This article will avail you with important explanations on the nature of Taoism. It elucidates the concept of The Tao and the meaning of immortality in Taoism. We shall help you to make the distinction between knowledge and relativity.
Table of Contents
The Nature of Taoism
Taoism is an ancient tradition of philosophy and religious belief that is deeply rooted in Chinese customs and worldviews.
Taoism is about the Tao. This is usually translated as the Way. But it’s hard to say exactly what this means. The Tao is the ultimate creative principle of the universe. All things are unified and connected in the Tao.
Taoism originated in China. It is a religion of unity and opposites; Yin and Yang. The principle of Yin Yang sees the world as filled with complementary forces – action and non-action, light and dark, hot and cold, and so on. The Tao is not God and is not worshipped. Taoism includes many deities that are worshipped in Taoist temples, they are part of the universe and depend, like everything, on the Tao.
- Taoism promotes:
- achieving harmony or union with nature
- the pursuit of spiritual immortality
- being ‘virtuous’ (but not ostentatiously so)
- self-development
- Taoist practices include:
- meditation
- fortune telling
- reading and chanting of scriptures
Before the Communist revolution, Taoism was one of the strongest religions in China. After a campaign to destroy non-Communist religion, however, the numbers significantly reduced and it has become difficult to assess the statistical popularity of Taoism in the world.
What is the Tao?
The Tao cannot be described in words. Human language can only give hints that may help the mind to form an idea. The most important thing about the Tao is how it works in the world and how human beings relate to it. Philosophical speculation about what the Tao actually is less important than living in sensitive response to the Tao.
The Tao is not a thing
The Tao is not a thing or a substance in the conventional sense. It cannot be perceived but it can be observed in the things of the world. Although it gives rise to all being, it does not itself have a being.
It might be more helpful to regard Tao as a system of guidance. And if one does this one can translate ‘achieving union with the Tao into developing oneself so as to live in complete conformity with the teachings of the Tao which is easier to understand and closer to the truth.
The Tao is not God
The Tao is not God and is not worshipped. Taoism does include many deities, but although these are worshipped in Taoist temples, they are part of the universe and depend, like everything, on the Tao.
The Tao includes several concepts in one word:
- the source of creation
- the ultimate
- the inexpressible and indefinable
- the unnameable
- the natural universe as a whole
- the way of nature as a whole
Gods and spirits
Taoism does not have a God in the way that the Abrahamic religions do. There is no omnipotent being beyond the cosmos, who created and controls the universe. In Taoism, the universe springs from the Tao and the Tao impersonally guides things on their way.
Immortality
Immortality doesn’t mean living forever in the present physical body. The idea is that the Taoist draws closer and closer to nature throughout his or her life and death is just the final step in achieving complete unity with the universe.
Spiritual immortality, the goal of Taoism, raises the practices to a yet higher level. To attain it, people have to transform all their qi into primordial qi and proceed to refine it to subtler levels. This finer qi will eventually turn into pure spirit, with which practitioners increasingly identify to become transcendent spirit-people.
The path that leads there involves intensive meditation and trance training as well as more radical forms of diet and other longevity practices. Immortality implies the overcoming of the natural tendencies of the body and its transformation into a different kind of qi-constellation. The result is a bypassing of death so that the end of the body has no impact on the continuation of the spirit-person. In addition, practitioners attain supersensory powers and eventually gain residence in wondrous otherworldly paradises.
Knowledge and relativity
Human knowledge is always partial and affected by the standpoint of the person claiming that knowledge. There can never be a single true knowledge, merely the aggregate of uncountable different viewpoints. Because the universe is always changing, so knowledge is always changing.
Religious Taoism
Taoism is often taught in the West as an atheist or agnostic philosophy, but in China and Taiwan particularly, Taoism still functions like any conventional religion and not like an abstract philosophy of life.
There are Taoist temples, monasteries and priests, rituals and ceremonies and a host of gods and goddesses for believers to worship. These are as vital to the survival of Taoism as individual understanding and practice.
Taoism’s rich palette of liturgy and ritual makes the Tao more real to human beings and provides a way in which humanity can align itself more closely to the Tao to produce better lives for all.
The religious elements of Taoism draw much of their content from other Chinese religions (including many local cults) and so enfold a very wide range of culture and belief within the wings of the Tao.
Conclusion
Taoism is about the Tao. This is usually translated as the Way. But it’s hard to say exactly what this means. The Tao is the ultimate creative principle of the universe. All things are unified and connected in the Tao.
Taoism originated in China. It is a religion of unity and opposites; Yin and Yang. The principle of Yin Yang sees the world as filled with complementary forces – action and non-action, light and dark, hot and cold, and so on. The Tao is not God and is not worshipped. Taoism includes many deities that are worshipped in Taoist temples, they are part of the universe and depend, like everything, on the Tao.
