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Reflecting on his own history of teaching the DDJ at American colleges and universities from the early 1970's through to the end of the 20th century, Norman Girardot describes scholarly and cultural changes that have had an impact on what he does in the classroom, especially his use of popularized presentations of the DDJ both as a way of opening students to the text, and as a reference point to be criticized once he has led them toward a fuller understanding of its historical and cultural context. Included is a discussion of the nature and role of performative ritual including a one‐day college‐wide phantasmagora called “Dao‐day.”

This introductory chapter talks about the confusions and controversies over the religious nature of Confucianism. It argues that the confusions come mainly from three sources. First, they come from the conceptualization of Confucianism as a world religion at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe, which was a historical product of the emergence of the “world religions” paradigm in the West. Second, they are caused by the problematic way in which Confucianism—and Chinese religions in general—has been studied and represented by questions which are based on a Judeo-Christian framework that cannot capture the complexity of Chinese religious life. Finally, confusion arises from the often contradictory development of Confucianism in today's China.

In this “contrarian” approach to reading he DDJ, Russell Kirkland argues that most textbooks do a credible job of presenting the DDJ as it has been inherited through both Confucian and Western conceptual lenses, but that such a view fails to see the Daoist as they saw themselves. He challenges students to “ponder the alienity of ancient China” before making assumptions about what the text is trying to accomplish. By focusing their attention on early Daoist religious practices, and the status of the DDJ as a Daoist scripture, Kirkland aims to cultivate in his students an appreciation for both the originary aims of the text and the way hermeneutical models are developed, challenged and clarified.

This chapter discusses the long-standing problem of identifying Confucians in China (and East Asia in general) through social science research methods—a problem deeply rooted in the nineteenth-century conceptualization of Confucianism and the overall classification of Chinese religions. It investigates different types of empirical data—national censuses and surveys—from Mainland China, as well as from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, in order to answer two questions. First is about whether “Confucianism” is a category in religious classifications in these East Asian countries and regions; the second asks about how many people are counted as “Confucians” in China.

This chapter focuses on a theme implicit in much of the book: the relationship of Hanuman's simian form to the mediatory religious role he assumes and to the “messages” he so effectively delivers. It first considers the preoccupation of some modern Indian authors with the “problem” of Hanuman's monkey form, situating their interventions within colonial and post-colonial debates about history, race, and cultural and biological evolution. For comparative purposes, it surveys a wider range of human responses to anthropoid primates, including the cults of simian deities in Chinese and Japanese religions and the discourse of modern primatology. Returning to India, it considers Hanuman's role in modern Hindu nationalism and in the religious patronage of the emerging middle class. Finally, it examines evidence of Hanuman's continuing rise as a comprehensive and encompassing deity, signaled by new iconography and a proliferating theological discourse. An epilogue speculates on the potential for Hanuman's role in movements promoting ecology and environmental ethics.

Eschewing both the uncritical faith stance of Daoism's apologists as well as the reductionist tendencies among some contemporary secularists, Harold D. Roth preaches a middle path when it comes to analyzing and teaching the Daode jing. Since the Daode jing draws from a meditative tradition that utilizes breath control he suggests our teaching include a mix of both third‐person analysis (where we rely on the traditional tools of scholarship such as historical‐textual research, hermeneutical analysis, and contemporary philosophic reflection) and first‐person analysis (where we encourage our students to engage in simple meditation and breathing exercises that are tied to specific chapters and that add an experiential dimension to their study). He suggests this combination as a way of both discharging our scholarly responsibilities while demonstrating a healthy respect for the integrity and coherence of this ancient text.

This essay discusses the way the DDJ contradicts or even subverts many Western philosophic and religious assumptions about ontology, cosmology and the self. Where many Western philosophers describe being as “a common property or a relational structure” the DDJ seems not to posit any such “superordinate One to which the Many reduce.” Similarly, where many Western thinkers portray the self as a collection of competing and sometimes conflicting faculties (e.g. reason, appetite and will), the DDJ does not. Bringing students to an awareness of these differences is, David L. Hall argues, an excellent way to introduce them to the advantages of a comparative approach to philosophic reflection.

This collaborative effort between an experienced teacher/scholar and two (then) graduate students presents three “overlapping” strategies for teaching the DDJ. The first emphasizes situating the DDJ within the context of Zhou Chinese intellectual struggles and then proceeds by student led discussions about thematically grouped chapters. The second contrasts contemporary expectations regarding gender language with the DDJ 's own use of feminine metaphors in order to help students uncover what the text may mean when it uses those metaphors in the way that it does. The third aims to turn the DDJ 's notorious ambiguity to the teacher's advantage by leading students through a series of re‐readings of the text from different points of view. This third strategy helps students to see how their understanding of the text changes with each re‐reading, and that all interpretations are context‐dependent.

This essay outlines the way Gary D. DeAngelis employs the DDJ in a course on comparative mysticisms. Beginning with Ninian Smart's definition of mystical experience as a “state of consciousness where one ‘acquires a fundamental insight into the nature of reality,'” DeAngelis leads students into a discussion of how the DDJ responds to two basic questions: “What is the nature of ultimate reality?; and How may one experience that reality?” These questions lead students to explore basic epistemological issues as they come to a deeper understanding of what the DDJ may mean by saying that it is possible to “know” a Dao which is itself “unknowable.”

This essay urges teachers of the Daode jing to cultivate in their students an appreciation of the multifarious history and ongoing reception of the DDJ and the traditions it has helped spawn. In particular it urges that our students come to understand the textual history of the DDJ's development (as revealed via recent archeological finds), the historical reality surrounding the text's creation (e.g. Warring States politics; competing philosophic views), and the role the DDJ has played in the development of Daoist rituals and practices. Livia Kohn also suggests that students would benefit from an appreciation of the religious dimensions of Daoism, especially an understanding of the meditative and cultivation practices which seem so critical to the early Daoist communities and the development of Laozi from legendary antagonist of Confucius to the status of a divine being.

Michael LaFargue aims to cultivate in students a capacity to see the DDJ from the point of view of its many literary forms and implied interlocutors. By exploring the structures of proverbial sayings he leads students away from the tendency to take its statements too literally, a tendency that typically makes the DDJ seem more obscure and mysterious than it is. LaFargue encourages students to ask: What “pragmatic implications” of the DDJ's statements can we reasonably attribute to the early Daoist practitioners who both produced and made use of this text? This leads to a historicist understanding of the DDJ that is rooted in questions quite different from those that a contemporary western reader would typically bring to the text.

This chapter explores the significant role that Chinese religious traditions have played in the context of family planning and related issues. It argues that the idea of family planning or population management does not necessarily conflict with the long traditions of the Chinese religions. On the contrary, the compatibility between the modern idea of family planning and how it was conceived according to Chinese traditions is in fact an inherent cultural and spiritual resource that has enabled Chinese people to tolerate, accept, and even support the modern idea of family planning. “Chinese religious traditions” designates the two major indigenous religions: Confucianism and Taoism, which have shaped the Chinese cultural tradition since the Chou Dynasty (1066–256 b.c.e.), during which the classics or scriptures of both religions were composed by their initiators. This chapter focuses on the ideas and beliefs shared by both religions that have been absorbed into the larger contexts of Chinese culture.

For many years Robert Henricks has used the image of an untended field to help his students understand what the DDJ means by the Dao. Henrick's field is not a farmer's field but rather a natural field that is “barren and deserted in the winter but filled with a host of different wildflowers throughout the spring and summer.” This analogy leads naturally into discussion of such central Daoist themes as: the Dao's rhythmic cycles from tranquility to activity and back; the need to remain “rooted” in the Dao; the true nature of morality; and what the DDJ might mean by immortality.

This epilogue discusses Leibniz's particular interest in China. Like his predecessors, Leibniz's preferred virtuous pagans were also ancient philosophers, but he was partial to those of China. Leibniz had showed an interest in China from the mid-1670s and, from 1689, roughly in the middle of his career, he began to conduct a correspondence with a number of the Jesuit missionaries to China, seeking information about Chinese writings, thought and language, as well as current news about political and religious developments. His intense interest in China and his voracious reading of all he could find out about it grew from these correspondences, and his fullest thoughts about Chinese religion are expressed in one of his last works, a letter On the Natural Theology of the Chinese, written in 1716 — the year of his death.

This chapter presents a study of second-generation Chinese Americans and how family is the center of their spirituality and religiosity. It demonstrates the difference between Western definitions of religion as a public institutionalized phenomenon and Asian religious practices that are noninsitutionalized and centered around the family. These Chinese Americans identify as nonreligious, yet, they still make use of religious repertoires of Chinese popular religion. The second generation participates in the so-called “Chinese American familism,” wherein the family is the object of worship, sacrifice, and moral obligation. Chinese Americans interpret their familism as ethnic and family traditions. Contrary to Herberg's theory, these Chinese Americans do not need a religious identity to belong in the US, collective family solidarity seems to be enough.

This chapter outlines general principles of Guodian religion. The focus of the religious system is unification that involves the bringing together of distinct individuals. Maintaining our individuality is underscored by the physical presence of morality in each of our bodies that requires us to recognize minority as well as majority concerns within the society at large; therefore, Guodian texts describe a system that is intended for an entire society of individuals. It also requires a belief in the ability of others to act morally. The transition from the individual to the society requires faith, as it relies on others for its maintenance and propagation. Subsequent chapters will provide a detailed analysis of the important transition between individual ethics and a socially conceived system, which is the foundation of religious sentiment in Guodian texts.

The contemporary Daoist practitioner, Eva Wong, explains that many of the DDJ 's most puzzling passages make perfect sense when seen in the light of Daoist activities and exercises. Specifically, she argues that phrases like “quieting the mind,” “nourishing the soul”, “infant breathing,” and “cleaning the subtle mirror” point toward particular kinds of actions which early (and in many cases contemporary) Daoists believed would lead one to live a life more nearly in accord with the Dao.

This chapter focuses on the Great Missionary Exhibition of 1909 in England titled “Africa and the East”. The exhibition was a huge undertaking which served to populate and furnish China in the British imagination. The British missionaries created educational displays of Chinese culture, public space and spirituality, and helped the good folk of England to picture Chinese bodies. This chapter also discusses the perception of Chinese religion in England.