cultural studies and long years of practice, the author creates a new typology of meditation based on six distinct ways of access to the subconscious. In a special chapter on each type, she then outlines the physiology, worldview, and traditional practice as well as its modern medical adaptations and organizational settings. In each case, she substantiates her presentation with examples from the Daoist, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Providing a thorough theoretical framework combined with a comprehensive, analytical overview, the book greatly advances our understanding of meditation.

Meditation Works in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist Traditions

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