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Essay on Reflections on The Tao Te Ching

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Reflections on The Tao Te Ching When the early Christians had to keep their faith against the persecutions of the Roman Empire, they had -- obviously -- a visible enemy. Once their religion was legalized and established, however, they had new questions to ask concerning who they were, what could hurt their souls and their way of life. Some of them, at least, concluded that the materialism of the dominant Roman way of life was a non-agressive, but equally corrosive force that would destroy them -- not physically, but spiritually. These Fourth Century Christians, men and women, then left their societies and withdrew into the desert to be able to find true "paradise," not in a safe, secure niche in society, but in their relationship with …show more content…

This assertion has always involved -- universally -- several profoundly felt assumptions. 1. That humans, unlike all other creatures, are called upon to develop, to become better than they are. 2. That to be most fully "human" requires individual choice and development by cooperative action with identifiable but demanding conditions. 3. That these conditions are truly universal, applicable and available to all people -- and in that sense absolute both in practice and in idea. In The Bhagavad Gita, for example, the poet says that whenever he reads the words of Krishna to Arjuna he enters into the Gita's predicament and experiences a change of soul. Similarly the Christian Gospels invite the hearers of the Word to participate in a divine life. 4. That there is something or some others or some One who is outside and beyond us and divinely interested in us as we succeed or fail at living up to our expectations. 5. That in stories, poems, myths, or codes, the elements of what it means to be human, as well as the passages from one level of awareness and life to another higher level, can be captured and shared, thus giving access to the "wisdom" of the culture. This "wisdom" may take two forms -- collections of specific rules and/or stories and poems that present the possibility of

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