Are You Taoist?

I'm just curious as to how many people here consider themselves Taoist. I think its a really cool Philosophy/Religion (whatever) but I didn't know if most of you just take several ideas from Taoism or totally believe in it. Just curious.

 

I mix it with Buddhism

 

I like the down-to-earthiness it introduced into Buddhism

 

When I read the Tao Te Ching, it really resonated and connected with me, more than any other religion or belief system ever has. So while I would not call myself a Taoist, I definitely do take a lot from it and incorporate it into my life.

 

I feel that Taoism is to blank. Tao Te Ching was a good read for the poetry and i do like some of the verses and there meaning but i think that someone who follows taoism competly will never go anywhere in life. because according to Lao Tzu it is better to be Nothing than to be Something because without Nothing you can't have Something or that it is better to not try than it is to try and fail.

 

i don't see that in taoism... where are you trying to go in life and how would taoism hold you back? there are so many different translations in english that i find it hard to take much of what is said in a completely literal sense. i read the tao te ching in as profound of terms as i can, within reason of course.

about competition... are you competing to be of higher status than others in some way? that is looked down upon, attaining higher titles to put oneself ahead of another. its not that you shouldn't go anywhere but it is to realize the path you are on and why. be true to yourself, eachother, nature, and the tao.

 

what i am is an awairness that observes. that makes me a little bit of many things and not entirely any one of them. i find the science-like honesty of phylosophical taoism refreshing and feel a kindred to it in my own perceptions, as i do many aspects of shinto and indiginous traditions, though i possess no committed intimacy with any of them, just a sense of greater spiritual closeness to these three then to any of the more dominant name brands of belief with which the less thoughtful so arbitrarily and blindly identify themselves.

i do feel a personal closeness with the 'kami' of the mountains where i grew up.

=^^=
.../\...

 

isn't it that we're all just here and the tao "the way" is just the way. I look at life as though the tao resonates in and out of "Everyone" in different areas of their being; not being aware of the book enabeling considerations all of it's aspects makes it hard to be completely centered and intune with the perfection of the all of all, but i've met people exactly like that and thought, wow, "you have incredible wisdom"

America is lousing it's natural taoist, taoists in the form of people of the land, back country folks of the old world who knew the ways of the land and lived a much closer to what the words of the tao portray i believe ;authentic christians; taoist in spirit

really... if all of us were to go out alone into nature, in the wilderness where there was know recolection of society or the ways of life in progression "city life" we'd all come to the consciousness of the tao. it isn't an it by my perception; we are the tao.

i feel that it's much easier to find the tao if we're able to look at ourselves and yes, our inflated egos, as if each persons me, or the thought of "you" within yourself, as, in a sense, sick. The western mind, possibly because of the deeply rooted ideaology of a monotheistic god, along with the consept of original sin, jumped the track of balance hundreds and hundreds of years ago and really, weather we like it or not, the spirit has been imbedded within our souls ever since childbirth. noone i know doesn't have an out of balance grandmother/father or mother/father who used to be a christian.

I spent some time with a group of chinese people, all between the age of 30 & 40 who'd been raised with a taoist philosophy as their root. it was really incredible how different and i might say enjoyable it was to have been allowed into their realm for only a second. I was very high for 8 to 9 hours around them and then unfortunately my western, attraction mind took over and had me giving very very slight glances to a girl i'd been attracted to the entire time and the spirit of a self-involved mind could be seen by every person in the around 20 person or so group and the realization for both me and them of my wavering taoist spirit became evedent.

that's basically why i think an admitance of being off track or sick is essential in the merge to realization of the tao.

 

Ah but what does it mean to somewhere in life?

Is it being rich and famous?

Or do people need those things to be content?

A content man is a content man no matter how much wealth he has.

A dead man is a dead man no matter how much his coffin costs.

Now if pain is caused by not having these things we "need" why should we struggle to obtain them when we can simply give up the desire binding us to these things?

 

I would not classifiy myself as a taoist, but that is because to me that would make it a religion, I dont view it as worship or a way to please the spirits, I view it as teachings on life and earth and the way we should live, having said that yes I do follow the teachings

 

Wilderness is one place to hear it: The mighty roar of the eternal void.

Once I sat quietly by the side of a lake (Celestine Lake, Jasper Park, Alberta, Canada)all afternoon, the nearest other person being probably fifteen miles to the south. It was a very small lake, perhaps 1/4 mile by 200 yards. Three birds were talking: one at the southeast, one at the southwest and one at the north. They were saying something like "Come here, baby" or "This is my nest, buddy, keep moving", or who knows what? But it was a definite conversation.

* * *

​

If you're lucky enough to have a seashore, do this. Sit facing the breakers. Close your eyes. Listen. Stereo sound comes in.
From the left : Shshshsh shaa.
From the right, start at right and slowly moving left: Shaa shsh.
At center: Whap! Shshsh Shaa (happening before the wave at right finishes).
And on and on.

You can probably do this with a prairie wind or even a mountain wind, if you're well away from traffic and people.

 

There is a time for work and a time for meditation. If you have a really boring job, daydreaming about some mountain retreat sometimes helps.

I don't have the Tao Te Ching in front of me. Some of Lao's ideas might indeed be better suited to a retiree than to someone slogging up a corporate ladder, working the oil patch, or fixing power lines in the middle of an ice storm. I suggest you take what you need and leave the rest.

For example, the biblical Old Testament has some good ideas in it, but few of us today would try to abide by the laws of Moses. Also, big chunks of it are a 'God On Our Side' apology for a scorched earth policy of Israelites toward their various neighbors. The first thing Joshua did after defeating Jericho was put everyone to the sword except a couple of spies.

The New Testament contains many references to miraculous events which are difficult for non-Christians to accept. It remains excellent if you are dying and need the comforting idea of an afterlife.

The Koran is blunt about the need to slay infidels, and outspoken about the need of woman to obey man.

Zen texts, such as Teachings of Huang Po, are faulted by some for their attack on the value of rational thought. Rational thought is held by most Westerners and most modern Japanese to be of great value in day to day life.

In the same way, the Tao Te Ching has a lot of lyrical stuff about how by doing nothing, everything gets done. This has to be taken with a grain of salt, so to speak. Am I supposed to do nothing the next time I have a flat tire on the highway?

 

Boys watch girls, girls watch boys. That is natural programming and not something to feel guilty about. If you've become actually indifferent to cute girls, it means you're sick, senile or gay. There is also the possibility that the girl would feel insecure and unwanted if no guys were sending her these signals.

 

Like many others I wouldn't consider myself a taoist (or any term really, even athiest) The labels seem so... strange in my mind. It's like a foreign idea (the label) entering and becoming something with me. I don't like it. With that aside, I do like many of the taoist teachings and the tao te ching was really good. I don't agree with a couple of them (the ones surrounding leading your life a certain way, and being devout, shit like that) and on the whole I don't agree with teaching someone a religion/philosphy/etc in the sense of I'm right you're wrong. The tao doesn't do this, but regardless I take the tao for what it's worth and enjoy the bits of revelation that they bring and enjoy the relations I can make between the ancient chinese and my life.

 

dirty dog what you wrote about the sea reminds me of kerouac's poem "the sea" that can be found at the end of big sur. Described as "a brilliant poem appended, on the hallucinatory sounds of the pacific ocean at big sur." - Allen Ginsberg

I'm not suggesting (or not suggesting) that you read it, but its very similar to what you wrote and just as interesting.

Also, I don't agree that you can "get anywhere" in life. Or that you can "do something" with your life. You have it to yourself and if you accomplish whatever you want to then that's your own thing. It'd be impossible to determine the definition of those terms and to me they don't exist. It's hard to debate a topic such as this when its merely personal preference/opinion though.

 

I could have gotten this idea from Kerouac, years ago. It just goes to show I'm capable of learning from reading, but this surf-listening meditation is very soothing. You're also clued in right away that the surf is happening now, it will be happening tomorrow and for hundreds of millions of years to come, and it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years.

Ksshhaw, pause. Ksshhaw. Whap! Ssshhhi ssshhaw.
​

And this guy, sitting here shoving his toes in the sand, is programmed to die in about twenty years, and knows it.


I'd rather be in sync with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac than with Bill Gates and George W. More recommended reading: Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General From Big Sur.

 

I am most certainly a Taoist but I would call myself a non conventional Taoist in that I prefer the Zhuangzi to the Tao Te Ching.

 

I don't think you can *be* taoist. I mean the tao just *is* there are no questions to answer, no wondering why. there's living to be done,, who has time for why?I've studied the writings of Ching and Laotsu but I can't say I practice it. I can't say I believe it either, cause believes gives the probability of not existing and to mean existing, the act of existing, as all.

 

I think your taking it all in face value. Let's go to the tire scenario...What it says is Don't Whine to *god* about why you nor should you think in terms of divine intervention. Don't curse and rave at the tire, at your situation, at the road. likewise if a desirable female shows up and help you out, don't thank your tire, *god*, or the situation. You got a flat tire, that's all that happened.