Purple Qi Comes from the East (Taishang Daozu Sheng Chuan)

Author: Xie Qingguo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: Laozi is a great thinker, philosopher, and deity revered by the Taoist community in the history of the Chinese nation. Through his concise and profound "Tao Te Ching" with its five thousand words, he continued the legacy and created a glorious chapter in the history of Chinese philosophy, thought, culture, and Taoism. Thought is inherently active; only through activity can "thought" be generated. "Thinking" is to cultivate in one's own heart; "imagination" is to watch (with the "eyes") the trees planted in one's heart grow. Thus, the profound significance of thought lies in its ability to generate thought. As a thinker, Laozi made thought his home, consciously rationally reflecting on the spiritual wealth of the civilization legacy created by his ancestors on the vast land of China, which is essentially a "thought" about thought itself. Laozi developed profound thoughts from the thoughts of ancient civilization, resulting in the concise yet rich "Five Thousand Words," which possess an extraordinary ability to transcend time and space. As a biography of a deity, this book takes a unique approach—it is neither as purely academic as self-admiring scholarly works nor as purely literary as fictional novels that treat life lightly. Instead, it strives to recreate the historically verifiable life experiences of Laozi and, based on this, combines them with the thoughts of Laozi's "Five Thousand Words," transforming historical documents into vivid life fragments. Even when citing stories from legends, novels, and other sources that lack the historical authenticity of actual events, they are still encompassed by the thoughts of Laozi and embody the reverence, understanding, and imagination of countless predecessors over millennia for Laozi. These elements make it easier to understand and learn from Laozi, inspiring readers to become advocates of his thought.