Is it a backhanded compliment to recommend a book more for its introduction than for the main text itself? Not if the introduction turns out to be twice the length of the text, as it is in Lau and Ames's collaboration Yuan Dao. The first chapter of the early Chinese Taoist text Huainanzi, Yuan Dao is similar to the Tao Te Ching in its elaboration of the natural Tao and the actions (or inaction) of the sage. It is worth reading for its limpid lyricism alone. With Ames's prefatory remarks, not only the text, but the whole of early Chinese thought comes more into focus. The reason we see ancient Chinese works as wisdom literature is that the Chinese were more interested in the how of the world than the what of it, and so Ames takes Yuan Dao as a jumping-off point for examining a world-view that contrasts sharply with ours but is still surprisingly modern. The original author (or sponsor) of Yuan Dao lost his life partly because it is a work that proposed pluralism and noncoercion in a time of forced consolidation. In our time, this message rings still rings true. --Brian Bruya

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Huainanzi and the Court of Emperor Wu 

Tracing Dao to Its Source: A Practicable Daoism 

"Han Thinking" and Radial Order

The "Source" in Tracing Dao to Its Source

 A "Watery" Source

"Dao" in Tracing Dao to Its Source

The Priority of Situation over Agency 

Dao as "The Oneness of Things"

"Knowing" Dao

The Gerundical Dao

The Continuity of Dao and the Human World

The Relationship between "Heaven" and "Humanity" 

Confucianism and the Continuity between Heaven and Humanity

Daoism and the Continuity between Heaven and Humanity

Tracing Dao to Its Source and the Continuity between Heaven and Humanity

Riding the Dragon (long龙）

Stilling the Heart-and-Mind (xin心） 

The Efficacy of Accommodation

On the Translation

Notes to the Introduction

Tracing Dao to Its Source

Notes

Bibliography