num_pages: 160
description: This is a translation of T'ai-i chin-hua tsung-chih, a late 18th-century Chinese meditation text falsely attributed to the shadowy 9th-century figure Lü Yen. A late expression of Chin-tan ("Golden Elixir") Taoism, it teaches manipulation of internal forces ("light") to achieve revitalization and spiritual rebirth. The work became famous in the West when Richard Wilhelm translated it in 1929, and published it with a commentary by psychologist Carl Jung. In an afterword, Cleary confesses the importance that the Wilhelm/Jung version had for his own personal development. Yet he misses few opportunities to disparage both Wilhelm and Jung, charging that their version "contains dangerous and misleading contaminations" (p. 5). It is, at best, ironic that Cleary, never obsessed by historical or textual niceties, accuses Wilhelm of publishing "a garbled translation of a truncated version of a corrupted rescension" (p. 3). Cleary's familiarity with Chin-tan texts does exceed Wilhelm's, but on the whole his translation is not much better. Extensive notes do illumine some passages, largely through use of a commentary by the 19th-century Taoist Liu I-ming. But as usual, Cleary's renderings are often unblushing paraphrases, and specific readings are sometimes simply arbitrary assignations of meaning based on his own "transcultural, transdogmatic appreciation of the mental dynamic of religion" (p. 133). Both the scholar and the general reader should approach this, like most of his earlier offerings, with due circumspection. Thomas Cleary is the preeminent translator of classic Eastern texts, including The Essential Tao, The Essential Confucius, The Secret of the Golden Flower, and the bestselling The Art of War.
language: English
title: The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Classical Chinese Book of Life
titlecomplete: The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Classical Chinese Book of Life
genres: Psychology, Eastern Philosophy, Mythology, Mysticism, Philosophy, Religion, Taoism, Spirituality, Nonfiction, China
ratings_count: 1560
publisher: HarperOne