Misty mountains by Bill Tyne
Taoism
Generally speaking, Taoism is an outlook on life that attempts to harmonize the individual will with the natural and spiritual influences of the cosmos.
Personal thoughts and actions are said to alternately coincide or conflict with the flow of the universe, or in some commentaries, the Will of Heaven.
The advent of Taoism is usually attributed to two Chinese sages, Lao Tzu (mid fourth-century BCE) and Chuang Tzu (369-286 BCE), although other profound Taoist authors are available in translation.
In the poetic Lao Tzu (also called the Tao-te-Ching), its author, Lao Tzu, tells of the 10,000 things (representing the visible world) that flow synchronously with an underlying ground of being which, although cannot be named, he calls Tao (often pronounced Dow, as in Dow-Jones).
Chaung Tzu’s writings are more mystical than Lao Tzu’s. Later developments in Taoism include the use of magic, alchemy and polytheistic worship. These trends were taken by many Chinese as degradations of the original message–that being the cultivation of virtue through naturalness and simplicity.
In recent times Alan Watts has popularized Taoism. Fritzoff Capra, Gary Zukav and others have followed suit by likening the cosmological aspects of Taoism to those of contemporary sub-atomic physics.
» Ancestor Cults, Anthroposophy, Confucianism, Evil, I Ching, Lao-tzu, Pantheism, Particle-Wave Duality, Reincarnation, Saint, Soul, Spinoza (Baruch), Wu Wei, Yin-Yang
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