Simplicity for the Sophisticated: Rereading the Daode jing for the Polemics of Ease and Innocence

2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-49
Author(s):  
Alan Cole
Keyword(s):  
Daode Jing

The Tradition of the Daode jing

2005 ◽  
pp. 78-86
Author(s):  
PAUL R. GOLDIN ◽  
VICTOR H. MAIR
Keyword(s):  
Daode Jing

The Archaeology of Passage: Reading Invisibility in Chinese Tombs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wu Hung
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Tao Te Ching ◽  
The Past ◽  
Daode Jing

The eleventh section of Daode jing (Tao Te Ching), the foundational text of Taoism, reads: . . . Thirty spokes share a hub; Because [the wheel] is empty, it can be used in a cart. Knead clay to make a vessel. Because it is empty, it can function as a vessel. Carve out doors and windows to make a room. Because they are empty, they make a room usable. Thus we possess things and benefit from them, But it is their emptiness that makes them useful. . . This section has always been appreciated as a supreme piece of rhetoric on the powers of nothingness, a philosophical concept fiercely articulated in the Daode jing. Whereas that may indeed be the author’s intention, the empirical evidence evoked to demonstrate this concept reveals an alternative way of seeing manufactured objects by focusing on their immaterial aspects. This way of looking at things has important implications for archaeological and art historical scholarship on ancient artifacts and architecture precisely because these two disciplines identify themselves with the study of physical remains of the past so firmly that tangibility has become an undisputed condition of academic research in these fields. Archaeologists routinely classify objects from an excavation into categories based on material and then inventory their sizes, shapes, and decoration. Art historians typically start their interpretation of images, objects, and monuments by identifying their formal attributes. Whereas such trained attention to material and formal evidence will surely persist for good reasons, the Daode jing section cautions us of the danger of ignoring the immaterial aspects of man-made forms, which, though eluding conventional typological classification and visual analysis, are nevertheless indispensible to their existence as objects and buildings. The current chapter incorporates this approach into a study of ancient Chinese art and visual culture by arguing that constructed empty spaces on artifacts and structures—holes, vacuums, doors, and windows—possess vital significance to understanding the minds and hands that created them and thus deserve a serious look into their meaning.

The Daode Jing in Practice

2008 ◽  
pp. 75-90
Author(s):  
Gary D. DeAngelis ◽  
Warren G. Frisina ◽  
Eva Wong
Keyword(s):  
Daode Jing

Blending Dao: An Analysis of Images in the Daode jing

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Paul D’Ambrosio
Keyword(s):  
Daode Jing

Becoming One with the Dao: Meditation in Daode jing and Dōgen

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
E. Leslie Williams
Keyword(s):  
Daode Jing

What Child Is This?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bede Benjamin Bidlack
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Real ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Daode Jing ◽  
Birth Narratives

Similarity across religious boundaries attracts many comparative theologians to the effort of their work. But what happens if the similarity is so striking that a doctrinal turf war erupts? Engaging the Chinese Taoist tradition, Bede Bidlack looks to the similar beginnings of two stories to ask, “What Child is This?” His chapter examines the birth narratives of Jesus Christ and Lord Lao, the sixth-century BCE author of the Daode jing, for clues to their roles as “saviors.” Instead of letting the comparison dissolve into a quarrel over competing truth claims––who is the real savior?–– the chapter allows the similarities to propel closer examination of what the texts claim about these divine children and the function of those claims within their original contexts. The result is a Christology that holds Jesus’ cosmic function in tension with his call for the temporal realm.

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