Taoism
By Brandon Halsey
Taoism facts
• Contemplating the remarkable natural
world Lao Tzu felt that it was man and his
activities which constituted a blight in the
otherwise perfect order of things. Thus he
counseled people to turn away from the
folly of human pursuits and to return to
one’s natural wellspring.
Development of Taoism
• After the death of Chuang Tzu Taoism
continued to grow in popularity although
as a philosophy it changed rather little for
the next six hundred years or so. There
were a few philosophers, however, who
made a contribution to its development.
Yang Chu
• One hundred years is the limit of a long life. Not
one in a thousand ever attains it. Suppose there
is one such person. Infancy and feeble old age
take almost half of his time. Rest during sleep at
night and what is wasted during the waking
hours in the daytime take almost half of that.
Pain and sickness, sorrow and suffering, death
and worry and fear almost half of the rest. In the
ten and some years that is left, I reckon, there is
not one moment in which we can be happy, at
ease without worry. This is being the case, what
is life for? What pleasure is there?
Lieh
tzu
• Those who maintain that heaven and earth are
destructiveble are wrong and those who
maintain that they are indestructivble are also
wrong. Whether they are destuctivble or
indestructivble, I do not know. Howdever it is the
same in one case and also the same in the
other. The living do not know the dead do not
know the living. What is gone does not know
what is to come and what is to come does not
know what is gone. Why should I be concerned
whether they destructible or indesructivble?
Lau Tzu: Father of Taoism
• Lau Tzu was a keeper of archives at the imperial court. When he was eighty years old he set out for the
western border of China, toward what is now Tibet, saddened and disillusioned that men were unwilling to follow
the path natural goodness. At the border, a guard yin Xi. Asked Lau Tzu to record his teachings before he
left. He then composed in 5,000 characters the Tao Te Ching. Whatever the truth, Taoism and Confucianism
is greatly concerned with social relations, conduct and human society. Taoism has a much more individualistic
and mystical character, greatly influenced by nature. In Lao Tzu’s view things were said to create “unnatural”
action by shaping desires. The process of learning the names used in the doctrines helped one to make
distinctions between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, high and low, and “being” and “non-being”, thereby
shaping desires. To abandon knowledge was to abandon names, distinctions, taste and desires. Thus spontaneous
behavior resulted. The Taoist philosophy can perhaps best be summed up in a quote from Chuang Tzu: ”To
regard the fundamental as the essence, to regard things as coarse, to regard accumulation as deficiency, and to
dwell quietly alone with the spiritual and the intelligent- - herein lie the techniques of Tao of the ancients.” One
element of Taoism is a kind of existential skepticism, something which can already be seen in the philosophy of
Yang Chu who wrote: “What is man’s life for? What pleasure is there in it? Is it for beauty and riches no
longer answer the needs of the heart, and when a surfeit of sound and color becomes a weariness to the eyes and
a ringing in the ears “The men of old knew that life comes without warning, and as suddenly goes. They denied
none of their natural inclinations, and repressed none of their bodily desires. They never felt the spur of fame.
They sauntered through life gathering its pleasures as the impulse moved them. Since they cared nothing for
fame after death, they were beyond the law. For name and praise, sooner or later, a long life or short one, they
cared not at all.”
Taoism Beliefs
• The ancient Chinese religion of Taoism is not entirely distinct
from Confucianism or Chinese folk religion, for all Chinese
religion and philosophy operate within the same ancient
worldview. Since earliest times, Chinese thought has been
characterized by an awareness of man’s close relationship with
nature and universe, a cyclical view of time and universe,
veneration or worship of ancestors, the idea of Heaven, and
belief in the divinity of the sovereign. Both Confucianism and
Taoism operate within this worldview and incorporate many of
its concepts. These two organized belief systems are best viewed
as complementary rather than competitive. While Confucianism
concerns itself with the social and moral side of life, Taoism
focuses on the individual, spiritual life. The articles in this
section explain some of the beliefs that are fundamental to
Taoism.
Information
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