Course: Taoism and Western Culture

In the 20th century, the Dao De Jing became much more accessible to Westerner. The well-known German philosopher, Martin Heidegger discovered the Dao De Jing and it revolutionized his thinking. …

The Dao De Jing invites us to acknowledge that the obvious material world depends on intangibles. So it is saying that we should not overemphasize human concerns, we should empty …

For Westerners anything Wu in the west is bad and negative, it sounds as if you had been invited not to do anything. Dao is the way things happen. We …

The Dao De Jing moves away from reason and away from rationality. You can’t figure it out by using your minds, whereas Westerners, philosophers and thinkers for a long time …

Dao De Jing is very difficult to translate into western languages. Westerners find it very difficult to understand because even Lao Zi himself says he cannot give a name to …

The rhymed Dao De Jing, largely a manual on proper governance, is about Dao. Emerging out of the collaboration of all of the Wanwu, Dao is inclusive. The Dao De …

Despite originating from the same God, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, have always been fighting over the so-called absolute truth. However, in China the Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, mutually accommodating and …

Dao De Jing is influenced by the Sun Zi Bing Fa in the way of thinking about warfare. We should translate the Dao De Jing by moving from nouns to …

The first chapter of Dao De Jing states that Dao that can be delimited is not the Dao that we find in everyday life. Different from the Christian concept “The …

What is the importance of the Dao De Jing for the world today? The starting point of Dao De Jing is that everything is done as collaboration with other people, …

The Dao De Jing provides Western people with a different cosmology, worldview and common sense from Chinese people. Every culture reads the Dao De Jing differently. It is an instrument …

One central idea in the Dao De Jing and Chinese philosophy is the notion of He or Hexie, translated as ‘harmony’, or a much better translation: the idea of optimizing …

Dao De Jing begins with an essential statement that relationality comes before particularity. It gives us a worldview that the entire human experience is organic. As the video explains, the …

( This article is excerpt from Introducing Daoism written by Livia Kohn(2008), London: Routledg.) The person in the Daode jing who exemplifies these attitudes and values is the sage, ideally …