What do Veeky Forums think about Taoism?

t. Nguyen Du Phuc

Taoism is pretty cool.

Watch the Big Lebowski.

Then imagine then, but with a load of typical Chinese hoodoo.

It's a support group for no fap chumps.

Taoism basically means "It is what it is"

I really think here, in Taoism, humanity got closest to the truth.

I am too dumb to read Tao Te Ching.
I tried but I just could not do it.

Confucius tastes vinegar and finds it sour.
Buddha tastes vinegar and finds it bitter.
Laozi tastes vinegar and finds that it tastes like vinegar.

I think they find Buddhists pretty hot

It tasted sweet.

>Morrissey: The Religion

lolol

It has a great mystical source book (Daodejing) that basically can be harmonized with most other religions, and is a recommended read.

The actual religion though is the most horseshit one I have encountered so far (lived one year in Hong Kong).

>"Oh, fellow priests, instead of finding ways to the divine, rather discuss "alchemy" and how we can live forever, and how we can use magic to curse other sects we do not like".
>"Oh Sir, no I will not drive you up To Fung Shan at night in my taxi. Do u no know, that there is ancestor spirits there cursing you".
>"Oh no, grandpa died. Better burn fake money, fake i pods, fake cars, a fake laptop etc. made from paper, so he has that stuff in afterlife and doesn't curse us".
>"Oh, fellow priests, making reproductions of shit out of paper and selling them to believers is good money-shekels. Let's do so."
>"Oh, child while our religion usually never prays, now when you have a math exam let's burn money at the temple so that our ancestor best at math will help you during the exam".

Basically it is a huge vending machine religion.
Throw paper money in, get blessings out, but otherwise do not care for your religion, unless some priest says your grandma will curse u unless you pay the priest.

Well you're burning the money to get the spirit of the money out, which goes to the spirit of your ancestors.
So your spirit ancestor spends their spirit money on spirit benefits then rewards you for helping them out.
Don't know why the spirits can't just burn their own money though

I taste vinegar and finds it to taste like Op's moms pussy

This, the afterlife is about allocating points in your successor

Sup Tao, Buddhism here.

So yeah.. uh I forgot to take the pill in China so we have a kid now. His name is Zen.

I don't want him anymore, he keeps telling everyone to kill the Buddha and shit. Fucking travesty, you take him.

In Taoism the ultimate truth can't be communicated. Its main tenet is "wu wei" or "non-ado", think of it as ultimate acceptance of what is, which tends to result in a perfect and effortless "flow" through life.

There's obviously overlap with Buddhism in the idea that your suffering arises from resistance to things AKA wanting things to be different than they are, which - when you think about it - is just about the most nonsensical and wasteful thing you could spend your time doing. I like this aspect a lot because it's immensely freeing and focusing in terms of aiming at a future goal when you start by accepting what is in the present moment.

The ancestor shit sounds more like Chinese folk religion but I don't know how much that can be separated from Taoism proper.

...

I really like reading the stories of Zhuangzi. The one with the turtle is great. I also like the philosophers who identified as both Daoist and Confucian.

I think that's common with Chinese thought in general. There was a lot of overlap between different belief symptoms and each of them tended to pick up elements of others. Most historians seem to like the word "syncretic" to describe that phenomena.

I also think there's a bit of a difference between philosophical Daoism and religious Daoism which imo developed later (around the AD 2nd to 3rd century)

Which philosophers is that if I may ask

These are good posts.

Yes, the interesting thing about the Chinese tradition of philosophy is that there is a lot of overlap. A prominent theme of all Asian philosophy is what you could call "infinite resignation," that is to say, the idea that caring is bad for you. This is just a general rule of thumb, as there are Chinese traditions that obviously place a great deal of emphasis on caring(particularly Mozi, who emphasizes impartial caring a lot).

To further clarify because my post didn't make much sense,

By infinite resignation I mean infinitely resigning your attachment to anything worldly. You can see this in Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism.

Oh, also:

My philosophy professor said there are those who interpret some daoist texts as being primarily political treatises. This is plausible, especially considering how political the Confucian tradition is. Nevertheless, I ultimately disagree. When you read Daoist texts, to me, it seems clear that there is some sort of metaphysical truth being asserted through the doctrine of wu-wei.

I may be misrepresenting them because I'm not sure that they themselves would have called themselves both. IIRC a lot of them considered themselves Confucian even though they had a clear love of Daoist works. However, I'm thinking of scholars from the 3rd century like Wang Bi, He Yan, Zhong Hui, the seven sages of the bamboo grove, etc.

Here's a good article

plato.stanford.edu/entries/neo-daoism/#GuoXiaNatDesSelRea

>Chinese folk
>Taoism proper.

Same thing.
And there is no "proper" one.

Just google the most important works of daoism after the daodejing. It is all horseshit magical stuff about how to do alchemy, become immortal, or spirit heal.

Not one comment on my sweet ass tattoo

Not even one

wew lad
wew

Your picture sums it up
It is
And it isn't
It's nowhere
But everywhere
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

turns out tattooing religious symbols on your body makes you look like a dumbass

That's not Taoism you dunce it's Folk Chinese Religion.

its ok user. I mean the faceless buddha.

Read Introducing Daoism by Livia Kohn and An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy by JeeLoo Liu.

Daoism is about the ever-changing nature of the cosmos.

For example, a divination book (Yijing) full of retarded superstition is followed by a political treatise (Daodejing) and an extremely difficult philosophical work (Zhuangzi), and then alchemy, a quest for immortality in this world, polytheism, supernatural powers, a legend about Laozi born out of a woman's hip and countless other retarded superstitions follow.

Only the Dao remains.

Read the books recommended above.