Saturday, October 19, 2013

With the I Ching Put to Bed

Trey Smith


Now that we've covered the major texts of the philosophical Taoist tradition, I will focus on some lesser known works. Some are derived from the more religious form of Taoism, while others may be more difficult to classify or what we might call quasi-Taoist. In the coming weeks, you will find daily in this time slot works such as the Yang Zhu, Yin Chih Wen (The Tract of the Quiet Way), Tai Yi Jin Hua Zong Zhi (The Secret of the Golden Flower) and other online texts as I find them.

The whole point of this exercise is NOT to share with you divine and sacred words from the creator or her human conduits; these are tracts written by people not that much unlike you or me.  No, the point is twofold: 1) To get a better handle on the ideas swirling around in Chinese thought predominantly from antiquity and 2) To see how different authors (whether singularly or collectively) try to address the issues of understanding and conceptualizing The Grand Mystery.

Take these texts as you will.  They may bore you to tears OR they may inspire you.  Heck, they could do both and more at different times.

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