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我不高兴。我没有工作我丈夫也没有工作所以我们没有钱。我不能去饭馆我不能去看电影我不能去家酒吧，我不能去跳舞，我不能看我的朋友们。我只去大学。我喜欢我的大学但是我想去酒吧，跳舞，看朋友们。我必工作我丈夫必工作。我的猫不必工作。他很福。
Facets of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion Edited by Anna Seidel and Holmes Welch was published in 1976 and came from a conference of Western and Japanese scholars in 1973 about Taoism. Today I'm sure this conference would have included Chinese scholars however at the time Mainland China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution and the only history books were being written by Marxist committees. I'm mostly going to go over the essays that I read and why I'm interested in them so I will have these notes for later. Not really a proper book review, but I've found them incredibly helpful over the past couple weeks so feel free to just ignore this.
1, Max Kaltenmark "The Ideology of the T'ai P'ing Ching. He analyzed this early document and compared it to the Dun Huang copies found of the text. The most interesting thing was that it was very similar to Confucian ideas rather than Taoist ideas. It was an ideology for ruling. One of the most interesting things about this essay was the fact that they left in the comments and questions sections from the conference as an afterword. It was almost fun to hear older famous scholars debating amongst themselves. Not normally something you get to do just by reading a book.
2, "Religious Taoism and Popular Religion from the 2nd to the 7th centuries by Rolf A. Stein. Stein categorized 5 differences between Taoism and popular religion, and the relationship of the two, particularly their uses of mediums, deification of heroes, festivals and holy day. He also talks about written contracts written by Taoists between Taoist deities and popular deities, often negotiating grave sites.
3, Local Cults around Mount Lu at the time of Sun Er's Rebellion" by Hisayaki Miyakawa. This essay looked not at the rebellion but at the obscure religious ideas behind it. How the local cults operated, how Taoists gained power over them and how Buddhism used the popular cults. Unfortunately as to how the religions interacted their was little evidence only a couple brief examples listed.
4, "K'ou Ch'ien and the Taoist Theocracy at the Northern Wei court." by Richard B. Mather. This essay looked at the unique circumstances about this particular rise to power, the subsequent Buddhist persecutions and the reforming of the religion. Not as relevant for contrasting with the Tang as I hoped but might have some useful ideas for background of relationship between Taoism and government.
5, "On the Alchemy of Tao Hung Ching" by Michael Strickman, I didn't read.
6, "The Chinese Belief in Baleful Stars" by Ching Lang Hou looked at the continuous tradition of ill omened, inauspicious and harmful stars from the time of the Han dynasty down to Taiwan today. He looked at the specific paths of three stars, Great Year, White Tiger and Dog of Heaven. He detailed several interesting exorcism rites involving these stars. He made several interesting points, he claimed that the Taoists had no specific doctrine for these stars just rites for dealing with them.
7, "Taoist Monastic Life" by Yoshitoyo Yoshioka. The most interesting thing about this article was that it was written from research gathered between 1940-1946 in Beijing by a Japanese scholar. Because of the war that makes for a rather interesting and questionable perspective. How close would an observer in such a time period be able to get to how things actually were? To make the matter more complicated all his notes were left behind when the war ended and he was forbidden to bring anything with him when he went back to Japan. I think in this case the historical significance lies not so much in the paper written but the circumstances in which it was written. Very interesting, not terribly useful however.
8, 9 "The Formation of the Taoist Canon" by Ninji Otachi and "Taoist Studies in Japan" by Tadao Sakai both not read.
1, Max Kaltenmark "The Ideology of the T'ai P'ing Ching. He analyzed this early document and compared it to the Dun Huang copies found of the text. The most interesting thing was that it was very similar to Confucian ideas rather than Taoist ideas. It was an ideology for ruling. One of the most interesting things about this essay was the fact that they left in the comments and questions sections from the conference as an afterword. It was almost fun to hear older famous scholars debating amongst themselves. Not normally something you get to do just by reading a book.
2, "Religious Taoism and Popular Religion from the 2nd to the 7th centuries by Rolf A. Stein. Stein categorized 5 differences between Taoism and popular religion, and the relationship of the two, particularly their uses of mediums, deification of heroes, festivals and holy day. He also talks about written contracts written by Taoists between Taoist deities and popular deities, often negotiating grave sites.
3, Local Cults around Mount Lu at the time of Sun Er's Rebellion" by Hisayaki Miyakawa. This essay looked not at the rebellion but at the obscure religious ideas behind it. How the local cults operated, how Taoists gained power over them and how Buddhism used the popular cults. Unfortunately as to how the religions interacted their was little evidence only a couple brief examples listed.
4, "K'ou Ch'ien and the Taoist Theocracy at the Northern Wei court." by Richard B. Mather. This essay looked at the unique circumstances about this particular rise to power, the subsequent Buddhist persecutions and the reforming of the religion. Not as relevant for contrasting with the Tang as I hoped but might have some useful ideas for background of relationship between Taoism and government.
5, "On the Alchemy of Tao Hung Ching" by Michael Strickman, I didn't read.
6, "The Chinese Belief in Baleful Stars" by Ching Lang Hou looked at the continuous tradition of ill omened, inauspicious and harmful stars from the time of the Han dynasty down to Taiwan today. He looked at the specific paths of three stars, Great Year, White Tiger and Dog of Heaven. He detailed several interesting exorcism rites involving these stars. He made several interesting points, he claimed that the Taoists had no specific doctrine for these stars just rites for dealing with them.
7, "Taoist Monastic Life" by Yoshitoyo Yoshioka. The most interesting thing about this article was that it was written from research gathered between 1940-1946 in Beijing by a Japanese scholar. Because of the war that makes for a rather interesting and questionable perspective. How close would an observer in such a time period be able to get to how things actually were? To make the matter more complicated all his notes were left behind when the war ended and he was forbidden to bring anything with him when he went back to Japan. I think in this case the historical significance lies not so much in the paper written but the circumstances in which it was written. Very interesting, not terribly useful however.
8, 9 "The Formation of the Taoist Canon" by Ninji Otachi and "Taoist Studies in Japan" by Tadao Sakai both not read.
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