The World of Laozi (Lectures on the Daodejing)

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“Spiritual Food for Our Daily Lives”

A scripture for practical use that can nurture your working and family life.

May the Way of old Laozi become your Way, and may you become a seeker of the Way, a practitioner of the Way, and a master of Way, not only enriching your own life but also steering the world in the right directions.

We need the wisdom to reinterpret the Daodejing in a way that is suited to these times. I would like to offer such an interpreta\-tion, sharing its familiar wisdom with our political leaders, our educators, and our common people with shopping baskets in tow. It seems to me that we have long understood the dao (the Way) shared by Laozi as something too lofty, too much like a form of playing with ideas.

I believe that now is the time for us to draw the daode (the Way and its virtue) that Laozi described to us as part of the reali-ty closest to us, to devote our passion to living the nameless Way and the virtue of nonaction. It should not be the Daodejing as a pie-in-the-sky ideal but spiritual food in our daily lives. It should be a scripture for practical use that can nurture our working and family lives. For this purpose, I have strived to explain the Daode\-jing in such a way that its teaching can be easily applicable to our lives.

My earnest hope is that you read Daodejing over and over, and contemplate its meaning again and again so that the Way of old Laozi becomes your Way and you become a seeker of the Way, a practitioner of the Way, and a master of Way, not only enriching your own life but also steering the world toward right directions.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Venerable Kyongsan (Jang, Eungcheol, b.1940) was the fifth Head Dharma Master of Won Buddhism. He entered the Won Buddhist faith at the age of twenty and graduated from the Department of Won Buddhist Studies at Wonkwang University in 1968. He served as President of the Youngsan College of Zen Studies, Executive Director of Administration for Won Buddhism, and Director of the Jung-ang Retreat Center before being inaugurated as the fifth Head Dharma Master in 2006.

Venerable Kyongsan continued with his efforts to realize the ideals of his predecessor, Venerable Daesan, the Third Head Dharma Master, whose Three Proposals for World Peace are the development of moral discipline for cultivating the mind, the opening up a common market, and the establishment of United Religions.

Venerable Kyongsan’s particular devotion was the realization of world peace through inter-religious cooperation, uniting people of all religious faiths to work toward the establishment of a worldwide organization of United Religions.

In the 12th year of his service as the fifth Head Dharma Master, he retired and became Head Dharma Master Emeritus. Venerable Kyongsan has written many books, including “The World of Lao-tzu,” “Taming the Ox: Our Mind,” “Hill of Freedom: Commentary on The Heart Sutra,” “The Functioning of a Buddha’s Mind: The Diamond Sutra in Everyday Life,” and “The Moon of the Mind Rises in Empty Space.”

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