![]() ![]() They can go up to heaven and extricate the dead from difficulties. The ideas now are exactly the same: The world of the dead is like the world of the living. If you look at the family lineage charts of Hakka, 200 or 300 years ago, many had a Taoist name too. In fact, Hakka may have remnants of this, too. Something like how the Hakka carried traditions with them when they were expelled from central China to the coasts and the south? ![]() We don’t know this, but there were non-Chinese members of the religion from the beginning and Taoism is an important religion among ethnic minorities in China, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. How did it end up all the way down in Yunnan? The social structure of the community is based upon this ritual, with social status determined by your rank in the Taoist religion. In almost all Yao villages, men and women have a Taoist name and title. It didn’t last in China as a whole, but we can see examples among the Yao tribes of Yunnan, for example. Well, first, it’s not exactly true that the political structure didn’t last. The political order lasted only a short time, but your book makes the point that many things that we can see then are present today. This is not traditionally how it was organized. They are trying to remake these religions in Christianity’s image, with membership in a churchlike structure. There are ordinary people who join temples and call themselves lay Buddhists or Taoists. ![]() Temples were run by committees, and they used monks and priests as needed for certain ceremonies. The only “Buddhists” were Buddhist monks and the only “Taoists” were Taoist priests. This is a very difficult question, because for centuries Taoism did not have lay members. But the structures and bureaucracy are very similar. Taoists do the same thing, but to the other world. They send petitions and documents to the emperor. I think of Taoists as Confucians of the other world. It is full of very detailed codes of conduct that everyone has to observe. Taoism, the religion, really has the same value structure as any other Chinese religion. ![]() Many people, especially in the West, think of Taoism as going with the flow, getting back to nature and so on. They teach a set of rules and morality, but you’ll find little morality in the Daodejing. Taoist priests don’t carry around copies of the Daodejing, and that work has little to do with what they teach. The two are not really that closely related. The word Taoism is horribly vexed because it has to translate two Chinese terms: “daojiao” and “daojia.” “Daojiao” is the religion Taoism, while “daojia” refers to philosophical works associated with Laozi and Zhuangzi, such as the Daodejing. In an interview, Professor Kleeman discussed how Taoism provided an alternative political model to the Confucian-based imperial order, how Taoist texts can help deepen our understanding of early Chinese history and why today’s Communist government seeks to control Taoist practices. A professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he is the author of the recently published “ Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities.” This is the first work in any Western language on the founding of Taoism as a formal religious movement, rooted in earlier philosophical teachings like the Tao Te Ching, also known as the Daodejing and sometimes translated as “The Way and Its Power.” Kleeman is a leading scholar of the early texts and history of China’s only indigenous religion, Taoism. ![]()
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