The Useless Tree

Taoism

  • Baiyunguan: White Cloud Temple

    I went to Baiyunguan – White Cloud Temple – today, a place where Daoism is practiced as a religion. It's an important location, a key site for the Quanzhen sect of Daoism.  I have to admit, I do not know… Continue reading

  • Ai Weiwei, Zhuangzi, and Life at the Margins

    Happy New Year! I saw the Ai Weiwei documentary, Never Sorry, again last night, and led a bit of a discussion about it afterwards.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  Alison Klayman does a great job presenting Ai's political… Continue reading

  • Nelson Mandela: Daoist Sage

    I'm reading obituaries of the great man, Nelson Mandela, who accomplished a transition to democracy in a divided and fraught South Africa. And I am reflecting on what I know of his life and how that experience has flowed through… Continue reading

  • Return to the Trolley Problem: The Daoists Are Right!

    A review in yesterday's NYT Sunday Book Review brings the infamous "trolley problem" to wider public attention. Having blogged on this issue before, primarily from a Daoist perspective (see here and here), I will not describe the full analytic apparatus… Continue reading

  • Birthday Thoughts

         Today is Aidan's birthday.       He would have been twenty-two.      As I think about his life, and what he gave to me, a passage from Zhuangzi comes to mind.  Without him, I would not have… Continue reading

  • Daoist Gun Control Redux

    I posted this in January, but the inhuamnity of American gun culture requires us to return, again and again, to the sad topic of firearm violence:    The Daodejing takes a dim view of weapons.  Passage 31 begins (Legge translation):… Continue reading

  • Daoism as the Core of Chinese Culture

    "Confucianism" is often taken as a metonym for "Chinese culture."  It's easy to see why: the educated elite in imperial China, who themselves had to master the Confucian classics, had a material interest in asserting the cultural preeminence of those… Continue reading

  • Daoism and the Diffusion of Trauma

    The title of this piece in yesterday's NYT Sunday Review caught my eye: "The Trauma of Being Alive."  After wondering if it was a riff on the first of the four noble truths of Buddhism (it wasn't), I myself slipping… Continue reading

  • “An Era of Lost Faith”?

    A piece in Caixin about a questionable qigong "master," brings up a larger point, one that provides some insight into China's current cultural climate. In considering why successful business people and government cadres seek out spiritual guidance from questionable sources,… Continue reading

  • It’s Hard Out Here For A Daoist

    A disheartening, if not completely unexpected, story in China Daily today (h/t Sinocism) on the ways in which the growing materialism of Chinese society is undermining the practice of Daoist religion: Taoist abbot Yuan Zhihong has a complicated attitude toward… Continue reading