Hampshire

Selborne Village Hall

Mon 19:00 - 20:30

Wing Chun Class

THE TRUTH ABOUT TAOISM

What Taoism is

Taoism (Daoism) is a Positive, Self-Development and Spiritual-Development System that is witty, whimsical and mystical. It contains techniques that the individual practices on a daily basis to gain specific benefits for themselves. Mostly good health to enable great longevity.

What Taoism is not

Taoism is not a religion based on gods, ghosts and demons, rituals and prayers, talismans, invocations and exorcisms.

What Taoism is

Taoism is a system of techniques, such as movement and breathing exercises, visualisations, meditations and leading the energy around the body through various energy pathways and energy centres to promote greater health and physical longevity.

It is also a way to develop greater wisdom and understanding about oneself and our connection to the natural world and the spiritual world. The Spiritual World is the world of the in-visible abstract inside us that is comprised of many components:

  • Wu Chi = An empty circle
  • Yin and Yang = A circle full of opposites
  • Wei = Doing
  • Wu Wei = Not Doing
  • Wu Xing = Five Phases
  • San Pao = Three Treasures = Ching (Essence), Chi (Energy) and Shen (Spirit)
  • Po and Hun = Emotions and Mental Clarity
  • Xing and Ming = Essential Nature and Eternal Life

Ultimately, Taoism is a system to create a Spirit Body within one’s own physical body. It is possible to then be inside one’s Spirt Body and exit the physical body and travel in this Spirit Body whilst alive. At the time of death of the physical body, to carry on one’s journey in this Immortal Spirit Body.

The techniques of Taoism are carried out within the physical body. The purpose is to access various in-visible internal qualities and work with them.

These in-visible internal qualities are things like Chi energy, emotions and aspects of consciousness and spirit. Because these qualities are all in-visible, many different types of metaphors and poetic constructs were created by the ancient Taoists to explain them.

Taoist mystics identified many of the physical locations within the body where one could find these various types of in-visible, but essential components. So the poetic explanations overlap symbols with physical locations. Taoism is practiced within the world that is within the physical body. 

The techniques of Taoism are methods to develop health and increase health span. They cultivate Chi life force energy to increase life span and personal spiritual immortality.

This is why Taoism has given the world:

  • Acupuncture
  • Chinese Herbal Medicine
  • Chi Kung (Qi Gong)
  • Tao Yin (Dao yin)
  • Five Elements diet
  • Nei Jia Chuan (Internal Martial Arts)
  • Yang Shen (Nourishing Life)
  • Nei Tan (Internal Red Cinnabar Pill Elixir)

Taoism is not a religion

Taoism is not a religion. It is a Self-development and Spiritual-development system which has longevity as its most obvious manifestation.

How can I prove that this is the case?

All I have to do is point you towards the Taoist Canon, known as The Tao Tsang (Dao Zang). It is comprised of 1,600 books, all together just over 200,000 pages. It was compiled about 1,625 years ago and it defines what Taoism is, by Taoists, for Taoists!

80% of the Taoist Canon deals with techniques for longevity!

The first document in the Taoist Canon is called The Seal of Xing Chi Ming. It is from the Chou Dynasty (500 B.C.) and it predates the Tao Te Ching by 200 years. It is a technical manual that describes in detail the basic and most fundamental of all the Taoist internal techniques which is known as The Small Heavenly Orbit. 

Out of the 1,600 books of the Taoist Canon, one of them has been publicised more than any other: The Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing) by Lao Tzu (Lao Zi). This has created an almost global agreement that Taoism is a philosophy of life derived from this one book. There is no harm in this, and it’s a nice philosophy, which can be a way for people to open the door into what Taoism really is.

Taoism is not Confucianism

Confucianism is a type of social totalitarianism. Its aims are to:

  • Have the children and wife subservient to the father.
  • The family subservient to the clan.
  • The clan subservient to the local government.
  • The local government subservient to the national government.
  • The individual subservient to the state.

All this is re-enforced with:

  • Social hierarchy
  • codes of morals
  • codes of ethics
  • codes of virtues
  • codes of social custom
  • bureaucracy
  • and ritualistic behaviour.

Confucianism is social order.

Taoism is not Confucianism. Taoism is about the individual, about free thought and about how one can find one’s own Way. Taoism is independence and personal internal spiritual development.

Taoism is not Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion.

It aims to have each person agree that…

  • They are not at ease and that they are suffering (dukkha)
  • That they are in a transient painful cycle of aimless drifting, wandering and mundane existence (saṃsara)
  • That they want liberation from their attachment to their transient, unsatisfactory existence and worldly suffering (nirvana)
  • That they are in a painful cycle of aimless drifting and want to have release from this (moksha)

That they should follow the Buddhist dictated

  • right view
  • right resolve
  • right speech
  • right conduct
  • right livelihood
  • right effort
  • right mindfulness
  • and right state of consciousness (samadhi)

Buddhism states that reincarnation / re-birth / re-death / cycle of transmigration is a fixed process of action driven by intention which leads to future consequences (Karma).

Buddhism denies the existence of the Individual Self or the Spirit (Pratityasamutpada).

Taoism is not Buddhism. Taoism is witty, whimsical and mystical. It is literally Positive Individual Self-development that is then transferred to one’s Spirit Body that has been internally, intentionally cultivated. So that after death one can personally, subjectively, intentionally choose what one wants to do next and to intentionally, personally choose where one wants to go next.

Taoism is independence and personal internal spiritual development. Taoism is individual free thought about how one can find one’s own Way in this life and after this life!

Taoism is not a monotheistic religion from the fertile crescent

​In monotheistic religions that originate from the fertile crescent there is one god who judges you and decides what happens to your soul after you physically die. The single god either sends you to heaven or hell.

Many people who have written about Taoism have been followers of monotheistic religions from the fertile crescent and so have knowingly or unconsciously mistranslated Taoist books through their own religions beliefs. As a result, some very strange things have been written about Taoism: that Tao is the one single god and that Taoism is a religion with similarities to the monotheistic religions from the fertile crescent.

Taoism is not a religion. Tao is not god. Taoism is from a very different geographic location, it is not from the fertile crescent, it is from China. It has a different origin. It developed in a different cultural landscape.

Its core component is that the individual has 100% control over one’s own Spirit and decides for oneself, personally and subjectively, where to go after physical death.

There is a ‘Religion of Taoism’

In India, Hinduism produced Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion with a doctrine and a priesthood, prayers and a system of temple rituals and monastic centres. Buddhism went over the border into China.

The Chinese Taoists could see that with its structure and organisation, Buddhism was taking over. So in response, the Taoists created a version of Taoism that would also have a doctrine and a priesthood, prayers and a system of temple rituals and monastic centres. This is how and why we now have a ‘Religion of Taoism’!

Unfortunately, the Taoist religion was not just a Taoist version of a religion that used the same structure for a religion that Buddhism had developed, but it also incorporated many Buddhist and Hindu components that have nothing to do with Taoism.

So today, you have a very strange situation in which the religion of Taoism now contains many Buddhist and Hindu aspects that are not really what Taoism is about.

For me Taoism is a Personal, Positive, Self-Development and Spiritual-Development System that encourages the individual to find their own Way in this life and after this life. This is my Way.

What do I think and feel about people who say that Taoism is a philosophy of life derived from The Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing) by Lao Tzu (Lao Zi). What do I personally think and feel about people who are enthusiastic about the religion of Taoism, about monotheistic religions that originate from the fertile crescent, about Buddhism and about Confucianism?

You have your Way
I have my Way
As for the right Way
the correct Way
and the only Way
it does not exist 

(Friedrich Nietzsche)