Maddie

Question of the day. What is the Taoist perspective on the spirit world and it's interactions with us? How does one protect oneself from the bad ones? Why do the bad ones do bad things? I went to a local Buddhist temple where there were a few western monks, and they basically looked at me and reacted as though the question was stupid and I was crazy. So not helpful. I later came to find out this is the perspective of a lot of Western Buddhists. What's the Taoist perspective on this?

How does Qigong tie into Taoism? Is it what Hatha yoga is to Hindu meditation? Preparing the physical body to be able to sit in meditation for extended periods of time?

My opinion. Since there are many different kinds of people some are just fine without rules, others not so much.

The legalists said no.

I suppose this is why the predominant philosophy was Confucianism.

Yeah you did 😉

Ok so in Buddhism the goal is liberation. The means to accomplish this is wisdom, that comes from insight, that comes from mediation and right view. If the goal in Taoism is immortality, what are the means to accomplish this?

Whoever it might be applicable to 😉

I totally get that but it makes me wonder why is it that we don't like rules?

For the day's question I would like to ask between taoism and Buddhism what are your preferences and why? I think I'll start off by saying that I've been pretty seriously involved with Buddhism for several years now and while it does make a lot of sense to me theoretically experientially I don't know if I've noticed a whole lot of difference or not.

Good stuff, good stuff, thanks for the great replies everyone! So in my perpetual musings it occurred to me that Taoism and Hinduism seem to have a lot of similarities. Hinduisms gave us Yoga, Taoism gave us Qigong. Hinduism has Brahman, Taoism has Tao. Both have a wide pantheon of deities. I would be interested to hear about how they are similar and how they differ.

I personally don't think this is correct if you consider the eight fold path, especially mindfulness, but I do think this is a commonly held perception. I believe in Japan people go to the Shinto shrine for this life issues and the Buddhists specialize in funerals. Not sure how this perception came to be.

Question of the day: What is the purpose of chanting in Taoist temples? What does it do?

It's not disagreement that matters. It's disagreeing respectfully that does. 😌

I do know what you mean though about the emphasis on Right view versus delusion. The sutras are very much about that.

Ok I guess I see your point, but I think the reason I was surprised is because as a Buddhist one of the things that appeals to me the most about it is the compassion, kindness, and peacefulness. But perhaps that's just what I tend to emphasize.

You think of Buddhists as argumentative? Why is that?

Useful replies! 😊 What about how Taoism compares to Buddhism?

Since the primary school at the time that Lao Tzu was debating about Tao was the Confucians maybe it would be helpful to contrast what both the Taoists and Confucians said about the topic? Maybe even what the Mohists said? And later Buddhist.

Yes, my question is how does one verify the Tao for themselves?

Actually that's exactly what I was wanting to know when I asked a question about verification ☺️

I am not sure why it would be considered a strange position to want to be able to verify if something is true or not. Verification is a process of determining what is true. The scientific method shows gravity is true because it is verifiable by means of a scientific method that is repeatable. To try to prove something is untrue then opens infinite possibility of things to prove that are untrue. When the scientific method showed that gravity is verifiable and reasonable it didn't then proceeded to disprove that the planets are held in place buy an infinitely long chain of elves holding hands connecting the planets together with an elf chain. Although technically there is no way to definitively prove that an undetectable chain of cosmic elves don't hold the planets together. Yet it is reasonable to assume that infinite chain of cosmic elves do not exist because we already have a verifiable explanation by the way of gravity. So in summary verification is to prove what is true and not to prove it infinite possibility of things are untrue.

So another question I have about Tao and Taoism is is it verifiable? The primary reason I don't prescribe to any of the theistic religions is because there is no way whatsoever to verify if their claims about their gods are true. Is there any way to verify that what I said about the Tao is correct? And if so how so?

So it sounds like if one were to compare Tao to a Creator God it sounds more similar to the Hindu Brahman.

I capitalized God to frame the question of asking what is the difference between Tao and the concept of a Creator God, as they are both said to be there source of all things and the sustainer.