okay, i hope all of you have at least heard about it if not know it, but if you don't... cause there are allways some of you, i guess i have to give a history.

The aurthor is commonly intitled Lao Tzu but that is a fallacy, sense Lao Tzu means "Master Lao" and the only Lao mentioned is a comptemporary of Confucius named Lao Tan. Chuang-tzu called him a master of it. So Lao Tzu was a great teacher of Tao. But the book is written by others who heard him speak. They are the collection of versus of things according to the Tao. They are then summed up or confomred and made into two books. First in my translation is the Te ching, or the classical teachings of virtue, and the there is the Tao ching, or the classical teachings of the way. These are the almost religious ideals and philosipies of a warring China and confusion with heaven and the way and the empire. This almost anarchist statement has become a mainstream philosiphy of the east.


so what do you all thing about Taoism, the tao te ching, and all the coolness there off. You are talking to someone who anniamately studies Taoism so your going to have some fun if you want to argue.

Taoism is not one of my favorite beliefs, but the yin-yang flux is definitely my favorite thought as a basis to the universe, all things are in balance with the yin and the yang (The good and the evil) even in a physical aspect, subatomic particle circle the nucleus in respect to each other, some being positive, some being negative, and some being neutral, when you think of an atom and then you think of humanity, you may begin to understand the logic of yin and yang, there are yin forces and yang forces all around us and they affect WHO WE ARE, one who finds himself in love with a particular earthly sin (for example doing crack) begins to flux to the evil karma (Actually producing negative spiritual energy) and finds himself in situations with other crack users (Also producing negative energy) which only feeds to his own, and he starts his way down the path of the wicked (you can only move forward, either towards your hell or towards your haven) and in a religious reality you can only have an evil heart (spirit) or a good heart, you may also be neutral but that doesn't really apply, because if you are neutral than you are on a level less than good, and any level less than good is evil (We round off the number 5 (Neutral) to 10 (Good) whilst God rounds off 5 (Neutral) to 0 (Evil)

I used to be pretty big into Taoism... til I realized its not much of a philosophy. "Practice NOT doing"? Bullshit. In this world you have to DO. Or else you cannot be happy, no matter how simplified your life is.

Taoism is for those seeking enlightenment through meditation, many of the eastern religions have similar guidelines.

The Dao Deh Ching is 20% mythological metaphysics and 80% anti-confucian political tractate. The idea of that 80% is how not to govern. The idea of Daoism is active letting go. Not to do nothing, fr0g, but to do things the right, natural way. Daoism really isn't something rarified and super intellectual. It's a fairly down to earth philosophy about not fucking around with the natural way of things.

Like in Sazen Zen, less is more. The less you do, the greater results you will get. Like playing "hard to get" when courting someone. It's not that by not courting them, you will win their heart. It's that by doing less, you peak their curiosity.

I also feel a distinction is in place that really doesn't make sense. Simon, you called it a search for enlightenment. The Middle Eastern religions, by contrast would then be what, a search for salvation? I really don't think there needs to be a distinction between the two ideas. From a wstern [skeptic's] point of view, it may seem like a necessary line to draw between the Middle Eastern religions which seem opressive and paranoiac and Far Eastern religions which seem refined, poetic and idyllic.









But, I mean... come on...

Middle east????? what is you talkin about fool?

When I was in high school for my english 2 exam I wrote a 50 page essay on eastern religions.

Wow, I'm a relgious studies major.


I'm talking about how the trend is recently to mock, discredit, and otherwise piss on the Abrahamic traditions. One such way is to go on and on about how they are different and inferior from the Far Eastern religions. They're really the same idea.