Daoism

8 Key excerpts on "Daoism"

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  Many Peoples, Many Faiths

  Women and Men in the World Religions

  • Robert S. Ellwood, Barbara A. McGraw(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The most important impact of Confucianism on China lay in the area of moral and social values. Although ancestrism, the family system, and the ideal of selfless work for the common good have pre-Confucian roots, Confucianism gave these values ultimate prestige through the civilized centuries. It was of a piece with Confucianism that all important families had ancestral shrines in which the names of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were lined up on higher and higher shelves for each generation and that worship was offered to them, as it was at the tombs, so it was in the home. Inseparable from ancestrism was the Confucian-based family system in which loyalty and filial obedience were obligations that gave precedence to no others. Confucianism also underlay the Chinese “work ethic,” the high regard for diligence and productivity, bringing honor and prosperity to one’s family name. Without the mental image of the wise and sober sage from the state of Lu, and the words from his followers’ pens, China would be very different from what we have known it to be for more than twenty centuries.

  Daoism (TAOISM)

  Fundamentals of Daoism

  Confucianism, even in its most expansive forms, does not exhaust the spiritual heritage of China. Few people can be wholly devoted to sober virtues all the time, and the Chinese are no exception. There is another side that demands its due. This is the side of human personality that is attracted to what expresses the private fears, fancies, and aspirations of the individual. It is the side that feels for communion with nature and aspirations toward/for mystic rapture, imaginative works of art and letters, rebellion against social conformity, inward fear of evil, and love for gods. This side affirms the needs of personal life against the demands of structured society, and it affirms the place of the feeling, symbol-making, nonrational side against the cool, world-oriented rational side. In China, all of this side has been found under the broad umbrella of the Daoist tradition.

  As one would expect from this, Daoism has been many things to many different people and has taken an immense variety of forms over the centuries. It has included hermit poets, temples with lavishly robed priests burning clouds of incense before resplendent gods, and “underground” secret political societies. It has ranged from “nature mysticism” to occult quests for immortality to the rites of spiritualists who call up the dead.

  Some commentators have talked about a “pure” philosophical Daoism and a “degenerate,” “superstitious” religious Daoism, but such presuppositions get in the way of real understanding. It is more instructive to comprehend how all of Daoism forms a unity of experience around a single pole, focusing on the feeling-oriented, nonrational side of life. Here it is simple to move rapidly from mysticism to occultism to revolution and back, and from “nature” to the most elaborate religious robes and rites, as long as they express something imaginative and personal. Daoism in China is really a tapestry of countless strands of folk religion, ancient arcana going back to prehistoric shamanism and private vision.

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  Daoism

  A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation

  • Livia Kohn(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Introduction The nature of Daoism

  Compared to other major religions, Daoism tends to be hard to define. Often described as the indigenous higher religion of China, it is multifaceted and often rather amorphous, so that it can be classified neither as an ethnic or a universal religion, but combines elements of both. That is to say, while deeply rooted in Chinese cosmology, society, and language, it is not tribal in the sense that anyone simply by being born Chinese is automatically a Daoist or popular to the degree that it pervades every aspect of traditional living. On the other hand, while exercising a strong appeal to seekers in other cultures and countries and claiming access to universal goals and values, it does not intentionally proselytize or spread actively.

  Typically, people who are born into an environment that offers forms of Daoism choose to follow it either as thinkers, devotees, or practitioners of self-cultivation, pursuing the aspect of the tradition that resonates best with them. There is no pressure to join a particular group, obtain a special transmission, or confess to a certain set of beliefs. In fact, a major group of Daoists are intellectuals, thinkers and writers who do not belong to any organized group or engage in obvious rituals or self-cultivation practices yet who “call themselves Daoist and create their identity with the help of Daoist concepts while also forming identity for the religion.”1 If the religion spreads, on the other hand, it is usually as part of something else—literature, medicine, philosophy, governance—so that Daoist ideas, metaphors, images, and practices pervade other East Asian cultures (Korea, Japan, Vietnam) but there are no monasteries, temples, or formal organizations. Only very recently have ordained Daoists begun to initiate foreigners and to support the building of temples and establishment of lineages overseas, supported by the Chinese government as part of their overall expansion and domination policy.2

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  Anthropology of the Self

  The Individual in Cultural Perspective

  • Brian Morris(Author)
  • 1994(Publication Date)
  • Pluto Press

    (Publisher)

  I Ching, a book of divination dated around 1150 BC. There are in fact three basic concepts which both Taoism and Confucianism share and which derive from the earlier oral tradition – the concept of Tao, a theory of polarity (Yin–Yang), and the theory of five phases or elements. We may consider each of these in turn, drawing out some of the contrasts between Taoism and Confucianism.

  Tao

  Tao (Dao) is a central concept in Chinese culture, and common to both Confucian and Taoist philosophy. In Chinese cosmology there is no creator of the universe as such, for it was thought that the world had created itself. From an original state of chaos, an abstract innovator, Tao, had created two fundamental principles or forces, Yin and Yang, that were then aspects of the world and all phenomena. But Tao, translated as the ‘way’, continued to be effective, guiding the functions of everything in the universe. The concept of Tao has been interpreted in various ways. A famous verse (25) in Tao Te Ching, the classic Taoist text attributed to Lao Tzu, a retired archivist and a contemporary of Confucius (551–479 BC), states the following:

  There was something formless yet complete That existed before heaven and earth; Without sound, without substance, Dependent on nothing, unchanging, all pervading, unfailing. One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven. Its true name we do not know; Way is the by-name that we give it. (Waley 1968:174)

  The ideas expressed in this extract are complex. Max Weber suggested that Tao meant ‘the eternal order of the cosmos and at the same time its course’, for at that period, he writes, these two aspects of reality were conflated, ancient metaphysics lacking a truly ‘dialectical structure’ (1964:182). Other writers have tended to interpret Tao in more religious terms, and equated it either with the theistic ‘god’ or ‘godhead’, or the Buddhist notion of the ‘mysterious void’, Nirvana, or with the Hindu Brahman. One writer, Henry Wei (1982), has equated Tao with all three conceptions. All these I think are misleading interpretations (see Blofeld 1973, Merton 1975).

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  Introducing World Religions

  A Christian Engagement

  • (Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Baker Academic

    (Publisher)

  men means “door,” referring to the door that leads to long life, enlightenment, and immortality. Tao means “way.” Accordingly, while there may not be an exact equivalent term in Chinese for the English word “religion,” there are many Chinese words that communicate what is important about Chinese religiosity.

  In the end, there are so many overlapping features of the “Chinese religions” (i.e., Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, indigenous traditions) that expressions such as “Taoism” and “Confucianism” are actually artificial constructions of Western scholars.[4] It is important to note that this chapter introduces Taoism and Confucianism rather than “Chinese religions” generally. Nevertheless, our task here is to tease out the unique features of Taoism and Confucianism, while keeping in mind that they too belong to a wider assemblage of religions that mutually act upon and influence one another. Furthermore, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Chinese indigenous religions are not monolithic but rather have undergone significant transformations throughout Chinese history. This is due in part to the ways each has engaged Chinese culture and cultures around the world, the historical moment from which each emerged, and the political regime changes under which each has existed.

  Origins and Concepts The Axial Age

  Asia and Europe experienced massive religious and philosophical changes between 800 and 200 BCE. The German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term “Achzenzeit ” (Axial Age ) to describe the profound and lasting influence of particular individuals and their ideas on the world during this period.[5] In Jaspers’s view, the ideas that began in the Axial Age formed the foundations upon which human beings since have lived, the lens through which most human beings see the world. Indeed, it is quite astounding to think of the prominent persons and philosophies that emerged in this period: Siddhartha Gautama (Buddhism), Laozi (Taoism), Mahavira (Jainism), Confucius

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  Understanding Eastern Philosophy

  • Ray Billington(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  9 Chinese philosophy I: Taoism

  INTRODUCTION

  We have seen that one of the three major religions/philosophies of China over the past two millennia has been Buddhism. While not many Chinese today would describe themselves as Theravada Buddhists, many have, without feeling compelled to surrender their own traditions, accommodated themselves to a Mahayana school, such as Pure Land and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. In fact, until the nineteenth century, the only foreigners whom the Chinese did not view as barbarians were the Indians, who were respected because of their Buddhist teachings.

  However, Buddhism arrived in China only in the first century CE; for many centuries prior to that, the Chinese had schools of philosophy of their own, which continued to coexist, and sometimes to blend, with this new form of expression. The most significant of these native traditions came to the fore around the middle of the Chou (Zhou) dynasty in the sixth/fifth centuries BCE, a period generally accepted as the golden age of Chinese philosophy (see my comment about this age universally on page ). It is often claimed that, during this period, there were 'a hundred schools of thought', but this is a misrepresentation of the situation, since the majority of these so-called schools were in fact variations on one another. Careful analysis suggests that there were six major schools:

  1. Taoism, based on the Tao Te Ching.
  2. The Yin–Yang School (Yin–Yang Chia).
  3. Confucianism (Confucius, Mencius, Hsun Tzu).
  4. Mohism (Mo Tzu, Mo Ti or Mo Chia).
  5. The Legalist School (Pa Chia).
  6. The School of Names (Ming Chia).

  Our concern will be with only the first three of these schools, with a brief reference to the fourth. The Legalist School was primarily concerned with the question of effective government and indicated, as its name suggests, how this may best be achieved through the effective use of the law as an instrument to control the people. The School of Names (a literal translation of its title) refers to a group of philosophers who have been compared to the Sophists of ancient Greece. Their interest lay in the analysis of words and their meaning, with the aim of avoiding logical errors in language. They are mentioned, usually in critical terms, mainly by representatives of the first four schools. All but one of their writings (and that survives only in part) have been lost, which, as one commentator, Laurence Wu (Fundamentals of Chinese Philosophy,

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  God Is Not One

  The Eight Rival Religions That Run The World, And Why Their Differences Matter

  • Stephen Prothero(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Black Inc.

    (Publisher)

  Second, so-called religious Daoism is not as religious as it may seem. Like philosophical Daoism, it shows almost no interest in what many regard as the religious challenge par excellence—the problem of life after death. Religious Daoism also draws heavily on the early classics. Almost every key concept from philosophical Daoism, including Dao, de, and wu wei, carries over into religious Daoism. Religious Daoists also revere Laozi as both a founder and god—“Saint Ancestor Great Tao Mysterious Primary Emperor”— and regard not only the Daodejing but many subsequent Daoist scriptures as revelations from him. 46 Religious Daoists are often distinguished from philosophical Daoists by their quest for physical immortality. But both the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi speak of immortals. The first chapter of the Zhuangzi tells of mountain-dwelling immortals overflowing with qi, which endows them not only with long life but also with extraordinary powers. One such holy man, as gentle as a virgin, lives on a faraway mountain, possesses the power of healing, eschews the five grains of settled agricultural communities, and drives flying dragons. The Zhuangzi ’s next chapter tells of an immortal who cannot be burned by fire or chilled by ice, is unfrightened by the most frightful thunder and lightning, and “moves with the clouds, soars above the sun and the moon and wanders beyond the four seas.” 47 Of course, Daoism changes over time. All religions do. It takes on Confucian and Buddhist elements, making peace with Confucian ideals such as filial piety, human-heartedness, and propriety, and adapting Buddhist meditation techniques for its own purposes. All these transformations, however, can be understood as developments inside a religious tradition unafraid of change. In the end, there is far more continuity than discontinuity between earlier and later Daoism

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  A History of the World's Religions

  • David S. Noss, Blake R. Grangaard(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In the prolonged period during which eternal life was sought through magico-religious means, what deities were addressed? There were many gods, both outside and inside human bodies, with the emphasis on them constantly shifting. Religious Daoism, however, seems always to have paid highest honors to various trinities of beings, such as Tai Yi, the Ultimate Oneness; Tian Yi, Heaven; and Di Yi, Earth. There also were exterior gods approached singly, like the god of the stove or kitchen (spoken of by Confucius), who was addressed by the alchemists when they went to the alchemy furnace. There also was the god of the southwestern corner of the house, also known to Confucius. Many others must have been locally honored; the lists shift with time and locality.

  Divination Blocks After framing a question— and proper wording is crucial—the petitioner drops two pieces of bamboo root cut to fit together like the halves of a cashew. After bouncing about on the floor, each block will eventually settle with its convex (yang) or concave (yin) side up. The three possible combinations are not flat “yes” or “no” indications but represent the deity’s response to the questioner’s phrasing. The balanced yang-yin combination is favorable, “Your phrasing shows piety.” Yang-yang means, “Your phrasing angers the deity.” Yin-yin suggests absurdity in the question, “The deity is laughing.” The blocks may be used in combination with sortilege: drawing a numbered bamboo stick from a container and then consulting a correspondingly numbered oracle passage (usually ambiguous or obscure) furnished by the temple attendant. (David S. Noss)

  Official recognition of the religious aspects of Daoism was not long in coming. This occurred implicitly in 165 CE through the act of the Emperor Huan of the Second Han dynasty in ordering, for the first time, official offerings to Lao-zi and the building of a temple in his honor. However, what was anticipated did not get fully under way until the fifth century, when Emperor Tai Wu Di gave Daoism imperial recognition in the Northern Wei empire. But the greatest epoch of Daoism came when the Tang (T’ang) dynasty reunited China and the Emperor Li Shi-min

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  World Philosophies

  • Ninian Smart, Oliver Leaman(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  ā da tradition in India. At any rate, while he was traditional in favoring Confucian learning, his standpoint was a good deal less conservative than that of the great synthesizer Zhu Xi. Zhu Xi had of course distinguished between the transcendental, moral mind and the human mind in order to explain evil in the universe. Lu’s explanation was that it was merely because humans did not think that they conceal from themselves the truth: again, this has something of an Indian ring to it – the cause of our problems is ignorance, the root of all evil.

  It will be seen from the foregoing that the Neoconfucian scholars were much concerned with cosmology and an analysis of the nature of the universe. Its emphases on the sage and moral self-cultivation flowed from the relevant worldviews they cultivated. Their more metaphysical interests, as we have seen, owed a lot to the need to take on the more elaborate Buddhist schools. And to some extent they were influenced in their practical ideas by Buddhist methods of meditation.

  Taoism as a Religion: Meditation, Monasticism, Celestial Hierarchy, Alchemy, Anarchism

  It was in the period of the Tang dynasty and later that Taoism’s various strands came together in a form recognizable as being like modern Taoist religion. The increased emphasis on meditation itself helped to encourage the formation of Buddhist monasticism, more or less on the model of Buddhism. Many techniques of inner visualization were used by Taoist adepts. Important in these developments was Wang-che (Wangche) (1112–70), whose methods were not dissimilar to those of Chan. Taoist monasticism ran in parallel to the dispersal through the rural communities of China of Taoist priests, concerned with rituals directed at a celestial hierarchy of gods, presided over by the Jade Emperor, and including heavenly immortals such as a deified Laozi. Meanwhile, another strand of Taoist thinking and practice was the whole enterprise of alchemy, including the use of complex formulas which would, if ingested, help to promote immortality. At the same time Taoist techniques and popular myths incorporated many messianic elements, and this gave the religion a rebellious dynamic. The canon of Taoist scriptures was not, however, assembled in final form until 1445, when it was printed under imperial auspices. It includes a huge variety of material, ranging from the Daodejing to alchemical works, and such messianic books as the T’ai-p’ing ching (Taipingjing) or Classic of the Great Peace

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