Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Richard Wilhelm

1873 – 1930 CE

Translator bridging East and West

Theologian, missionary, early sinologist, and personal friend of Carl Jung; Wilhelm gave us two culturally transformative translations: the I Ching and The Secret of the Golden Flower. He moved to China as a young man and lived there for 25 years. During that time, he met a sage driven out of his hermitage by the revolution—Lau Nai Suan who introduced him to the philosophy of Chinese yoga and the I Ching's psychology. This meeting and his studies produced a bridge between east and west but also a deep conflict within Wilhelm between consciousness and unconsciousness, between his Christianity and eastern philosophy.

Eras

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Der Mensch und das Sein

Introduction to Secret of the Golden Flower

Quotes by Richard Wilhelm (7 quotes)

“To Confucianism, the final principle of an undivided One is the Tai Chi (the great ridge-beam)... the word Tao here has an inner-world significance and means the 'right way;' on one hand the way of Heaven, on the other, the way of man.”

from Introduction to Secret of the Golden Flower

Themes: Confucianism

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“While Taoism degenerated more and more in the Han period in an external wizardry... Lü Dongbin's movement represented a reform. The alchemistic signs became symbols of psychological processes”

from Introduction to Secret of the Golden Flower

Themes: Taoism

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“This philosophy [Lü Dongbin's] is—to a certain extent—the common property of all Chinese trends of thought. It is built on the premise that cosmos and man in the last analysis obey common laws; that man is a cosmos in miniature and is not divided from the great cosmos by any fixed limits.”

from Introduction to Secret of the Golden Flower

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“The fundamental idea is that Tao, though itself motionless, is the means of all movement and gives it law... The original meaning is that of a 'track which, though fixed itself, leads from the beginning directly to the goal.'”

from Introduction to Secret of the Golden Flower

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“Herein lies a difference between Buddhism and Taoism. In Buddhism, this return to Nirvana is connected with a complete annihilation of the ego, which, like the world, is only illusion. In Taoism, the goal is to preserve in a transfigured form, the idea of the person, the 'traces' left by experience. That is the Light symbolized in our text by the Golden Flower.”

from Introduction to Secret of the Golden Flower

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“since Confucianism has a broad common base with Taoism, the union of these two sets of ideas does not cause a loss in coherence.”

from Introduction to Secret of the Golden Flower

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“In order to understand fully the inner worldly order, one must imagine it as transparent, so that the primordial order is seen through it.”

from Der Mensch und das Sein

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Quotes about Richard Wilhelm (1 quotes)

“Wilhelm was a truly religious spirit, with an unclouded and farsighted view of things. He had the gift of being able to listen without bias to the revelations of a foreign mentality, and to accomplish that miracle of empathy which enabled him to make the intellectual treasures of China accessible to Europe.”

Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist
from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

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