Howd you find the tao?

[GrandTrinity]

Enter, and there is no begining.

Follow, and there is no end.

-Tao Teh Ching

 

For me, it was when I happened up Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality at my campus bookstore. This was after taking an experimental (the first and lass) class on "Qi and Chinese Medicine" as a first semester freshman.

 

As you can imagine, that was a lot to handle! (esp. when dabling in medicinal mushrooms/herbs)

 

Its been a wild ride ever since, ups and downs! But very fun!

 

Now I am finally starting to get balance! Thank god! No, thank the tao!

 

Check out this amazingly cool quote:

"In Buddhism they practice until enlightenment.

In the tao enlightenment is secondary, the practices are first."

-Paraphrased from Road to Heaven

[hagar]

Nice quote!

 

In my experience, there are no real differences in what daoists and Buddhists aim for. For both the mind is the universe.

 

But on another level there is a difference.

 

A buddhist would say that nirvana is attainable if you follow the right way, have the right map and stop at the right gas station to refuel.

 

A daoist would say that the Dao is found while at the gas station, and you realize that they have excellent burgers.

 

h

[Yoda]

After taking time off from my Buddhist style practice, I wanted to get back into it and the folks at dragondoor were very into qigong. After reading Ken Cohen's Way of Qigong, I was hooked.

 

I found HT by googling something like "sperm retention" to an inspiring RJ post so here I am.

 

-Yoda

[sean]

I bought "Multiorgasmic Man" somewhere in my late teens/early twenties when I was practicing Magick. I played with the techniques and also bought "Taoist Secrets of Love". I felt a strong resonance with what Chia and Winn spoke about and it made a lot of things "click" for me. I became deeply interested in blending the path of physical love and relationship with the spiritually focused path of the monk. But soon my ADD kicked in and I moved on to other dabbling. Fast forward several years later ... about two years ago I picked up "Multiorgasmic Couple" in a bookstore with Lezlie. We started exploring some of the work together and it peaked my interest again. I did some googling and found Trunk's site which I read back to back and began exploring the techniques there. His site led me to the HT forum and Winn's material. I also credit the balanced, grounded wisdom on Trunk's site with how I've managed to stay relatively sane on this path.

 

Sean

[BobD]

To be honest, I can't actually remember!

 

I started out with Buddhism, reading lots of books by Christmas Humpfries, that then turned into Zen books, also by him. After that, I think it was my first copy of the TTC that got me into Taoism. That led me to some internet sites after a google, and then into Tai Chi, Chi Kung and sites such as the HT, and then the books of Chia. So started off from religion to philosophy to physical to alchemical. At least I think thats how it went

[el_tortugo]

One day after I had just got done burying a nice big crap out in the woods I stumbled over somethig that I thought was a rock. A closer inspection revealed it to be the Tao.... Life has never been the same since.

[Zenwind]

For me, the path to the Tao began with Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder in *The Dharma Bums*, then Snyder's translation of Han Shan's *Cold Mountain Poems* with a Chinese commentary on the poems in which Han Shan is called a "man of the Tao." Han Shan is the closest I have to a personal "saint."

 

Alan Watts' book, *The Way of Zen*, emphasized how Zen developed after Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism met in China. That was the first that I ever heard real discussion of the Tao.

 

I then read the basic Taoist classics.

 

A very nice treatment was Alan Watts' *Tao: the watercourse way*.

 

Ever since, I've been going to the forests and mountains.

 

-Zenwind.

[sean]

el_tortugo, your avatars just keep getting better and better:

 

 

Sean.

[mbanu]

For me, finding the Dao was the problem; Daoism was the solution.

[peter falk]

it was always there.

[spyrelx]

"Howd you find the tao?"

 

I originally found it to be vast, amorphous and a bit slippery -- and still do. These days I also find it a bit reticent, but for some reason keep visiting.