Skip to main content
Uncategorized

Kristofer Schipper

By 18 July 2022No Comments

Kristofer Schipper

8 april 2021

When, in the early eighties, I read the book “Tao, the living religion of China”, a new world opened up for me. Until then, I had read and heard all kinds of things about Tao, Yin and Yang and the like. But I had never before seen or heard these concepts in the context of the original Chinese texts or the living tradition of these religious rituals. Qi and Yin and Yang were terms from alternative medicine or spiritual philosophies.

This book gave a foundation and a foundation to the woolly container terms that were eagerly embraced by searching Westerners.

I was totally impressed by the author, Kristofer Schipper, when I first heard him speak in real life at the 1987 10th anniversary conference of the Dutch Acupuncture Society. I remember his surprise and bewilderment when he asked who had read the Huang Di Nei Jing. And who knew the Nan Jing. Fortunately, times have changed and so has the quality of education.

Fascinated, I continued to follow Kristofer Schipper and his work. His life story was and still is an exciting boy’s story that I can only dream about. The son of a deliberately unmarried mother and a minister, he was born in Sweden and went to the Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap in Bilthoven and the Montessori Lyceum in Amsterdam. Fascinated by Chinese art, he decided to go to Paris to become an art dealer. But his interest in the culture and philosophy does not stop at art objects. He decided to study Chinese and Japanese language and culture in Paris. His great interest in the Tao and ritual takes him to Taiwan, where he, as the only Westerner, is trained to become a Taoist master.

His story is inspiring to me and encourages me to study in China and spend some time in a Taoist monastery in Wudan Shan.

His translations of the works of Lao Zi and Chuang Zi are magnificent. And his complete Taoist canon makes Taoist philosophy accessible to the West as well.

When I discovered that Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée, another sinologist I admire enormously, had studied with Schipper in Paris, it explained to me why the content of the course clicked so well between Elisabeth and me.

A few years ago, the time had come. After decades of being present as a thread in my Chinese medical and philosophical work, there was suddenly the personal meeting. The writer and journalist Mark Blaisse asked me if I would like to have lunch with him and Kristofer Schipper in Amsterdam. It was a special first meeting and I am very happy and grateful that I was able to have private conversations with him several times in recent years.

On 18 February, Kristofer Schipper died at the age of 86.

And although all rituals are meaningless and one can never be a Taoist, I am convinced that Kristofer Schipper, riding a white cloud, was received with open arms by the Taoist Immortals.