daoist afterlife

[Monkeyman]

i believe there is no real consensus. so what do you think happens when you die? i have no idea.

maybe the accomplished immortals on this forum can shed some light , since they can travel back and forth.

[Marblehead]

i believe there is no real consensus. so what do you think happens when you die? i have no idea.

maybe the accomplished immortals on this forum can shed some light , since they can travel back and forth.

 

I do not hold to the concept of an afterlife as do the Buddhists and Christians. I do know that many religious Taoist do though.

 

I doubt that one will ever find concensus with this subject. Funny thing is though that many philosophical Taoists also consider themselves Buddhists. I guess the philosophy wasn't enough so they added the religion. I think that this is still a common practice on Mainland China.

 

Be well!

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

I suggest reading this thread on the Taoist conception of Hell and its historical origins.

 

http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showto...;hl=taoist+hell

 

 

Also, the land of the immortals, Peng Lai, and several other heavenly realms can be found in references from the most ancient Taoist texts available. See the Lieh Tzu, sections of Chuang Tzu, the Huinan Masters, and the Songs of Chu. All of these texts are from the Warring States period and are not later "additions" by some outside group of religious Taoists. Granted, in the early texts, they do not make a strong distinction between the dream state and the afterlife/other world, but then Chuang Tzu famously put into question the relationship between waking life and dreaming (in the butterfly dream), so it is still a valid and important line of spiritual inquiry.

 

For the ancient pre-Taoists (Taoism did not exist until the Han dynasty) the question of dogmatic belief did not play in at all. It was simply important to question and explore these things for oneself through meditation, dreams, astral projection, visions, and other mystical means. To explore and to wear down any artificial boundaries that we put upon ourselves through self-limiting and ultimately relativistic beliefs.

[Monkeyman]

I do not hold to the concept of an afterlife as do the Buddhists and Christians. I do know that many religious Taoist do though.

 

I doubt that one will ever find concensus with this subject. Funny thing is though that many philosophical Taoists also consider themselves Buddhists. I guess the philosophy wasn't enough so they added the religion. I think that this is still a common practice on Mainland China.

 

Be well!

 

 

 

yeah, reading some of these forum threads, i started to wonder if this wasn`t a buddhist forum.

[Monkeyman]

I suggest reading this thread on the Taoist conception of Hell and its historical origins.

 

http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showto...;hl=taoist+hell

Also, the land of the immortals, Peng Lai, and several other heavenly realms can be found in references from the most ancient Taoist texts available. See the Lieh Tzu, sections of Chuang Tzu, the Huinan Masters, and the Songs of Chu. All of these texts are from the Warring States period and are not later "additions" by some outside group of religious Taoists. Granted, in the early texts, they do not make a strong distinction between the dream state and the afterlife/other world, but then Chuang Tzu famously put into question the relationship between waking life and dreaming (in the butterfly dream), so it is still a valid and important line of spiritual inquiry.

 

For the ancient pre-Taoists (Taoism did not exist until the Han dynasty) the question of dogmatic belief did not play in at all. It was simply important to question and explore these things for oneself through meditation, dreams, astral projection, visions, and other mystical means. To explore and to wear down any artificial boundaries that we put upon ourselves through self-limiting and ultimately relativistic beliefs.

 

 

tnx . great stuff. it raises all kinds of questions for me. i like that.

 

however there is one basic question that has always bothered me with ancient texts. how do people know what these ancient characters mean in order to translate into modern language. is there some kind of dictionary, a standard? and if so, who wrote it and where did he/she get this knowledge. these characters are not in use today and haven`t been for generations right? although serious study might give a reasonably accurate explanation, there`s no way of knowing for sure i think.

maybe the meaning of these characters got passed down from generation to generation, but then the meaning of these characters must surely have been influenced by personal insights and beliefs.

and then ofcourse there`s the problem of somehow translating and explaining modern chinese language and concepts into something westerners like me can understand, but that one is solvable i think.

you seem like the right person to ask this question. *bows in respect*

[Spirit Ape]

There is a Taoist book called Journey to the underworld or something like that it was free at my temple, it has different levels of hell /hades. It was written for all humans, by a master that went into a trance for so many days and nights and was taken by the rulers of Hades to the different levels to see what happens to the soul in the afterlife. It would make a great horror movie if you ever get to read this book and if its true, look out you all better be careful of what you say, do and your actions, thoughts.

 

Ape

[Marblehead]

yeah, reading some of these forum threads, i started to wonder if this wasn`t a buddhist forum.

 

Hehehe. Yeah, there are a lot of Buddhists here. But still, every now and then we get to talk about Taoist concepts.

 

Be well!

[Ya Mu]

The book Destiny of Souls has an interesting take on this. A lot of the book's information coincides with my experiences which are described in this book.

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

however there is one basic question that has always bothered me with ancient texts. how do people know what these ancient characters mean in order to translate into modern language. is there some kind of dictionary, a standard? and if so, who wrote it and where did he/she get this knowledge. these characters are not in use today and haven`t been for generations right? although serious study might give a reasonably accurate explanation, there`s no way of knowing for sure i think.

maybe the meaning of these characters got passed down from generation to generation, but then the meaning of these characters must surely have been influenced by personal insights and beliefs.

and then of course there`s the problem of somehow translating and explaining modern chinese language and concepts into something westerners like me can understand, but that one is solvable i think.

you seem like the right person to ask this question. *bows in respect*

 

The written Chinese language is a very interesting thing. As I am sure that you know, it is not constructed from phenoms (like our letters). Instead it uses ideographic characters that primarily represent ideas. This means that the spoken language is able to change over time (as languages always do) without the writing having to change significantly. To give you a feel for this in modern times, consider how Cantonese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Mang, and several other languages all use the same set of characters and can all read each others writing, even though they would probably be unable to understand each others speech. It would be as if someone who just spoke Italian could read a French or Spanish book without even being able to tell necessarily that it was written by someone who spoke another language. When we say "the Chinese language," we are really saying, "the whole Sino linguistic family." The reason that we group them together like this, interestingly, is because of the common ground they share with their written language.

 

Similarly, this distinctive feature of the Chinese written language also allows us to go back in time and still be able to read the writings fairly easily. This is greatly aided by the fact that the Chinese, through the influence of the Confucians, all had to read the ancient texts as part of their education and they all had to mimic Classical Chinese grammar and word constructions for all of their writings. This was the sign of an educated man. Therefore, after the ancient period, no one in China wrote like the spoke. This traditional convention was in place right up until just before the cultural revolution, when some people first began playing with alternatives before outlawing the old ways altogether (and "simplifying" the characters).

 

The characters themselves went through several slight changes throughout the millennia, which were primarily stylistic. The Chinese people, again due to the traditionalist Confucian bureaucrats, usually noted the changes and preserved the older texts as is. The biggest single shift occurred during the Qin Dynasty, when the First Emperor executed tens of thousands of Confucians, outlawed and burned all books not having to do with farming or medicine, and standardized the characters over all the different linguistic groups of China. Luckily, this dynasty (which ended the Warring States period) only lasted about 30 years. By the time the Han dynasty was able to form in its place, many (but not most) of the ancient texts were reproduced from memory (they were all written in poetic form, which aided memorization). We have also since uncovered pre-Qin dynasty texts in tombs to compare against (see the Muwangdi scrolls among others).

 

Some ancient characters have fallen out of use, some have come to mean different things, and some have stood completely unchanged. The study of this is actually a huge academic field. I have several Classical Chinese dictionaries on my bookshelf, in fact. But it has not changed so much that I could not pick up a modern dictionary and translate most of the Tao Te Ching or the Annals of Confucius (as long as I knew the very basic grammar rules). The biggest problem that you will encounter is typically in specialized terminology. For instance, "What does virtue mean in the Tao Te Ching, because it seems to be different from the way Confucius uses the word." But this is more of an interpretation question than a translation one. Chuang Tzu is quiet a bit harder than most of the other ancient texts, because he would make up his own words and deliberately try to use language to make you realize that you cannot trust language.

 

 

The spoken Chinese language has gone through a large number of changes over the centuries, and it is very difficult to academically reconstruct what it might have sounded like. There have been attempts, and most scholars agree that it would have been closer to Cantonese (with fewer tones) than Mandarin. A lot of the work to reconstruct the language, interestingly is done by first looking at the modern reading of the characters and then looking at the rhyming schemes of ancient texts (since the majority of the classic texts were written as poetry). This has yielded so-so results, but we cannot know for sure.

 

 

___________________________________________________________________________________

 

I hope that wasn't information overload.

[Monkeyman]

The written Chinese language is a very interesting thing. As I am sure that you know, it is not constructed from phenoms (like our letters). Instead it uses ideographic characters that primarily represent ideas. This means that the spoken language is able to change over time (as languages always do) without the writing having to change significantly. To give you a feel for this in modern times, consider how Cantonese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Mang, and several other languages all use the same set of characters and can all read each others writing, even though they would probably be unable to understand each others speech. It would be as if someone who just spoke Italian could read a French or Spanish book without even being able to tell necessarily that it was written by someone who spoke another language. When we say "the Chinese language," we are really saying, "the whole Sino linguistic family." The reason that we group them together like this, interestingly, is because of the common ground they share with their written language.

 

Similarly, this distinctive feature of the Chinese written language also allows us to go back in time and still be able to read the writings fairly easily. This is greatly aided by the fact that the Chinese, through the influence of the Confucians, all had to read the ancient texts as part of their education and they all had to mimic Classical Chinese grammar and word constructions for all of their writings. This was the sign of an educated man. Therefore, after the ancient period, no one in China wrote like the spoke. This traditional convention was in place right up until just before the cultural revolution, when some people first began playing with alternatives before outlawing the old ways altogether (and "simplifying" the characters).

 

The characters themselves went through several slight changes throughout the millennia, which were primarily stylistic. The Chinese people, again due to the traditionalist Confucian bureaucrats, usually noted the changes and preserved the older texts as is. The biggest single shift occurred during the Qin Dynasty, when the First Emperor executed tens of thousands of Confucians, outlawed and burned all books not having to do with farming or medicine, and standardized the characters over all the different linguistic groups of China. Luckily, this dynasty (which ended the Warring States period) only lasted about 30 years. By the time the Han dynasty was able to form in its place, many (but not most) of the ancient texts were reproduced from memory (they were all written in poetic form, which aided memorization). We have also since uncovered pre-Qin dynasty texts in tombs to compare against (see the Muwangdi scrolls among others).

 

Some ancient characters have fallen out of use, some have come to mean different things, and some have stood completely unchanged. The study of this is actually a huge academic field. I have several Classical Chinese dictionaries on my bookshelf, in fact. But it has not changed so much that I could not pick up a modern dictionary and translate most of the Tao Te Ching or the Annals of Confucius (as long as I knew the very basic grammar rules). The biggest problem that you will encounter is typically in specialized terminology. For instance, "What does virtue mean in the Tao Te Ching, because it seems to be different from the way Confucius uses the word." But this is more of an interpretation question than a translation one. Chuang Tzu is quiet a bit harder than most of the other ancient texts, because he would make up his own words and deliberately try to use language to make you realize that you cannot trust language.

The spoken Chinese language has gone through a large number of changes over the centuries, and it is very difficult to academically reconstruct what it might have sounded like. There have been attempts, and most scholars agree that it would have been closer to Cantonese (with fewer tones) than Mandarin. A lot of the work to reconstruct the language, interestingly is done by first looking at the modern reading of the characters and then looking at the rhyming schemes of ancient texts (since the majority of the classic texts were written as poetry). This has yielded so-so results, but we cannot know for sure.

___________________________________________________________________________________

 

I hope that wasn't information overload.

 

No overload, very clarifying. Thanks a lot for the free lecture! One problem solved for me.

Now i`m gonna tackle the problem of interpretation of specialized terminology. That will set me back a few decennia.(Do i smell another forum topic?)

 

 

@ all

Tnx for the tips guys!

[innerspace_cadet]

i believe there is no real consensus. so what do you think happens when you die? i have no idea.

maybe the accomplished immortals on this forum can shed some light , since they can travel back and forth.

 

What do I think happens when I die? I have no idea either. So, what do you think happens when you live? By this I mean living life to its very fullest. By "living life to its very fullest" I mean living consciously, not wasting a single moment of your existence, being present for every moment. Thinking for yourself. If I lived my life to the outer bounds of what is possible for me, then I don't have to worry about what happens after I die. If you can experience heaven on earth, heaven in your own mind, why wait for the afterlife? Trust me, I haven't mastered living a full life either, but I focus on that more than speculating what happens after I expire.

 

Who really cares about consensus anyway? The consensus used to be that the earth was flat, and that the earth was the center of the universe. I asked this same question on this same forum about the "Taoist" take on the afterlife, but I think even asking the question was a waste of time. I don't need someone to spoon feed me an "answer" because I need to find my own answers.

[Walker]

There is a Taoist book called Journey to the underworld or something like that it was free at my temple, it has different levels of hell /hades. It was written for all humans, by a master that went into a trance for so many days and nights and was taken by the rulers of Hades to the different levels to see what happens to the soul in the afterlife. It would make a great horror movie if you ever get to read this book and if its true, look out you all better be careful of what you say, do and your actions, thoughts.

 

Ape

 

Free to read online here.

[Spirit Ape]

Thats it!!!

 

Makes HELL RAISER look like a picnic!!

 

Cheers

Ape

[Monkeyman]

What do I think happens when I die? I have no idea either. So, what do you think happens when you live? By this I mean living life to its very fullest. By "living life to its very fullest" I mean living consciously, not wasting a single moment of your existence, being present for every moment. Thinking for yourself. If I lived my life to the outer bounds of what is possible for me, then I don't have to worry about what happens after I die. If you can experience heaven on earth, heaven in your own mind, why wait for the afterlife? Trust me, I haven't mastered living a full life either, but I focus on that more than speculating what happens after I expire.

 

Who really cares about consensus anyway? The consensus used to be that the earth was flat, and that the earth was the center of the universe. I asked this same question on this same forum about the "Taoist" take on the afterlife, but I think even asking the question was a waste of time. I don't need someone to spoon feed me an "answer" because I need to find my own answers.

 

That`s good advice. I agree that it`s better to focus on the things you can do right now, than worrying about the afterlife. Carpe diem! Living fully, as you put it, will probably make you a happy man (or woman) i think. Maybe content is a better word. I mean that`s what all the teacher teach and that`s what we all are looking for, and that`s probably why we are here on this forum.

And yes, ofcourse the only true knowledge is the one that you can experience for yourself.

However, one needs to be curious about things he doesn`t know in order to start to understand them. And it is this curiosity that has lead me to this question. Is that wrong? I don`t think so.

Therefore it seems to me that you asked the same question for a different reason.

Furthermore, you would be foolish to assume that I am a person who takes any knowledge for granted. If that would be the case, I would probably be more interested in Christianity or Islam or something (although I think there are some parts within these religions which are very much worth exploring)

I think the most fascinating thing about Daoism is the possibility to experience firsthand the theories via meditations and other methods and therefore gain substantial knowledge. Like in this case, with proper training and guidance I think it`s possible for every person to go and see what the afterlife is all about. I think it`s very interesting to hear what these people have to say about it.

So to conclude, i disagree with you. This question is actually not a waste of time.