Thanksgiving is Over TAT

Hi guys! It is nice to meet with you guys after thanksgiving! Hope all of you had a great weekend with your family and enjoyed some delicious turkey dinner! For this week, I decided to do a picture time about Taoism to get you a visual understanding about Taosim. So let's start!

Sixty-Four Gua

This is the picture of Taiji of Taoism and it's like god of Christianity. The middle of this picture is called Taiji icon and the lines around the icon represent all the times and locations in this universe.

The Three Pure Ones

The Three Pure Ones are the highest Deities in Taoism and they are the avatar of Taoism.

The Jade Emperor

The Jade Emperor is the supreme ruler of Heavens. He is the highest ruler of Taoist world.

Lao Tsu

Lao Tsu was known as the first people invented Taoism. He lived a little bit around Confucius around 6 BC.

Qing Cheng Mountain

This is the mountain where Xiao Tianshi found his life goal and collected most of his Taoist collections. This is also the place where Fu Jinquan put all his collections during Ming and Qing dynasty.

Xiao Tianshi

The series of Tao Zang Jin Hua

That's much about today's picture time! Wish you have more Three-dimensional feeling about Taoism than before! And the finals are coming, so hope everyone stand strong and nail all their finals! Fighting!

Happy Thanksgiving!

First of all, I want to say happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Wish all of you have a great week coming and also don't forget there are lots of finals coming! >_<

As you known, I have started to translate English back to Chinese this week and I have to say this! It is great to feel like you are an expert in some another language rather than English! Haha~

Today I want to share a little story I heard from professor Valussi few days ago about an old Daoist scholar name Fu Jinquan and his interesting relationship with Xiao Tianshi.

We have already known when Xiao Tianshi worked for government in Sichuan provenience, he found lots of precious Taoist books in Qingchen mountain. And because of these books, he devoted the rest of his life in Taiwan to the publishing of Daoist books. Have you ever wondered why there are so many precious Taoist books there? And why Qingchen mountain became such an important place for Taoist people to practice? All of these things began from the Daoist scholar Fu Jinquan.

Fu Jinquan, also known as Ji Yi Zi, was bron in Xishan City, Jiangxi provenience. His biography was like a total mystery, and people cannot find enough information about him life. But what we have known is that he traveled to Sichuan provenience in the year 1817 and he stayed in Sichuan for 40 years. Fu Jinquan was a outstanding Taoist scholar at his time and he was an expert at practice Neidan and Yin-yang. During his 40 years in Sichuan, Fu Jinquan wrote down countless Taoist books including Ding Qi Song, Cai Jin Song, Xin Xue, Xin Ke Tao Shu Wu Pian Zhu, etc. The reason why Fu Jinquan wrote so many books at that time was because Fu deeply wanted to separate his knowledge about Taoism with other people and extremely hoped Taoism would not disappeared in the history of mankind. He built a Taoist temple in Qingchen mountian and started to store all the Taoist books he could collected. And all those collections finally went to Xiao Tianshi's hands after a hundreds year later and Xiao Tianshi trully finished Fu Jinquan's will to separate Taoist knowledge among world. 

Two people lived in two different era, depended on their dedication of Taoism, cross the barrier of time and space to completed their destiny of Taoism. What a wonderful story! ^^

Finished My translation!

Hi guys! It is my pleasure to talk with all of you on this loving Sunday night! First of all, I want to introduce you guys a great movie name Argo! I believe this is the best movie I have ever seen this year and you should definitely see it in a cinema if you haven't!

Also, I have finished all my Chinese translation on last Thursday night and I will start to translate some English back to Chinese next week! I feel so exciting about translate something into my first language and I hope I may do a better job than my English translation! XD So this is gonna be the last week I posts some my English translations, and I will begin to tell you some funny story about my Chinese translation next week! At last, Hope all of you enjoy the last translations I did and have a awesome coming week!

第十三集之三 太乙金華宗旨 呂祖指玄篇秘註 合刊
一 414 太乙金華宗旨一卷 呂洞賓乩筆 民國三年廣州文魁閣刊本
Xiao said in 金華宗旨與指玄篇秘註合刊序：
Those secrets this book has shown is all from practical experience from our ancestors. It is our duty to learn and pursue the truth throughout our life. All these cannot be done in one step and be obtained in a short period. If so, we can only get partial understanding of those truths. Also we should know the connections between truths. Otherwise we cannot study other providing with those truths in hand. I link my mind with gods and follow my heart. Get to know gods and words. I appreciate gods’ grant and what they have taught me. I treated gods’ words as truth. After I have read through the book, even simple words have further meanings beneath. The words are also clearly presented. People with diverse background or from different area can finally get together and find the place called “truth”. Just a glimpse of truth, you will get eternal truth. The path is easy and can be followed by any common people. This book is written by Weixin Zhou living in Shu who learned from a Taoist priest named Liaoxu. It was published in the East and read by a large population and save them. His offspring reprinted this book during Qing dynasty in Chengdu. Hereby to certify.

二 247 悟真篇三注 四注悟真篇三卷 宋張伯端撰 宋薛氏註 宋陸墅註 元陳致虛註 清傅金銓頂批圈點 掃葉山房石印本

Xiao said: the book called ‘Wuzhenpian Sanzhu’ is the edition of Saoyeshan Fangcang. It is originally named ‘Sizhu Wuzhenpian’. It contains annotations from people in three genres. Their name is Zixian Xue, Ziye Lu and Zhixu Chen. But only another annotation written by Jinquan Fu as footnotes directly pointed out the crucial ideas. All those four consist of the ‘Sizhu’. Since the main material is from ‘Wuzhenpian Sanzhu’, it is named after this. ‘Zixian Zhizhu’ is actually ‘Baoguang Zhizhu’. This book was researched just like the ‘Siku Quanshu’. All those three books were annotated by Mr. Qiu. Only small portion of the material were deleted. In order to inherit our ancestors’ thoughts and ideas, it was permitted to be published. Hopefully it will become a good reference and proof of the idea of the Taoism. And it is not a short trip to foster and enhance the Taoism. I hope this book can let the reader get an overall idea about the Taoism. It is a little bit regret for having lost some materials as the result of the annotations.

It Is Good To Be Back!

Hi guys! It is great to be back! I finally finished all my midterms and have no more exams next week! Hope I may have a nice week coming! Also wish you guys just had an amazing and awesome Halloween!

As usual, I will post onel translations from Tao Zan Jing Hua to let you have deeper understanding about Taoism. This translation is basically about why Xiao Tianshi put this article into his Tao Zang Jing Hua and why this article is such so important for readers to study and learn.

Finally,  hope everyone enjoys this as usual! ^^

第三集之七 南北合參法要
Xiao said on the preface of Nan Bei He Can Fa Ya:
First, this book uses different chapters from Tong Yi Qi Si Zhong. The book has four chapters and was original published by Zun De Tang in Kui Mo year during Guang Xu period. The first chapter is about basic  theory of three major philosophies in ancient China. The second chapter is about the difference between South and North faction of Taoism. The third chapter includes ten poems which express the goods inside Taoism. The Fourth chapter has several unorganized Taoist articles and poems. The book has a hundred thousand words and it talks about the integration of South and North faction of Taoism.

Second, the original writer of the book is Fang Nei San Ren from Nan Chang. He integrated not only Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism together, but also South and North faction of Taoism. He tried his entire life to research Taoism from details to details and tried to exclude cult parts from Taoism. Mr Fang Nei was weak and sick when he was very young. But he kept study Taoism continuously. He studied Taoism ten years like the first day he started, and he also was an expert in Zhou Yi Lian Luo Guan Chong and Fu Nei Dian dan Jing. After he finished his research, he started to search classic copy of Taoism and he found Xiong Zhan An‘s Zhen Chuan Mi Lu. He became a true expert in North faction of Taoism after that. Based on Mr Fang Nei’s true intelligent and hardworking and a little bit luck, he meets oen of the masters of Taoism and became an expert in South faction of Taoism at last. After he learned from both South and North faction of Taoism, he continuously worked hard and became well-known among Taoist academia. And that’s why all the words from the book is come from some experts’ Zhen Jue and reader should not ignore those parts.

Third, this book use fundamental theories from all Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Although all three philosophies have different theories, they all came from the same sources. People, who only see the difference of three philosophies, are always stupid and trouble markers. And that’s why we delete and re-organized several chapters and renames chapter two to help readers understand the importance of this part.

Forth, although this book has another name called Tong Yi Qi Si Zhong, the only importance in this book is  only about the South and North faction of Taoism. All four chapters practice this theory, and these chapters all have excellent inference and logistic. And that is why we use the name Nan Bei He Can Fa Ya insted of Tong Yi Qi Si Zhong and put it at beginning of the book.

Fifth, the original copy of this book has a chapter about ten poems in Taoism, and we delete that chapter from this edition. People who want to see the complete version of this book may wait for another day when we re-publish this book.

Sixth, the original chapter four contains several unorganized Taoist articles. And the essence of this part cannot be described either by writer or editor or teachers, we hope readers could read it carefully and patiently.

Seventh, the original copy of the book also has a chapter about how to do ceremony in Taoism, and we thought it is not related with the book. We deleted this chapter and hope one day we will publish this chapter as an individual book.

Eighth, there is chapter called You Kun Xiu Yu, and we already put this chapter into the book “Nv Gong Zhen Fa Ji Yao.” Other parts of the book we do not included will no longer discuss here and hope reader could understand ours’ decision!