The Daode Jing's Forgotten Forebear:  The Ancestral Cult  
Kenneth E Brashier, PhD
4 June, 2022       
​9:30 am - 11:00 am, PT
The  Dàodé Jīng  (道德經)  is one of the most famous books in the world, but scholarship on it never asks, “Where did it come from?” In the early ancestral cult, forebears gradually lost identity, fading upward into lineage history and into the formless heavens. In the early Dao discourse, the named and distinct ten thousand things merged into a nameless, blurry, unified Dao. For First Saturday PDX 's final program of this season, Dr. Ken Brashier’s presentation explores the surprising connections between these two systems, paying particular attention to where the Daode Jing still mentions the ancestral cult. He lends evidence to the conclusion that the Daode Jing is in fact, a child of the ancestral cult.

About the speaker:
K.E. Brashier received his BA from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, his MA from Harvard, and his PhD from Cambridge, after which he taught Chinese religions (eventually as the Thomas Lamb Eliot Professor of Religion and Humanities) at Reed College from 1998 until his retirement in 2021. Author of Ancestral Memory in Early China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) and Public Memory in Early China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014), et al, he is currently studying the idea of hell in late imperial China. In 2006, he was recognized as the national "Outstanding Baccalaureate Colleges Professor of the Year" by the CASE/Carnegie Foundation, but his chief goal in life remains a futile attempt to get his two cats to respect him.
​See Dr Brashier's video on Chinese Hell Scrolls here
See Dr Brashier's website here
Images: 
1. An ancestor emerges from the formless (Shaanxi, 2nd cen C.E.)

2. A part of a Taoist manuscript, ink on silk, 2nd century BCE, Han Dynasty, unearthed from Mawangdui tomb 3rd, Chansha, Hunan Province, China. Hunan Province Museum.  Mawangdui Silk Manuscript Volume First, Wen Wu Publishing, Beijing, China, 1980-03

3.  Dao De Jing calligraphy by Master Shi Bo ink on silk mounted scroll, Chapter 1 


Video of this First Saturday PDX presentation available here

​Join us after the webinar from 11 - 11:30am in our First Saturday Tea House to further the discussion and online social time.  Bring your cup of tea! 
​(Separate  access link for this will be provided in your single registration for this event.)
This presentation is offered via Zoom Webinar:
Our program series is supported by Portland State University's Institute for Asian Studies, Northwest China Council and Lan Su Chinese Garden.   All our programs are free and open to the public.