Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words

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Gia-Fu Feng 馮家福

1919 – 1985 CE

Counterculture Patriarch, translator, teacher and Taoist rogue

The son of a wealthy Shanghai banker, a founder of the Bank of China, Gia-Fu became a millionaire three times in his life and each time gave most of his money away. During the Japanese invasion of China he moved to Kunming and after the war to the USA to study international finance at the Wharton School. Because of the Korean war, he could not return to China and instead wandered around America in an old car. On the West Coast he encountered the Beat Generation and became friends with Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Abraham Maslow, Fritz Perls, and his student Michael Murphy, the main founder of Esalen Institut

Lineages

Eras

Western

Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)
Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)

Unlisted Sources

Quotes by Gia-Fu Feng (1 quotes)

“Whereas Confucianism is concerned with day-to-day rules of conduct, Taoism is concerned with a more spiritual level of being... The essence of Taoism is contained in the 84 chapters of the book [Tao Te Ching]—roughly 5000 words—which have for 2500 years provided one of the major underlying influences in Chinese thought and culture, emerging also in proverbs and folklore.”

Themes: Confucianism Taoism

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Quotes about Gia-Fu Feng (1 quotes)

“No one has done better in conveying Lao Tzu's simple and laconic style of writing, so as to produce an English version almost as suggestive of the many meanings intended. this is a most useful, as well as beautiful, volume—and what it has to say is exactly what the world, in its present state, need to hear.”

— Alan Watts 1915 – 1973 CE