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Chronology
My first three books formed a trilogy and a novelized biography of my Taoist martial arts teacher, Kwan Saihung (Guan Shihong). The books were The Wandering Taoist (1983), Seven Bamboo Tablets of the Cloudy Satchel (1987), and Gateway to a Vast World (1989). I later edited them and revised them into a single volume, Chronicles of Tao (1993).
The crux of Mr. Kwan’s system is that physical purification through diet, herbs, qigong, martial arts, philosophy, and meditation form a methodical approach to the spiritual. This system formed the basis of Scholar Warrior (1990). The book takes its name from a traditional phrase that means a well-rounded individual. Such a person combines the scholar’s intellect, insights, and creativity with the warrior’s sense of honor, dignity, purpose, and action.
My next book, 365 Tao (1992), was based on a single premise: If this system of philosophy was so vital, then I ought to be able to find something Taoist in each day. I noticed then, as I do now, that many people regard Taoism as something ancient and distant. Many can speak about Taoism as it existed two thousand years ago, but they don’t talk about it as something that exists here and now. So I challenged myself to find a Taoist lesson not in books, but in my experiences each day, and then to write it down before the day was done. Sometimes, I didn’t finish until just before midnight!
Serendipitously, many readers have found this book a guide to daily discipline or even recovery. It remains my most popular book to date.
Four years later, I followed with another book of meditations, Everyday Tao (1996). This time, I took my inspiration from the structure of Chinese words. Many Chinese words are pictures, and I felt that this would make esoteric concepts more immediate. While some words are almost purely phonetic and borrow their forms from other words, nearly all Chinese words are grouped into categories such as hand, mouth, water, fire, person, heart, wood, silk, and rock. Even understanding the category to which a word belongs helps make it more concrete. For example, the word tao belongs to the signifier for movement (represented by footsteps) combined with a face (meaning a person). Tao is a person moving on a path. That makes tao not esoteric but immediate, tangible, and personal.
Two years later, I was approached to write a Zen cookbook. Anyone who loves to eat, as I do, also has to know how to cook. Zen and Taoism are kindred spiritual systems, and both emphasize the importance of diet and therefore cooking. The result was a lavish color cookbook published by Pavilion Books Limited in Great Britain and Soma Books in the United States, Zen: The Art of Modern Eastern Cooking (1998).
In addition to my own recipes, the book features contributions by San Francisco restaurateur Arnold Wong and chef Kate McGuire as well as kaiseki menus by Urasenke teacher Scott McDougall. Edward Espe Brown of the San Francisco Zen Center provided a wonderful introduction, and Jess Koppel took beautiful photographs that captured both the austere beauty of Zen and the lusciousness of the food itself.
Almost immediately, I began work on The Living I Ching (2006). The difficulty of researching, translating, interpreting, and providing a context for this sacred book was so daunting that it took eight years to complete this project. The I Ching (Yijing) is one of China’s holiest and most revered books. Ostensibly a book of divination, it is really the repository of generations’ worth of wisdom and experience. I believe that the challenges and stresses we face today are of the same archetypal nature as what thousands before us experienced. Why not avail ourselves of what they discovered? That’s why I feel so strongly that ancient Chinese wisdom is still vital today and that it in fact gives us access to knowledge that is either lost or underemphasized. Only by taking the view of millennia can we counter short-range confusion. This book also features my original poems and paintings.
The Lunar Tao (2013) was written as a companion to 365 Tao. One of the ways to integrate oneself with the rhythms of nature is to follow the cycles of the sun, moon, and seasons. The practice of Taoism is also deeply informed by qigong, poetry, art, folk tales, and stories of the gods. All these topics are integrated through the traditional Chinese lunar-solar calendar in a format that takes just one page a day to follow.
Each Journey Begins with a Single Step (2018) asks the question, “What are the key poems and passages that inspire a person who wants to follow Tao?” I drew from dozens of sources, from the Daodejing to Tang poems. Ideal for our quicker and shorter times, this book makes it easy to get in touch with ancient wisdom.
The Way of Heart and Beauty (2019) looks at all three of China’s great philosophical systems: Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, with an eye toward nourishing the heart and finding the truth in beauty.
Taming Tigers & Butterfly Dreams (2026) collects the greatest wisdom stories and wisdom parables in Chinese tradition. Much of Taoism is conveyed through tales that can be humorous, sarcastic, satirical, or even ribald. The sages utilized a surprising range of topics to reveal Tao in daily life.
The Pattern of Change (2025) A collaboration with the prize-winning mathematician Robert V. Moody, this book explores the discernable patterns within change, and how order can spontaneously emerge from seeming randomness and chaos. A book twelve years in the making, this is the ideal exploration of the nexus of mathematics and Taoism.
The Complete Dàodéjīng (2027) is a fresh translation and commentary on Lǎozǐ’s famous classic. The original text is one of the principal guides to Dào (Tao and Dào are the same word), and if one truly reads it in context, a complete understanding can emerge. I began by examining every word. Anyone can follow along through the received text that is provided for each chapter, and refer to a detailed and thorough glossary. Read the text for yourself and gain a direct understanding of one of the world’s greatest holy books.
Reviews
The Lunar Tao – Review from Yoga International (PDF)
Audio Interview with Deng Ming-Dao (MP3)
The Lunar Tao – Review from Spirituality & Health (PDF)
The Lunar Tao mentioned in the New York Review of Books, “Dancing in Empty Beijing”
Have You Eaten Yet? A Spring Festival Meditation From The Lunar Tao
A review of The Lunar Tao from Spirituality and Practice
The chapter in Morton Marcus’s book Striking Through the Masks, about Deng Ming-Dao (PDF)