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The Teaching and its Divergences        US$ 15

This paper comments on a Lieh-tzu's chapter concerning the Yang-tzu's teaching and its divergences.

The Taoist philosophy, improperly called "philosophy" if we think what designates this word for the Western culture, is a way/method (Tao) of life grounded on the pertinent observation of the reality and inspired from the development of the natural phenomena. But during the time, people have lost the keys of wisdom of the ancient Masters and even if they were called Taoists they have never been so far away from the Tao.
[Paper by Jhian Yang, word count: 755, PDF, download]

Yin and Yang        US$ 15

This paper is an introduction to yin and yang, their first appearence in Taoist philosophy and comments on their meaning.

Yin and Yang are fundamental terms in classical Taoist philosophy.
Some speculations concerning the dialectics of the two principles delighted the esoterically schools which followed and hoped to achieve immortality by most abstruse psycho-physical methods. But as it seems, the occurrence of this terms is not as ancient as we feel inclined to suppose...
In I-ching they are not found and they are substituted by the words "bright" and "dark", by "strong" and "weak", expressions which evoke  a polarity on the phenomenal level.
[Paper by Jhian Yang, word count: 1212, PDF, download]

Chuang-tzu and the Butterfly Metaphor        US$ 10

A short commentary on the significance of the butterfly in Chuang-tzu text.

The ambiguity resulting from the butterfly metaphor is altogether strange to a Taoist master's spirit: it's just an apparent ambiguity. With good reason Chuang-tzu asks himself how we could know for sure which is our real self? Self-knowledge is undoubtedly a hopeless topic.
[Paper by Jhian Yang, word count: 522, PDF, download]

Taoism and Christianity    US$ 15

Discusses some similarities between the Taoist doctrine and the Christian ethics.

I don't know how many people have noticed that there are certain similarities between Jesus' teachings from the New Testament and those of the religious Taoism (tao-chia). There was a time in the past when I thought about a possible influence of the ancient Chinese tradition on Judaism, without finding a specific proof of it. No trace of the writings belonging to the Taoist authors - Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, Lieh-tzu  - can be found in the Old Testament, either.
Then I thought that maybe during those years of Jesus' life of which no records were kept, he might have visited the cultural abodes of the ancient times and learned about the Taoist teaching or ideas.
[Paper by Jhian Yang, word count: 1047, PDF, download]

Yin and Yang: Patterns of Interaction    US$ 15

Discusses the idea of complementarity related to the yin and yang principles in Taoist philosophy.

Actually, yin and yang do not really infer the idea of complementarity. Still, it is present in everyday language as in the sentence "woman and man complete each other".
It is not very difficult to trace back the origin of this strange idea: in the Bible, in the Old Testament, precisely in the Book of Genesis, where we learn that the woman was born from Adam. The speculations concerning the A myth of the Genesis, where it seems we have to do with an androgynous, primary creature, give a handle to the idea that man and woman are complementary, that is, together, they create the unity, the primary androgynous.
[Paper by Jhian Yang, word count: 663, HTML, download]

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