Customer Reviews

Daoism and Chinese Culture

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Livia Kohn has taught Daoism to college students for over 15 years, and she just edited the Daoism Handbook (which you can buy for a whopping $245!). She's one of the world's experts on Daoism, and for the first time she's put together an extraordinarily readable introduction to one of the world's most fascinating and least understood religions.

Unlike many books on Daoism this book covers the whole history from ancient wisdom traditions, through medieval religious communities, to contemporary spiritual practices such as Qigong and Falun gong. Nowhere else are you going to get as comprehensive, and as readable an introduction.

It's not just dry history because the author makes connections to broader issues in Chinese culture and also to issues in comparative religions such as mysticism, modernity, identity and community. It's a great book and great value too.

Livia Kohn has written an excellent, if not sometimes overly detailed, introduction to Daoism in Daoism and Chinese Culture. The complexity is confusing, but also compelling. She does not shy away from showing how Daoism changed over time, incorporating a wide variety of practices from Chinese folk religion and tradition, Buddhism, Confucianism, as well as going through a myriad of internal changes, as it transmuted into different branches and trends, each stressing some new or old (or new-old) element of Daoism.

Daoism comes across in Kohn's book not as Daoism, but daoisms. There is great deal of information in this book ina short space, and Kohn does not dilute it for us in the least.

Livia Kohn's book is both a wonderful survey of Daoist philosophy but also an engaging cultural history.