It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
As the Year of the Snake slithers in, an intriguing trend has emerged — petting snakes.
Dedicated shops offering interactive experiences with pet snakes and other reptiles have become trendy destinations. According to the shop owner, the Year of the Snake has ignited a newfound curiosity about snakes. These experience shops provide a safe environment for people to interact with snakes, dispelling misconceptions and fears. Click the video to learn more.
Snakes play a vital role in Taoist mythology, philosophy, sorcery, and ... Taoist healing traditions sometimes incorporate snake imagery or even snake ...
In the lake dwells a white snake spirit who has been practicing Taoist magical arts. ... Snakes in Chinese mythology. Notes. edit. ^ Idema (2012), p. 26 ...
The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula. K. Le Guin is a fantasy work in Western literature that shines with ostentatiously idiosyncratic sparks of Taoist philosophies. Resorting to Taoism (also translated as Daoism) and its representative work Tao Te Ching, this article aims at exploring the Earthsea magic, a ubiquitous motif in fantasy, with Taoist thoughts and theories including the law of relativity, harmonious dialectics, and equilibrium. This article reconstructs the magical Earthsea world within a Taoist framework and reveals the Taoist connotations of magic. Finally, this article concludes that, radically distinct from its traditional image, magic in Earthsea serves to heal the physical, mental, and spiritual wound of separation; set up harmony of the opposites in binaries; and preserve the delicate equilibrium insusceptible to the ravages of time. Magic in The Earthsea Cycle works miracles in a Taoist manner.
What can we expect in the Year of the Dragon? Who will fare better? Which sectors in Macau can enjoy robust growth? A Macau-based feng shui master shares his predictions
It’s time to unleash the roar! As we usher in 2024, the Chinese zodiac for this year will be the dragon, symbolising power, emperors, and royalty in Chinese traditions. Besides representing majesty, a Macau-based feng shui master indicates that 2024 also represents a new start.
In Chinese feng shui, there is a concept of a mega cycle that spans 180 years and is divided into nine 20-year phases. According to Master Sam Pou (森寶師傅), the world has just concluded the Eighth Phase, which spanned from 2004 to 2023, and this year marks the beginning of the Ninth Phase, which is between 2024 and 2043.
The last three years before the end of a phase, such as the 2021-2023 period for the Eighth Phase, typically bring financial turmoil, says Master Sam Pou. “But we have put the worst behind us for now,” he continues.
As the Eighth Phase represented the element of earth, with robust sectors in infrastructure and real estate during the past two decades, the Ninth Phase stands for the element of fire, according to the feng shui master. “Thus, the Ninth Phase will be a huge boost for the city’s development in hi-tech, healthcare, and high-end tourism sectors,” he adds.
In addition, during the Year of the Dragon, it is worth noting that the east corner of a place—be it a home or an office—represents strong romance and interpersonal relationships, while the south corner signifies financial loss. The south-eastern direction is associated with illnesses, the west indicates severe illnesses, the north symbolises good wealth and career, and the north-eastern direction is linked to academic excellence.
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Predictions for 12 Chinese Zodiac Signs
As we celebrate the Year of the Dragon, which begins on 10 February, Master Sam Pou outlines his forecasts for the 12 Chinese zodiac signs in terms of wealth, career, health, and love.
Saturday, May 25, 2024
Talk to Sinologists: Exploring cultural exchanges through Taoism
Culture25-May-2024
CGTN
02:13
During an interview with CGTN, Misha Tadd, associate professor in Nankai University's College of Philosophy and director of the university's Global Laozegetics Research Center, expressed his hope to see more people in the U.S. take an interest in various elements of Chinese culture, beyond just Taoism. He emphasizes the significance of human exchange and direct interaction as key components in understanding different cultures.
According to Professor Tadd, direct human connection is vital for cultural exchange. His own journey to China started with the Tao Te Ching, highlighting the significance of cultural awareness as a starting point. However, he believes that bringing people together and allowing them to interact in a human way is powerful for fostering harmony and understanding.
Professor Tadd draws parallels to historical events like ping pong diplomacy, emphasizing that it's not the activity itself but the human interaction that fosters peace and comprehension. He encourages travel and cultural exchange as powerful tools for global harmony.
Join us as we delve into how Taoist philosophies and other elements of Chinese culture can create bridges between people worldwide.
(Cover image designed by Huang Ruiqi; Video edited by Qi Jianqiang)
POLITICAL doctrines, like public buildings, are often named after persons. The US boasts the Lincoln Memorial, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, even Washington, D.C. America’s very name owes its origins to the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Had the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller not appropriated the name America for his map of the New World in 1507, America might have been named Colombia, after Christopher Columbus.
Political doctrines too have a patrimony: in the East, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism and Brezhnevism. The latter declared the then USSR’s obligation under the Warsaw Pact to intervene militarily if any Eastern Bloc socialist country was threatened. China has seen Taoism, Maoism and more recently Xi-ism. Xi-ism has morphed from ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, formally incorporated in the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party in 2018. Xi Jinping Thought has been summarised to include Ten Affirmations, Fourteen Commitments, Thirteen Areas of Achievements, and Six Musts. Collectively, they encapsulate Xi Jinping’s worldview and the Sinicisation of Marxism.
Xi Jinping has chosen to follow the footsteps of his precursors. In the west, President Donald Trump has hurdled over the doctrines left by his predecessors — in particular, Dwight Eisenhower’s of 1957, which assured economic aid and military assistance to any Middle Eastern countries threatened by ‘international communism’. And Richard Nixon’s in 1959, which affirmed that the US would honour “treaty commitments” but expected its allies to be responsible for their own defence. It would provide arms and aid but not troops.
Trump has backtracked centuries to Theodore Roosevelt’s doctrine of 1904 and James Monroe’s of 1823. Roosevelt’s doctrine identified Latin America as its backyard, where the US could expand its commercial interests and block European hegemony in the region. It sought to make the US the dominant power there. Monroe warned European powers like Spain against colonising the Americas further.
A Great Dane is no match for a hungry Rottweiler.
The impact of the Monroe Doctrine on US foreign policy has been discussed in Jay Sexton’s The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America. He traces the growth of these United States (the original 13 states) to the United States. He explores their ambivalent relationship with an expansive 19th-century Great Britain, and describes the Monroe Doctrine as “an American shorthand for a hemisphere (and ultimately a world), cleared of the British Empire”.
Two centuries later, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 has been refurbished and reframed as the ‘Don-roe doctrine’. Today, Trump’s America has nothing to fear from King Charles III’s Britain. Trump’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is more than a doctrinal goal. It is a combustible propellant that admixes “right-wing populism, right-wing anti-globalism, national conservatism and neo-nationalism”.
His policy is a forceful application of ‘dollar diplomacy’, used many times before in US history — instances are when the US bought Louisiana from France in 1803, Florida from Spain in 1819, Alaska from Russia in 1867, and the US Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.
The Danes having sold the Virgin Islands should prepare themselves for the ‘forced sale’ of Greenland. They may not have a choice. The contiguous US mainland is almost four times bigger than Greenland which is 50 times larger than Denmark. A Great Dane is no match for a hungry Rottweiler.
Trump’s demands evoke fears expressed over a century ago by small nations when threatened by larger ones. Hispanics in particular became apprehensive. As one Argentine put it, by substituting the United States for Europe as “a source of civilisation”, they would be getting “European civilisation second hand”.
This in essence is the unease felt by many in our modern world. There are over 190 sovereign states, each with its own flag, individual aspirations, and unique identity. They view modern Xi-ism with its One Road, One Belt universalism and Trumpism with its insidious tariff ultimatums through the same lens. They fear being treated by both superpowers as ‘politically free’ but also as ‘commercial slaves’.
These concerns are sharpened by the reality that China and the US share a sinister characteristic: Xi is leader for life; Trump for a finite term, ending whenever. At their apex, both superpowers have become what John Quincy Adams (who helped draft the Monroe Doctrine) warned against — ‘a military monarchy’.
Some will recall the Five Principles (Panchsheel) agreed between China and India in 1954, and echoed in the I.K. Gujral Doctrine of 1996. They spoke inter alia of territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality, and peaceful coexistence. Sadly, “the past”, in L.P. Hartley’s words, “is a foreign country”. They did things differently there.
China will host a global Buddhist conference in October that experts and rights activists outside the country say is aimed at boosting its soft power in Asia and build on its narrative that it has greater influence over Buddhist-majority nations than India, the birthplace of Buddhism.
Monks, experts, scholars and representatives from about 70 countries are expected to attend the sixth World Buddhist Forum in mid-October in the eastern city of Ningbo, Chinese state media reported.
However, the Dalai Lama, perhaps the most prominent Buddhist leader in the world, is not invited. Regarded by Beijing as separatist, the Tibetan spiritual leader hasn’t been invited to any of the past forums since the first one organized by China in 2006.
The goal of the conference, according to the state-run China Daily, is to “promote world peace, improve the well-being of all individuals, and gather wisdom and strength for building a community with a shared future for humanity.”
Gyaltsen Norbu, the Chinese government-appointed 11th Panchen Lama, speaks during an opening ceremony of the third World Buddhist Forum in Hong Kong, April 26, 2012. (Kin Cheung/AP)
But in fact, China has little interest in promoting or protecting Buddhism, and instead is trying to use the conference to achieve its political goals, Sana Hashmi, a postdoctoral fellow at the policy think tank Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, told Radio Free Asia.
“China has been trying to forge religious diplomacy with countries that have Buddhism as their main religion,” she said.
“It also wants to show that instead of India, which is the birthplace of Buddhism, China has more influence when it comes to Buddhism.”
By organizing the forum, China is misleading the international community by creating the illusion that the state supports Buddhism, though there is no genuine protection or support for Buddhists within the country, said Shartse Khensur Rinpoche Jangchup Choeden, secretary general of the International Buddhist Confederation.
‘Sinicizing’ Tibetan Buddhism
The conference comes at a time when Beijing is ramping up efforts to “Sinicize” Tibetan Buddhism to bring its religious doctrines into line with Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, ideology and emphasize loyalty to the party and the state.
Although China’s constitution states that its citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief,” in practice this is not the case. Officials routinely clamp down on religious expression by Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims and Christians across the country.
The government officially recognizes Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism, but requires clergy members to pledge allegiance to the CCP and socialism.
Far from showing that China is preserving Tibetan Buddhism or the Buddhist religion in general, the conference will showcase Beijing’s efforts to assimilate Tibetans and other minority groups and erase their distinctive features and cultures, activists and experts say.
Yan Jue, president of the Buddhist Association of China that's organizing the conference, seemed to acknowledge as much. He said the sixth forum will “adhere to the direction of Sinicization of Buddhism” in China and “fully publicize and display the status of religious freedom in China.”
‘Key instrument’
The Buddhist Association of China is the official government body supervising Buddhist practice in China, which in turn is overseen by the United Front Work Department of the CCP's Central Committee.
Venerable Master Hsing Yun, founder of Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan, delivers a speech at the opening of the first World Buddhist Forum in Hangzou, China, April 13, 2006. (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)
The International Campaign for Tibet, a rights group, calls the association a “key instrument” in Beijing’s strategy to assimilate and transform Tibetan Buddhism, especially when it comes to searching for and recognizing reincarnated lamas.
Beijing is using the association to “break down Tibetan Buddhism’s unique characteristics and to change it into a tool of the Chinese state,” the group says.
“Since 2020, under [President] Xi Jinping's leadership, the CCP has intensified efforts to Sinicize Tibetan Buddhism, assigning this task to the Buddhist Association of China, which organizes conferences and events that serve as tools of soft power manipulation,” said Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan-American and Buddhist former commissioner at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Tibetan writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue said the conference must shed light on severe restrictions imposed on Buddhist practices, particularly in Tibet and Mongolia, and oppose the CCP’s “manipulation of Buddhism and religion for political gain.”
Edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan and by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
The recluse-poet Tao Yuanming (陶淵明 or 陶潛, 365-427 CE) is famed for having given up service to the state for a life of leisure, writing, drinking, and occasional agricultural pursuits. He is the archetype of a man who has rejected the onerous demands of the day to pursue instead the cultivation of the self. This quest for quietude, one also tinged with worldly concerns and fears, is recorded in poems that, for over 1600 years, have inspired artists and writers alike.
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Tao Yuanming’s poem ‘Substance, Shadow, and Spirit’ addresses ancient and abiding tensions between lived reality, aspiration and transcendence. Referred to and quoted by writers over the ages, Tao’s message also featured in Confessions 懺悔錄, an agonised reflection on the dilemmas of life, work and politics in modern China published by the journalist Huang Yuansheng 黃遠生 in 1915, shortly before he was assassinated in San Francisco by associates of Yuan Shikai, republican China’s president-cum-emperor.
In Confessions, Huang wrote that living under Yuan Shikai he had become ‘schizophrenic‘ and, referring to Tao Yuanming, he mourns the fact that although his soul is dead his body lives on, like an automaton, in service to pettifogging existence. For China to reform and grow, he declares ‘I must first question myself, for if I am incapable of being a man what right do I have to criticize others, let alone the society and the state?’ What matters, above all, he declares is a spirit of ‘independence and self-respect’ 獨立自尊. Decades later, Liu Xiaobo would echo these sentiments in his appeal in June 1989 for people to confront their own failings, to confess their limitations and to seek redemption through action. (For more on Huang and Liu, see Confession, Redemption, Death: Liu Xiaobo and the Protest Movement of 1989, 1990; and also Liu Xiaobo on the Inspiration of New York, 31 December 2021.)
The quest to reconcile ‘substance’ and ‘shadow’ marks Chinese life into the twenty-first century. The agonies of writers like Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai would, for some, be resolved through self-renewal under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party. Although that rebirth was agonised and short-lived, the call for confession and ‘self-revolution’ 自我革命 is once more a feature of contemporary Chinese life, advocated by none other than Xi Jinping, the party-state-army’s Chairman of Everything.
The contemporary recasting of an ancient dilemma according to Party dogma hardly appeals to everyone. In an era of ‘involution’, ‘lying flat’ and eremitism, the fatalism of the Spirit in Tao Yuanming’s poem finds a ready resonance:
甚念傷吾生，正宜委運去。 縱浪大化中，不喜亦不懼。 應盡便須盡，無復獨多慮。
Dwelling on such things wounds my very life. The right thing to do is to leave things to Fate, Let go and float along on the great flux of things, Not overjoyed but also not afraid. When it is time to go then we should simply go. There is nothing, after all, that we can do about it.
***
Elsewhere I have noted that the lively tension between Substance, Shadow and Spirit 身、影、神, as discussed in the following poem by Tao Yuanming, best reflects my notion of what I call The Other China. Engagement, questioning, self-doubt and transcendence are recurring themes both in China Heritage and in its various precursors.
Tao Yuanming’s work is specific to one place and a particular time in dynastic history, but its appeal reaches beyond the narrow confines of religion, state ideology and heedless materialism. The words of Stefan Zweig, which are quoted in the introduction to Intersecting with Eternity, and what he calls ‘the invisible republic of the spirit’ come to mind:
Whoever makes his home within this invisible realm becomes a citizen of the world. He is the heir, not of one people but of all peoples. Henceforth he is an indweller in all tongues and in all countries, in the universal past and the universal future.
We would suggest that the ‘spirit’ that Zweig evoked over a century ago resonates today with the Spirit 神 of Tao Yuanming’s haunting poem.
***
神，《说文解字》
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This chapter in the series Intersecting with Eternity is a companion piece to three essays on Tao Yuanming in The Tower of Reading. The first focusses on Tao himself. In the other two, the celebrated poets Su Dongpo and Lu You reflect on his inspiration.
My thanks to Callum Smith for his help with the layout of William Acker’s translation of Tao Yuanming’s poem.
— Geremie R. Barmé Editor, China Heritage 12 July 2024
Whether nobly born or humble, whether wise or simple, there is none who does not diligently seek to spare his own life, but in so doing men are greatly deluded. Therefore I have done my best to set forth the reasons for this in the form of an argument between Substance and Shadow which is finally resolved by Spirit, who expounds Nature. May gentlemen of an inquiring turn of mind take it to heart.
[1] According to popular taoism, which was gradually becoming institutionalized into a church in Tao’s time, the adept could achieve these things by the practice of taoist yoga (a system of breath control), an elaborate and strict sexual regimen and, above all, a strict diet with avoidance of grain and meat and reliance on vegetables, herbs, and drugs of various kinds. Tao here shows himself to be rather skeptical of such claims.
[2] This refers specifically to taoist yoga, sexual regimen, and diet, which at the very least were supposed to confer longevity.
[3] After long and successful practice of “the art of preserving life,” culminating perhaps in the discovery of some elixir of immortality, the taoist adept was supposed to become transfigured. His very body was transformed into some finer substance, and he soared away to certain realms of the Immortals, where he lived in houses of gold and subsisted on air and dew. The Kunlun mountains far in the west, Mount Hua at the great bend of the Yellow River, and Mount Penglai floating in the midst of the Eastern Ocean were believed to be such abodes.
[4] The material soul (po [魄]), which unlike the spirit (shen [神] or hun [魂]) remains with the body after death like a sort of lingering eddy of animal magnetism, was identified with the visible shadow. But it remained with the body, whether visible or not.
[5] The Tao (Way) is the sum totality of all things, spirit, matter and the laws by which they operate, conceived of as one great monad. But though ultimately all is one, this monad expresses itself, operates, and ceaselessly creates through two apparently opposing forces, yin (shade) and yang (light). These terms are applied very widely to account for all sorts of dualities such as positive and negative, male and female, active and passive, etc. Neither one of these forces ever destroys or diminishes the other; the quantity and strength of each in these in the universe as a whole remain constant. The term Da Jun [大鈞] (“great scales,” “great balance”) expresses this truth, and so may almost be taken as an equivalent to Tao itself.
[6] Within the Tao, yin and yang, spirit and matter, the passive and the active, are all inexhaustible, indestructible, and equal. All phenomena and effects, visible or invisible, are produced by their ceaseless motion and constant interplay. Although this view of the universe leaves no room for a personal God, or deus ex machina, it cannot be called atheistic or materialistic, but is closer to what we know as pantheism or monism.
[7] The Three Cosmic Forces (San Cai [三才]) are Heaven, Earth, and Man. Chinese thought is by no means so unanthropocentric as is commonly said.
[8] The Chinese Methuselah, a very shadowy figure who had no special cult, but was merely proverbial for longevity.
***
Source:
William Acker, T’ao the Hermit: Sixty Poems by T’ao Chi’en (365-427 A.D.), London: Thames and Hudson, 1952. See also Arthur Waley, Substance, Shadow, and Spirit.
During an interview with CGTN, Misha Tadd, associate professor in Nankai University's College of Philosophy and director of the university's Global Laozegetics Research Center, expressed his hope to see more people in the U.S. take an interest in various elements of Chinese culture, beyond just Taoism. He emphasizes the significance of human exchange and direct interaction as key components in understanding different cultures.
According to Professor Tadd, direct human connection is vital for cultural exchange. His own journey to China started with the Tao Te Ching, highlighting the significance of cultural awareness as a starting point. However, he believes that bringing people together and allowing them to interact in a human way is powerful for fostering harmony and understanding.
Professor Tadd draws parallels to historical events like ping pong diplomacy, emphasizing that it's not the activity itself but the human interaction that fosters peace and comprehension. He encourages travel and cultural exchange as powerful tools for global harmony.
Join us as we delve into how Taoist philosophies and other elements of Chinese culture can create bridges between people worldwide.
(Cover image designed by Huang Ruiqi; Video edited by Qi Jianqiang)