China Books

There are no real faults with this book. The Introduction is interesting. An essential book for those seriously interested in the Daoist Perspective.

In my opinion, this document is of equal standing with the Chuang-Tzu and the Lieh-Tzu in importance, and as a compilation of thought, in a way more important as these documents as an overview of Taoist thought.

Having read a more obscure translation earler, I found this translation to be delightfully accessible and clear. There are excellent notes, summaries, explanations, and histories to compliment the document. I wish they had been present in the earlier translation I had dug up.

After reading the Tao Te Ching, read this before moving on to the Chuang-Tzu, Lieh-Tzu, or any other Taoist document. It's worth it - and in the spirit of Lao-Tzu, not too long or wordy.

Besides the Yuan Dao's enormous historical and philosophical value, the introduction to the Yuan Dao is the most important introduction to taoist thought that has been written in many years. It clearly defines the essential differences between the way Taoist and Western philosophies think.

Basically the book is just what it claims to be: a history of Zen Buddhism in China (it says "India" because it discusses the precursors to Zen in the Mahayana tradition and yoga). It is perfect for students interested in the topic.

I've heard from a few people (and the preface of the book admits it as well) that this book is somewhat dated because scholarship in this field has ballooned in the past decade or two. However, there is no equivalent introduction to all of Zen history. Thus, if you plan to study Zen history in depth, this is still the best place to start and you can move on to more recent books covering more specific movements and time periods. On the other hand, if you're not going to study in depth, then the new developments are not so radical as to render this unhelpful. Within ten years a better, up to date history of Zen is bound to come out. If you can wait...

On the other hand, I believe that a background in Chinese religion would be helpful, since Dumoulin really doesn't provide the background that a student needs in that area. But he does refer to them--Taoism and other strands of Chinese Buddhism--enough that perhaps he ought to have given a bit of introduction to them. He does give an interesting coverage of Neo-Confucianism, although not in much depth and only discussing their relationship to Zen. I was glad I had some familiarity with Taoism, but I found myself wishing I'd had more familiarity with Chinese Buddhism.

For that reason, if you are a beginning student, I'd strongly recommend some other books first.

If you're new to Zen, start with "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism" by D. T. Suzuki.

If you don't know much about Taoism, I recommend Livia Kohn's "Daoism and Chinese Culture."

If you don't know much about Chinese Buddhism, I recommend "Buddhism in China" by Kenneth Ch'en.

I think, at that point, if you want to get into the history of Zen Buddhism in greater depth, then you'll be ready to get a lot out of Dumoulin's fine book.

Of course, if the history of Zen really is the ONLY thing you're interested in, not how it interacted with Taoism or other kinds of Chinese Buddhism, then go ahead and just jump straight into this one.

Zen Buddhism: A History India And China is a new edition of volume 1 of the classic two- volume history by Heinrich Dumoulin (1905-1995), one of the world's most renowned Zen scholars. Covering the emergence of Zen through India and China, the new edition also includes additional notes by James W. Heisig of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture; a new introduction by John R. McRae of Indiana University exploring recent developments in the study of Zen; and the complete original text. An excellent, thoroughly researched, in-depth history especially recommended for advanced students and scholars of Buddhism and religious history.

A detailed survey that begins in India with the historic Buddha, Sakyamuni, and finishes with the decline of Zen in China. The amount of detail would be overwhelming if Dumoulin hadn't digested it so well and hadn't written so well. Packed no only with historical events and persons, there are many observations and insights that reveal not only how Zen developed but the extent of diversity and challenges within it.

There were some highlights for me: the roots of Zen in yoga (hence the emphasis on the lotus pose for zazen), the importance of the Mahayana sutras with all the work to translate them into Chinese, the interplay of Buddhism with Taoism in China that led to Zen, the persecution of Buddhism in China that only Zen and Pure Land survived, and the settling down into the methods of regular zazen and koan practice. The differing views on enlightenment and other key Buddhist concepts as well as on meditation practice reveals that Zen was ever exploratory and many things to many of its masters and those who followed them.

Remarkably NeoConfucianism eventually gathered strength so as to be able to successfully challenge Zen for the Chinese heart. This volume closes with Chinese Zen in a decline from which it never recovered. Dumoulin explains how NeoConfucianist scholars were able to weaken the hold of Zen upon the Chinese such that Zen only was able to progress outside of China. Thar Zen later prospered in Japan did not lead to its rehabiilation within China so one is left wondering if Japanese Zen largely succeeded due to not facing a NeoConfucian challenge within Japan: all the more reason to read carefully Dumoulin's history of why Zen declined in China. I find it impossible to wonder if Japanese Zen, however much it flourished there, did so to some extent by avoiding the challenges that Zen faced in China. Any such questions may be answered by a careful reading of both this Volume 1 and the companion but consensus seem less to be found than a struggle by many that shaped the tradition without bringing it closure.

Zen Buddhism, Volume 2: A History (Japan) (Treasures of the World's Religions)

Zen's Chinese Heritage - The masters and their teachings, by Andrew Ferguson, is a long awaited reference for those wishing to appreciate the origins of the Zen tradition. As a long time practioner of Zen, the many illustrious and noteworthy ancestors of my tradition, have often been nothing more than a confusing collection of names, difficult to pronounce and even more difficult to appreciate as once real and living men and women. Andrew Ferguson's painstaking efforts at bringing to life these practioners of old, and providing us with history and anecdotes from their allusive lives, has enlivened my practice and given new meaning to the many wonderful and amazing persons I encounter in my koan study. This book is a wonderful guide and reference, especially with its accompanying lineage chart, for anyone who is either a practioner of this wonderful tradition or is solely interested in furthering their appreciation for the history of Zen.

I took months to read this book and only ever reached the stage of being an open-mouthed, lightning-struck bystander. Such a treasure is not often found in one life. I congratulate the authors on feeding us such juicy and tangy fruit.

I read this book back when I was living in a monastery. I found it to be extraordinary, the other monk that I was living with at the time was also amazed that such a book had been written and he was the one that order one for the monks and one for the nuns.

The book goes through the very beginnings of Chan (Chinese word for Zen) up through the "Golden Age" and beyond. I found very intriguing particularly to see that at one point in the Chan history that there was this point when so many enlightened masters had arose at once. Probably something we may never see again. You will find all Five Schools in here plus other schools that were not so prominent but had an impact as well.

Definitely a book worthy of your dollar.

I first heard about this calendar on one of my many yahoo groups, someone had posted that this calendar had wonderful photos and I couldn't agree more! This calendar features 1 province each month and has a small black outline of China and shows where the province is in China. There is 1 large photo and then each day has it's own small photo. The photos where captured by Dennis Cox and each month has a write up of that province by Lisa See who does a wonderful job. The provinces featured are: Zhejiang, Anhui, Hebei & Shangdong,Guangxi, Shanghai, Yunnan, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Shaanxi & Shanxi and Xinjiang.

It is my hope that in the following years the calendar has each of the provinces in China. If you use a felt tip marker for marking things on the calendar you should be able to cut out the photos and use them for your child's lifebook or to make an ABC China book. There are many beautiful photos it maybe hard to choose which photos to use.

These photos will leave you in awe. I have done many trips to China and Dennis Cox captures the feeling with a superb sense and awareness of the Chinese culture.

This brilliant text provides a "fly-on-the-wall" view of what it must be like to work in a TCM clinic overseas. From the History through diagnosis and treatment options it presents an accurate and concise account of patient care and the Shen of healing. This is a professional text, written in clear clinical shorthand and a must for your library.

Buy this book, if for no other reason that the treatment protocol for "Flu Like Symptoms" (#5). You will use that methodology to help people from now on.

The Churchill Livingstone edition is bound more stoutly than most Chinese texts, but will require loving preservation - because it WILL be used - if it is to last you a lifetime!

This text really exposes you to a variety of difficult cases from China. It shows you the true power of acupuncture as a form a medicine with its ability to heal patients that are often in critical condition. Not only does it give you the point selections that were used to treat the patients, it also gives you the reasoning behind the selection and sometimes the needling techniques that were used. I highly recommend it because for me, it filled in a lot of missing pieces of the clinical puzzle, especially in the area of why certain points are chosen and how they should be needled in order to get the desired effect.

Greg O'Leary has assembled as fine a collection of essays on the current direction of labour markets and industrial relations in China as has been written. The scholarship is cutting edge. O'Leary himself contributes a masterly introduction.

Greg O'Leary has assembled an excellent array of contributions for those interested in contemporary Chinese economy and labor relations. The book combines first-rate academic research and analysis, and covers a broad range of issues with a consistently high quality. The editor provides insightful commentaries in his own chapters, which rank among the best scholarship on China that this reviewer has read.

This collection of poems piques the reader's senses and maintains interest throughout. The narrative with compelling characterizations keeps the reader moving along and even identifying with the mysterious Chinese aunt and her family in the United States. It is one of those rare books of poetry which you want to read to the very end without putting it down, and yet to enjoy stopping and mulling over individual poems. The encounters between Buddhist, Christian, and Confucian elements lend universal significance. This is the best poetry on today's literary scene.

This book is the winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award for 2000. While not a narrative poem, the story of the author's aunt that married a "Chinaman" and left her family only to return when she was dying, is as close as one can get. The poems tell of the author's need for connections and a sense of family and humanity that are inspiring and eternal. The bridge over all that divides us is, after all, built on hope and caring and sharing. A Marvelous collection.

"If at first you don't succeed , try, try again" is an old adage we frequently laugh at, but in Will's case, it lead to success. Will, a long-distance runner from Britain, wanted to be the first person to run the length of the Great Wall of China. It took him several years, but he finally accomplished this, but not without encountering serious illness, traveling through areas closed to foreigners and winding up in jail (which he subsequently broke out of) and eventual deportation from China. This is a good read about a heartwarming experiernce, espescially about hardships some people must go through to reach their dreams. The hardbound copy, which I don't think is available in the United States, contains some photos (Chinese authorities confiscated most of his film); the paperback book does not. Will has a strong interest in the Great Wall, and since he moved to Beijing permanently, spends many weekends camping out on the Wall. This has lead to another book on the Great Wall, this one on camping out on it. That book should be out in the fall of 1998. I first met Will in the fall of 1994 when I moved to Beijing to work as a copy editor for China Daily; Will already was working there. But even if Will weren't a friend, I would still recommend this book for anyone with a spirit of adventure or who just wants to share in this marvelous, inspirational adventure.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. He has a great writing style and his accomplishment was remarkable. His courage and persistance is amazing.

As an aside, I met William in China and spent a few days walking with him on the "wild wall". It is just as amazing as he details in his book. He is a very nice chap and is now quite an authority on the Great Wall of China. I hope he continues to write!

There have been several prominent books and journal articles on Japan's postwar economic success (my personal favorite is The Misunderstood Miracle: Industrial Development and Political Change in Japan (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)). However, understanding the true nature of this flourishing is a somewhat different matter. While Friedman addresses the ECONOMIC aspects, Fosberg ably addresses the political and diplomatic aspects.

Prior to the War, Japan had been a major industrial power, and while a stupendous amount of plant and materiel had been physically destroyed by Allied bombing, it was clear that Japan possessed the trained personnel and deepened industrial institutions to recover. What was not clear, however, was if the US political establishment had the will or vision to help out.

Political establishments are heterogenous things, with complicated networks of competing and colluding interests; and while this is something so obvious it ought to be vapid, it's a point usually overlooked by ideologically zealous historians. For those interested in a serious, well-documented treatment of how the network of myriad US interests coalesced towards a strategy of helping Japan develop, and then integrate into the US economic sphere, this is a good beginning.

Students of economics will possibly be perturbed because Forsberg does not strictly adhere to neoliberal economic orthodoxy. This book tends towards neutrality on controversial issues in development economics, and rather, deals with what actors expected to happen as a result of the policies they pursued. So, for example, for much of the period covered the US Congress wavered between accommodating Japanese home markets protection (for the purpose of defeating Communism in the region) and demanding that the Japanese authorities open their market to US goods. An orthodox economist might object that protecting domestic markets was a stupid "payout" for either Japanese or US constituencies generally, but the point is that in 1950 very few political actors anywhere thought such things.

In general, the account tends to be fairly favorable to the US polity in terms of "generosity" (in this case, willingness to sacrifice short-term regional preferences for long-term success in the project of Japanese development), and emphasizes the success of Japanese industry interests in protecting specific markets. At the same time, the difficulty of getting the US polity to support Japanese economic recovery is not ignored. The terms of the bilateral agreements with Japan were sometimes one-sided, allowing the USA bases without commitments to actually defend Japan. Partly this was an ugly byproduct of the fact that Japan had become a US client by virtue of defeat in a war; but it also reflected internal divsions in the Japanese polity over the relationship with the USA.

In any respects, the book is an outstanding companion to the above-mentioned Friedman book on the economics of Japan's development. While Friedman emphasizes the overlooked entreprenuerial aspect, Forsberg explains the institutional and diplomatic aspect that actually prevailed. Readers of varing ideological or economic dogmas may draw their own conclusions based on what actually followed.

in my world history class i was doing a project on the japanese economic miracle after world war ii. this was the main source of information i used. i thought that this book was full of information involving the japanese and their sturggle to gain economic success. this book also taught me a lot about how the americans felt about the japanese. although in war they were enemies, after the war, since the US occupied Japan, due to their help, the japanese were able to get the success they wanted. if you are working on a project or just want to know about the japanese economic miracle, then i strongly suggest this book.

I haven't read this book, but I just wanted to mention that "Sources of Chinese Tradition" compiled by deBary and Bloom has a chapter of about twenty pages by Keightley discussing the oracle bone inscriptions. It might serve as an introduction for those with only a slight interest--especially as "The Ancestral Landscape" becomes harder to buy--and is usually available for pretty cheap. (I have the second edition, so double check to make sure the first edition has this chapter too!)

Thanks

Keightley, one of the top Western scholars in this field, has produced a must-read with this exploration of everything the oracle bone divination contents can tell us about the lives and environment of the Shang world, including agriculture, time and the calendar, the Shang territory, capital and its environs, foreign relations, and religious life. On each topic, Keightley presents phrases found in the oracle bone inscriptions, directly translated graph for graph into modern Chinese characters, then presents his translation into English, and a discussion. His style is lucid, his scholarship keen. There are eight figures with rubbings of actual oracle bones in the rear, but other than this, all the contents of the divinations are presented only in modern, traditional graphs, which is a bit disappointing for those like me who would very much like to see the oracle bone versions of the graphs for each phrase. Nevertheless, highly recommended.