The Daoist Way

a. According to an article I read, there Is a decline of Daosim among Chinese people in Singapore. Researchers say the main reasons for the Daosim’s troubles are its poor social networking and the lack of available information about ties teachings. Increased competition for young people by proselytizing Christion groups may also be a factor. Another problem for Daoism is that, like all small religions, it is often made fun of or outright ridiculed by people of other faiths. Earlier this month, a Christian pastor in Singapore made a personal apology to Daoist Federation Chairman Tan Thiam Lye for comparing Daoist beliefs to the “Protection racket,” according to an article in the Strait Times.

While the Way can be considered an intangible idea of how to live your life, others believe it is an omnipotent force that shapes all things and cannot be named. Confucianists believe the former, where they have a superior chance of achieving a better life through ritual. Daoists, however, trust in nonaction, in not interfering with nature, to have a better and longer life. Conversely, the Daoist idea can only hold true in an ideal society. The Confucianist idea instead relies on action, the use of virtue with rituals, and the overall betterment of the self for the community to reach the Way.

In my opinion, the Daoist imagery of the wheel is a concept that offers concise insight into a number of different areas of life. One idea that the imagery of the wheel provides that I believe holds significant merit is the idea of the emptiness of the hub. This idea of the emptiness of the hub seems an especially important quality for individuals tasked with the responsibility of organizations, communities, or similar collectives. In order to rule or govern effectively, it is necessary they are devoid of personal inclinations, biases, or preferences that may prompt them to made decision that would be unbeneficial to the welfare of their collective. Daoist thought presents the state of emptiness as one of mental clarity, being free of desires

While the Way can be considered an intangible idea of how to live your life, others believe it is an omnipotent force that shapes all things and cannot be named. Confucianists believe the former, where they have a superior chance of achieving a better life through ritual. Daoists, however, trust in nonaction, in not interfering with nature, to have a better and longer life. Conversely, the Daoist idea can only hold true in an ideal society, since it would be hard to employ. I will argue that a Confucianist society is better, because it relies on action in a society, the use of virtue with rituals to learn, and the overall betterment of the self to create order in the community as a means of reaching Way.

Before parallels can be drawn between ideals and paths in Daoism, Daoist philosophy and Dao must be defined. It is hard to put Daoist Philosophy into a nice, neat sentence because of the complexity and vast amount of information on the subject. For the intent of this paper, Daoist philosophy is defined as a Chinese philosophy that takes a more naturalist approach to religion and way of living. It is the connection between imitating nature and harmony. Dao is defined in Chapter 1 as the constant moving “everything” that surrounds us. It is not tangible, it is just what it is, and you do not know exactly what this something is.

Daoism has everything to do with nature. It plays the most important role in human development and knowledge . It states that humans should help

Daoism emphasizes on living in harmony with the Tao. Taoism should be understood as being: A system of belief, attitudes, and practices set towards the service and living to a person’s nature (A personal Tao PG 14) In Taoism, a good life is a life that’s simple, spontaneous, in harmony with nature, unencumbered by societal regulation, and free from the desire to achieve social ascendancy, a life lived in accordance with the Tao. Taoists are thus champions of individuality and individual freedom. Unlike Buddhism, Taoism doesn’t completely disregard the existence of the self, instead Taoism acknowledges that the self exists, but it emphasizes that the person has to be “selfless” instead of the “I” it’s “others” and this person will forever live in harmony, in a balanced life with nature and others.

One of the reasons I chose Daoism was that I believed it would be an easier practice than the others, given that the Daoist philosophy centers around “not doing.” I could not have been more incorrect. In fact, this essay has been the most difficult to articulate in my undergraduate career. After all, “the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”; rather, it is a mystery (Mitchell, 1988). I learned that, in a society that values mastery, sometimes the most difficult course of action is not acting at all. Practicing wu wei requires one to relinquish control over a situation. I found this to be antithetical to the cultural values I was raised with, and it was hard to break old habits. According to the Tao Te Ching, to know the masculine principle but to act in accordance

Like Confucianism, Daoists offer two principles to cultivate oneself: ziran (自然) and wuwei (无为). Ziran has been widely translated to mean self-so. Laozi explains what self-so may mean when he tells his followers to “open yourself to the Tao, then trust your natural responses; and everything will fall into place.” As Robert Eno, Associate Professor of Early Chinese History and Thought at Indiana University, puts it, “The inhabitants of the Natural world are ‘self-so,’ they simply are as they are, without any intention to be so.” Simply put, in civil society, humans have no choice but to be driven by some purpose or action. To connect with the Dao, one must return to the State of Nature and act without effort or intention. This

In many religions, there is often an infinite being or creator of all nature and everything that resides in it, even including the soul and patterns in life and death. For example, the Hindu notion of Brahman is the divine reality of all things, and the Buddhist notion of shunyata is “emptiness,” or rather the ever changing and impermanent reality of the life. In Daoism, their notion of the Dao can be placed in the same broad category as Brahman and shunyata. But based off of the information from Chapter 6 in Molloy’s text, the Daoist account of the Dao is more like the Hindu notion of Brahman because of the individual’s experience with the notion and its relationship to the creation of reality.

Daoism is synonymous with Taoism; in this religious philosophy, the way of nature is central theme of life. It was founded by Lao Tzu in 500BC in China. Lao is believed to have authored the “Dao de Jing”, which details the Daoist beliefs. Dao is a concept, a way, a principle that will lead a person to a happy, peaceful life. Dao can be achieved by incorporating the Three Jewel of Taoism that are humility, simplicity and compassion in one’s life. According to Dao, de Jing “The Way to Heaven is to benefit others and not to injure”.15 Further, there is no concept of good and evil, the Dao is simply the universe, which is perceived as a self- sustaining entity that generates energy called qi. Like other Chinese traditions, Daoist also have great reverence for the spirits of ancestors as well as spirits of nature that is plants, animals, rivers, etc. 16

Daoism is an indigenous traditional philosophy that is believed to have widely shaped the Chinese people’s life for over 2000 years. In a wider sense, Daioist attitude towards life is seen as the yielding and accepting, the joyful and the carefree side of the Chinese people. The main assumption of the Chinese aesthetics is that the phenomenal world reflects the

Dao simply means “the way”. For Confucians, tien bestows “human nature”, and in following our human nature we are in fact following the dao; by cultivating the dao we educate or civilize ourselves (from Doctrine of the Mean, in Chan, 1963:98). The Daoist school of Chinese philosophy has adopted it as its central concern; and its principal proponent, Lao Zi-whose ideas are set forth in the Dao De Jing (Book of the Way and Its Power)- speaks of the dao as eternal and nameless. To interpreters of the dao, it is “the way of man’s cooperation with the course or trend of the natural world” (Watts, 1992;xiv). According to the Dao De Jing (Lao Tzu [Zi], 1998: Chap. 37), “Tao [dao] invariably does nothing (wu-wei) and yet there is nothing that is done”.

Opposing culture of entropy, Confucianism opposed uncontrollability, spontaneity, spontaneous manifestations of feelings, cultivating in the noble husband gravity, restraint and the need for constant self-checking. Daos people, on the contrary, urged to be exempted from ways of conventions, not to look for the dual relations where they are absent actually, but to follow harmonious unity and integrity of space. The Daoism, thus, does not alienate the person from the environment, but enters him in uniform, immemorial natural

The social media is one of the most common ways of communication and pretty much of knowing anything and everything around the world these days, and it is growing very rapidly. It changes and affects each person in a different way, or ways. Some may argue that social media has a bad influence on children and young adults, and that it negatively effects their brains, character, or personalities, while most people see that the social media has a more positive effect on them than a negative one. Moreover, social media has helped many people around the world to connect, or re-connect, with each other, easily. Social media is basically the new way of keeping in touch with everything and everyone, and of even strengthening bonds between each