Taoism at a glance

Taoism is an ancient tradition of philosophy and religious belief that is deeply rooted in Chinese
customs and worldview.

Taoism is also referred to as Daoism, which is a more accurate way of representing in English the
sound of the Chinese word.

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 2000 years ago
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
feng shui
fortune telling
reading and chanting of scriptures

Relating to the Tao

Many Taoist ideas come from other Chinese schools of thought. It's not always easy to draw accurate
distinctions between ideas that are fundamentally Taoist and those that Taoism took in from elsewhere,
especially Buddhism.

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, is less important than living in sensitive
response to the Tao.

The most useful words to stimulate an idea of the Tao are found in the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the mother of all things.
......
There was something undifferentiated and yet complete,
Which existed before Heaven and Earth.
Soundless and formless it depends on nothing and does not change.
It operates everywhere and is free from danger.
It may be considered the mother of the universe.
I do not know its name; I call it Tao.
......
All things in the world come from being.
And being comes from non-being. (form comes from formlessness)?

Tao Te Ching
The Way is to man as rivers and lakes are to fish,
the natural condition of life.

Chuang Tzu

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 being.

Although it's conventional to refer to The Tao, some writers think that the "the" should be dropped
because it isn't in the original Chinese term.

They feel that using 'the' gives Westerners the idea that the Tao is a metaphysical reality, by which
they mean a thing (in the widest sense) or an absolute being like a god.

But even the name Tao can lead Westerners to think of Tao in the same way that they think of objects.

That sort of thinking is misleading: Thinking of the Tao as some sort of object produces an
understanding of the Tao that is less than the reality.

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.
Glimpsed only through its effects

A good way of avoiding the Tao-as-object error is to see the various concepts of the Tao as doing no
more than describing those effects of the Tao that human beings are aware of. They do not describe its
reality.
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

Origins and development

Laozi is traditionally regarded as the founder of Taoism and is closely associated in this context with
"original", or "primordial", Taoism. Whether he actually existed is commonly disputed; however, the
work attributed to him the Daodejing is dated to the late 4th century BC.

Taoism draws its cosmological foundations from the School of Naturalists (in form of its main elements
yin and yang and the Five Phases), which developed during the Warring States period (4th to 3rd
centuries BC).

Robinet identifies four components in the emergence of Taoism:

Philosophical Taoism, i.e. the Daodejing and Zhuangzi
techniques for achieving ecstasy
practices for achieving longevity or immortality
exorcism.

Some elements of Taoism may be traced to prehistoric folk religions in China that later
coalesced into a Taoist tradition. In particular, many Taoist practices drew from the Warring-States-era
phenomena of the wu (connected to the "shamanism" of Southern China) and the fangshi (which
probably derived from the "archivist-soothsayers of antiquity, one of whom supposedly was Laozi
himself"), even though later Taoists insisted that this was not the case. Both terms were used to
designate individuals dedicated to "... magic, medicine, divination,... methods of longevity and to
ecstatic wanderings" as well as exorcism; in the case of the wu, "shamans" or "sorcerers" is often used
as a translation. The fangshi were philosophically close to the School of Naturalists, and relied much on
astrological and calendrical speculations in their divinatory activities.
 The first organized form of Taoism, the Tianshi (Celestial Masters') school (later known as
Zhengyi school), developed from the Five Pecks of Rice movement at the end of the 2nd century CE;
the latter had been founded by Zhang Daoling, who claimed that Laozi appeared to him in the year
142. The Tianshi school was officially recognized by ruler Cao Cao in 215, legitimizing Cao Cao's rise to
power in return. Laozi received imperial recognition as a divinity in the mid-2nd century BCE.
Taoism, in form of the Shangqing school, gained official status in China again during the Tang Dynasty
(618907), whose emperors claimed Laozi as their relative. The Shangqing movement, however, had
developed much earlier, in the 4th century, on the basis of a series of revelations by gods and spirits
to a certain Yang Xi in the years between 364 to 370.
In the 12th century, the Quanzhen School was founded in Shandong. It flourished during the
13th and 14th century and during the Yuan dynasty became the largest and most important Taoist
school in Northern China. The school's most revered master, Qiu Chuji, met with Genghis Khan in 1222
and was successful in influencing the Khan towards exerting more restraint during his brutal
conquests. By the Khan's decree, the school also was exempt from taxation.
Aspects of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism were consciously synthesized in the Neo-
Confucian school, which eventually became Imperial orthodoxy for state bureaucratic purposes under
the Ming (13681644). The Qing Dynasty (16441912), however, much favored Confucian classics over
Taoist works. During the 18th century, the imperial library was constituted, but excluded virtually all
Taoist books. By the beginning of the 20th century, Taoism had fallen much from favor (for example,
only one complete copy of the Daozang still remained, at the White Cloud Monastery in Beijing).

Concepts within Taoism

The One
The One is the essence of Tao, the essential energy of life, the possession of which enables things and beings to be
truly themselves and in accord with the Tao.

Taoist texts sometimes refer to the Tao as the mother and the One as the son.
Wu and Yu
Wu and Yu are non-being and being, or not-having and having. Wu also implies inexhaustibility or limitlessness.
Some writers suggest that Wu can be directly experienced by human beings.
Te
Te is usually translated as virtue, but this translation uses some Confucian ideas and can be confusing.
Another way of looking at te is an awareness of the Tao together with the capabilities that enable a person to follow
the Tao.
Professor Victor Mair suggests that a better translation is integrity. He writes:

Tzu Jan
Tzu Jan is usually translated naturalness or spontaneity, but this is rather misleading.
One writer suggests using the phrase 'that which is naturally so', meaning the condition that something will be in if
it is permitted to exist and develop naturally and without interference or conflict.
The Taoist ideal is to fulfil that which is naturally so, and the way to do this is Wu Wei.

Wu Wei
The method of following the Tao is called Wu Wei. This can be translated as uncontrived action or natural non-
intervention.

Wu Wei means living by or going along with the true nature of the world - or at least without obstructing the Tao -
letting things take their natural course.

So Taoists live lives of balance and harmony. They find their way through life in the same way that a river flowing
through the countryside finds its natural course.

This doesn't stop a person living a proactive life but their activities should fit into the natural pattern of the
universe, and therefore need to be completely detached and disinterested and not ego-driven.

This implies that Taoists take an attitude akin to Voltaire's (satirically intended) doctrine that "All is for the best in
this best of all possible worlds."

And certainly pure Taoism requires individuals to live on the basis that the world is working properly, and that they
therefore should not interfere with it.
Yin Yang

Yin Yang is the principle of natural and complementary forces, patterns and things that depend on one another and
do not make sense on their own.

These may be masculine and feminine, but they could be darkness and light (which is closer to the original meaning
of the dark and light sides of a hill), wet and dry or action and inaction.
These are opposites that fit together seamlessly and work in perfect harmony. You can see this by looking at the yin
yang symbol.

The yin yang concept is not the same as Western dualism, because the two opposites are not at war, but in
harmony.

This can be seen very clearly in the symbol: the dark area contains a spot of light, and vice versa, and the two
opposites are intertwined and bound together within the unifying circle.

Yin and yang are not static, the balance ebbs and flows between them - this is implied in the flowing curve where
they meet.
The Taoist body

Taoists view the body as a miniature of the universe, filled with the Tao. The parts of the body have their
counterparts in physical features of the universe, and:

Ch'i

Ch'i or qi is the cosmic vital energy that enables beings to survive and links them to the universe as a whole.
Qi is the basic material of all that exists. It animates life and furnishes functional power of events. Qi is the
root of the human body; its quality and movement determine human health. Qi can be discussed in terms of
quantity, since having more means stronger metabolic function. This, however, does not mean that health is a
byproduct of storing large quantities of qi. Rather, there is a normal or healthy amount of qi in every person, and
health manifests in its balance and harmony, its moderation and smoothness of flow. This flow is envisioned in the
texts as a complex system of waterways with the "Ocean of Qi" in the abdomen; rivers of qi flowing through the
upper torso, arms, and legs; springs of qi reaching to the wrists and ankles; and wells of qi found in the fingers and
toes. Even a small spot in this complex system can thus influence the whole, so that overall balance and
smoothness are the general goal.
Human life is the accumulation of qi; death is its dispersal. After receiving a core potential of primordial qi
at birth, people throughout life need to sustain it. They do so by drawing postnatal qi into the body from air and
food, as well as from other people through sexual, emotional, and social interaction. But they also lose qi through
breathing bad air, overburdening their bodies with food and drink, and getting involved in negative emotions and
excessive sexual or social interactions.
Immortality doesn't mean living for ever in the present physical body.
The idea is that as the Taoist draws closer and closer to nature throughout their life, death is just the final
step in achieving complete unity with the universe.

TEXTS
Three Treasures
The Three Treasures or Three Jewels (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: snbo) are basic
virtues in Taoism comprising Compassion, Moderation, and Humility. They are also translated as kindness, simplicity
(or the absence of excess), and modesty. Arthur Waley describes them as "[t]he three rules that formed the
practical, political side of the author's teaching". He correlated the Three Treasures with "abstention from
aggressive war and capital punishment", "absolute simplicity of living", and "refusal to assert active authority".[61]

Tao Te Ching
The Tao Te Ching or Daodejing, also often called Laozi, is widely regarded to be the most influential Taoist text.[76]
According to legend, it was written by Laozi.[77]

Zhuangzi
The Daozang (, Treasury of Tao) is also referred to as the Taoist canon. It was originally compiled during the Jin,
Tang, and Song dynasties. The version surviving today was published during the Ming Dynasty. Following the
example of the Buddhist Tripiaka, it is divided into three dong ( , "caves", "grottoes"). They are arranged from
"highest" to "lowest":[92][93]
The Zhen ("real" or "truth" ) grotto. Includes the Shangqing texts.
The Xuan ("mystery" ) grotto. Includes the Lingbao scriptures.
The Shen ("divine" ) grotto. Includes texts predating the Maoshan revelations.

Physical practices

Because Taoism doesn't make a rigid division between body and spirit, it recognises that physical actions have a
spiritual effect.
Purity
Taoist texts teach the importance of keeping the body pure in order to ensure spiritual health. To remain pure a
person should avoid certain activities and foods. Greed, lust, pride and dishonesty are examples of things that
should be avoided.
Meditation
Meditation is important to many Taoists. Complex meditation rituals are practiced in various temples.
A vital use of meditation is to create mental stillness and enhance mindfulness. This can give a person the mental
space to know the Tao directly.
Breathing
Breath is the most easily perceived form of ch'i, and there are many Taoist breathing exercises. Taoist breathing
exercises are called Qui Gong (qigong).
Energy flow
The flow of life energy - ch'i - within the body can be enhanced, regulated and harmonised by various forms of
exercise, meditation, and techniques such as acupuncture and moxibustion.
Martial arts
Tai Chi (taiji) originally derived from Taoist exercises created by Chang San-Feng (Zhang Sanfeng) (1127-1279 CE).
Modern forms of Tai Chi are more likely to be secular exercises than Taoist practices.
Diet
Classical Taoist teaching recommends abstaining from alcohol, meat, beans and grains.