{"product_id":"tao-isbn-9780394733111","title":"Tao","description":"\u003cb\u003eDrawing on ancient and modern sources, \"a lucid discussion of Taoism and the Chinese language [that's] profound, reflective, and enlightening.\" —\u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAccording to Deepak Chopra, \"Watts was a spiritual polymatch, the first and possibly greatest.\"  Watts treats the Chinese philosophy of Tao in much the same way as he did Zen Buddhism in his classic \u003ci\u003eThe Way of Zen\u003c\/i\u003e. Critics agree that this last work stands as a perfect monument to the life and literature of Alan Watts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, . . . Watts begins with scholarship and intellect and proceeds with art and eloquence to the frontiers of the spirit.\"—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eForeword, \u003ci\u003eby Al Chung-liang Huang     \u003c\/i\u003evii\u003cbr\u003ePreface     xiv\u003cbr\u003eProlegomena     xvii\u003cbr\u003e    \u003ci\u003eThe Pronunciation of Chinese Words     \u003c\/i\u003exxi\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e1. The Chinese Written Language     \u003c\/i\u003e2\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e2. The Yin-Yang Polarity     \u003c\/i\u003e18\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e3. Tao      \u003c\/i\u003e37\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHINESE CALLIGRAPHY     56\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e4. We-wei     \u003c\/i\u003e74\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHINESE CALLIGRAPHY     99\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e5. Te—Virtuality     \u003c\/i\u003e106\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce Again: A New Beginning, \u003ci\u003eby Al Chung-liang Huang     \u003c\/i\u003e123\u003cbr\u003e    \u003ci\u003eNote on My Calligraphy     \u003c\/i\u003e128\u003cbr\u003eBibliography     129\"A gem to remember Watts by ... There is a flamboyant and fascinating display of learning and complex indications of a personality that seems to have resisted inner pacification.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, Alan Watts had the rare gift of 'writing beautifully the unwritable' ... Watts begins with scholarship and intellect and proceeds with art and eloquence to the frontiers of the spirit ... This is a profound and worthy work, left by a teacher to echo and re-echo.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A remarkable book because of Alan Watts's talent for communicating Eastern ways of thought ... not only the last of his works, but the best ... This book is a 'must.'\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eShambhala Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Watts's last book is in the category of his finest work, a lucid discussion of Taoism and the Chinese language ... profound, reflective, and enlightening. Moreover, the text supplies a sense of his ebullient spirit behind the revelation of Tao.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003eALAN W. WATTS, who held both a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate of divinity, is best remembered as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular, and of Indian and Chinese philosophy in general. Standing apart, however, from sectarian membership, he has earned the reputation of being one of the most original and “unrutted” philosophers of the twentieth century. Watts was the author of some twenty books on the philosophy and psychology of religion that have been published in many languages throughout the world, including the bestselling \u003ci\u003eThe Way of Zen.\u003c\/i\u003e An avid lecturer, Watts appeared regularly on the radio and hosted the popular television series, \u003ci\u003eEastern Wisdom and Modern Life,\u003c\/i\u003e in the 1960s. He died in 1973.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e2. The Yin-Yang Polarity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAt the very roots of Chinese thinking and feeling there lies the principle of polarity, which is not to be confused with the ideas of opposition or conflict. In the metaphors of other cultures, light is at war with darkness, life with death, good with evil, and the positive with the negative, and thus an idealism to cultivate the former and be rid of the latter flourishes throughout much of the world. To the traditional way of Chinese thinking, this is as incomprehensible as an electric current without both positive and negative poles, for polarity is the principle that + and –, north and south, are different aspects of one and the same system, and that the disappearance of either one of them would be the disappearance of the system.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePeople who have been brought up in the aura of Christian and Hebrew aspirations find this frustrating, because it seems to deny any possibility of progress, an ideal which flows from their linear (as distinct from cyclic) view of time and history. Indeed, the whole enterprise of Western technology is “to make the world a better place”—to have pleasure without pain, wealth without poverty, and health without sickness. But, as is now becoming obvious, our violent efforts to achieve this ideal with such weapons as DDT, penicillin, nuclear energy, automotive transportation, computers, industrial farming, damming, and compelling everyone, by law, to be superficially “good and healthy” are creating more problems than they solve. We have been interfering with a complex system of relationships which we do not understand, and the more we study its details, the more it eludes us by revealing still more details to study. As we try to comprehend and control the world it runs away from us. Instead of chafing at this situation, a Taoist would ask what it means. What is that which always retreats when pursued? Answer: yourself. Idealists (in the moral sense of the word) regard the universe as different and separate from themselves—that is, as a system of external objects which needs to be subjugated. Taoists view the universe as the same as, or inseparable from, themselves—so that Lao-tzu could say, “Without leaving my house, I know the whole universe.” This implies that the art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one’s actions may use them and not fight them. In this sense, the Taoist attitude is not opposed to technology per se. Indeed, the Chuang-tzu writings are full of references to crafts and skills perfected by this very principle of “going with the grain.” The point is therefore that technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Our overspecialization in conscious attention and linear thinking has led to neglect, or ignore-ance, of the basic principles and rhythms of this process, of which the foremost is polarity.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn Chinese the two poles of cosmic energy are \u003ci\u003eyang\u003c\/i\u003e (positive) and \u003ci\u003eyin\u003c\/i\u003e (negative), and their conventional signs are respectively — and – – . The ideograms indicate the sunny and shady sides of a hill, \u003ci\u003efou, \u003c\/i\u003eand they are associated with the masculine and the feminine, the firm and the yielding, the strong and the weak, the light and the dark, the rising and the falling, heaven and earth, and they are even recognized in such everyday matters as cooking as the spicy and the bland. Thus the art of life is not seen as holding to \u003ci\u003eyang \u003c\/i\u003eand banishing \u003ci\u003eyin, \u003c\/i\u003ebut as keeping the two in balance, because there cannot be one without the other. When regarding them as the masculine and the feminine, the reference is not so much to male and female individuals as to characteristics which are dominant in, but not confined to, each of the two sexes. Obviously, the male has the convex penis and the female the concave vaginal and though people have regarded the former as a possession and the latter as a deprivation (Freud’s “penis envy”), any fool should be able to recognize that one cannot have the outstanding without the instanding, and that a rampant \u003ci\u003emembrum virile \u003c\/i\u003eis no good without somewhere to put it, and vice versa, But the male individual must not neglect his female component, not the female her male. This Lao-tzu says:\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eKnowing the make but keeping the female, one becomes a universal stream. Becoming a universal stream, one is not separated from eternal virtue.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eyang \u003c\/i\u003eand the \u003ci\u003eyin \u003c\/i\u003eare principles, not men and women, so that there can be no true relationship between the affectedly tough male and the affectedly flimsy female.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe key to the relationship between \u003ci\u003eyang \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eyin\u003c\/i\u003e is called \u003ci\u003ehsiang sheng, \u003c\/i\u003emutual arising or inseparability. As Lau-tzu puts it:\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWhen everyone knows beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness;\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWhen everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e“To be” and “not to be” arise mutually;\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eDifficult and easy are mutually realized;\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eLong and short are mutually contrasted;\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eHigh and low are mutually posited; . . . \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBefore and after are in mutual sequence,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey are thus like the different, but inseparable, sides of a coin, the poles of a magnet, or pulse and interval in any vibration. There is never the ultimate possibility that either one will win over the other, for they are more like lovers wrestling than enemies fighting. But it is difficult in our logic to see that being and nonbeing are mutually generative and mutually supportive, for it is the great and imaginary terror of Western man that nothingness will be the permanent end of the universe. We do not easily grasp the point that the void is creative, and that being comes from nonbeing as sound from silence and light from space.","brand":"Pantheon","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305489387749,"sku":"NP9780394733111","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780394733111.jpg?v=1767737790","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/tao-isbn-9780394733111","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}