Connection between tao and christianity

[SirPalomides]

My apologies for my uncalled-for snippiness.

 

I think if the document were genuine, someone by now would be able to produce a copy other than Robert Ware's 17th century English version.

[Taomeow]

5 minutes ago, SirPalomides said:

My apologies for my uncalled-for snippiness.

 

I think if the document were genuine, someone by now would be able to produce a copy other than Robert Ware's 17th century English version.

 

No worries.  

 

As for someone producing a copy later than the 17th century, what about Dr. Alberto Rivera in 1967?  Also fake?  ??     

[SirPalomides]

Dr. Alberto Rivera? The guy who claims the Catholic Church invented Islam, communism, and Nazism? Who appears prominently in several Chick Tracts? That Dr. Alberto Rivera?

[Taomeow]

27 minutes ago, SirPalomides said:

Dr. Alberto Rivera? The guy who claims the Catholic Church invented Islam, communism, and Nazism? Who appears prominently in several Chick Tracts? That Dr. Alberto Rivera?

 

I don't know what Chick Tracts are.  The rest I've heard too, but not from him.  "Heard" is an understatement.

 

I propose dropping the subject.

[rideforever]

On 10/12/2019 at 12:36 PM, Apech said:

In terms of comparing the systems - they are of course very different.  One is determinedly theistic while the other seems to see the absolute as a non-personal natural energy or way.  So to start with there is the 'God problem' to deal with.  They are also ethically very different - not that you would end up behaving that differently perhaps - but more that one suggests a moral plan handed down as God's will - and the other that morality only arises because immorality exists (to paraphrase) - two views which seem completely at odds.  All this points to big difficulties.

 

Devotion

"Oh unfathomable source of 10,000 things".
"Our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name."

 

Salvation or Destruction
Heaven and Earth are impartial;
They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The wise are impartial;
They see the people as straw dogs.

 

"Wide is the gate that leads to destruction and most find it, narrow is the gate and straight the road that leads to life and few find it, enter through the narrow gate."

 

Loving Others
Loving all men and ruling the country,
Can you be without cleverness?
Opening and closing the gates of heaven,
Can you play the role of woman?
Understanding and being open to all things,

... + Accept disgrace willingly

 

"Love your neighbour as yourself"

"If a man slaps on one cheek turn the other cheek to him"

 

The Weak Overcomes the Strong

TTC : The weak can overcome the strong;
JC : "The meek will inherit the earth"

 

Between Excess and Deficiency

Better to stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of heaven.

 

Parable of the Sower (The way things grow and don't grow)

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

 

From Seeds to Yields

The sage never tries to store things up.
The more he does for others, the more he has.
The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.

 

The Parable of the Talents (I won't paste it here) ... is about not doing too much or too little.  Just in the middle.  Too little is done because of fear or false asceticism ... but without a yield it is wasted.  Too much leads to squandering and indulgence.  But in the middle the seed is planted grows and yields fruit.  Do not store things up.

 

On Frauds and Hippocrites

Matthew 23, Jesus talks about the fraudulent Rabbis : 

They do everything to be seen by people. They increase the size of their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments.

 

TTC

Therefore the sage works without recognition.
He achieves what has to be done without dwelling on it.
He does not try to show his knowledge.

 

In looking at these two, can you read these things as if for the first time?
There are many similarities but also differences; in my opinion the differences relate to the particular aspects they wish to emphasise.  The One is vast, you cannot learn everything at once.  Training methods work on certain areas.  Chinese culture emphasises things different to the Middle Eastern cultures.

 

Jesus seems more personal, more of this earthly world, farmers and crops.  The Tao more abstract.  Jesus more active, the Tao more surrendering.. ... but that is only a surface reading, because both poles are required ... earth and heaven.  The active and passive.  Both need to be worked on.

Reading from one to the other is very informative and helps to slew off the accumulated dumb ideas attached to these tradition, it is very good.  Because only the truth counts.

 

Jesus says that before anything love God with all your heart might and soul. 

Laozi says stay close to the Tao.

 

Edited December 11, 2019 by rideforever

[rideforever]

And then, there was silence.
It must be Christmas ... 

Merry Christmas to you all.

[Apech]

57 minutes ago, rideforever said:

And then, there was silence.
It must be Christmas ... 

Merry Christmas to you all.

 

..and a Happy Dao Year.

 

[gendao]

On 12/10/2019 at 12:22 AM, Walker said:

Enough with the anti-Christian bigotry!

 

There are indeed monsters within Christianity. With your psychological make-up, if power is ever placed in your hands, you will become terrifyingly like them!

 

Read what Taomeow just said to you 100 times until it seeps into your bones!

Quote

Christian prophet: Trump’s critics are so full of demons ‘they’re not even human anymore’

During an appearance on the The MC Files webcast, pro-Trump conspiracy theorist and and Christian “prophet,” Mark Taylor, claimed that people who are opposed to President Trump are possessed by demons.

Speaking to host Chris McDonald, Taylor said that people will be “astonished” when they find out what’s driving the impeachment effort against Trump.

“The demons are manifesting in them,” Taylor said in a video clip flagged by Right Wing Watch. “This is what’s happening, and this is why they are acting the way they are. They are being choked out, so to speak. It’s almost like the oxygen to these spirits is being cut off, so they’re manifesting in any way possible, trying to survive.”

According to Taylor, some of “these people” aren’t “even hardly human.”

“You’re going to find out some of these people are to the point where they’re not even human anymore, they have been handed over to themselves, they’ve been handed over to the enemy to the point [where they’re] just not even human.”

 

Pardon me, is that you, Mark?

 

In all seriousness though, I am not cherry-picking rogue Christians...but CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ITSELF.  The rogue ones are actually the more "evolved" ones...while the Fundys are the most f'd up.  Which has been proven ad infinitum in just this thread alone. 

 

That being said, that alleged Jesuit Oath does sound like sensationalized fake news...and also while Jesuit history is in fact a lot of Catholic colonialism and numerous suspected clandestine ops...I still don't see mass slaughters as ordained in that version (correct me if I'm wrong).

Quote

The objectives of the reductions were to organize and exploit the labour of the native indigenous inhabitants while also imparting Christianity and European culture.

  

But even without any extreme "conspiracy theories," their conventional history and mission is still in lockstep with the Enlilite/Christian colonialist theft/destruction of Mother Earth...and diametrically opposed to aborigines descended from Pleiadians (as opposed to just the Anunnaki).

Quote

Cherokee legends teach that Native Americans originated long ago in the Pleiades, and assert that indigenous people are on Earth as “star seeds,” with a mission of bringing light and knowledge. The Navajo call the Pleiadian star cluster the “Sparkling Suns,” and the Iroquois petition the constellation for happiness. The Lakota/Dakota people say their ancestors are from the Pleiades.

On 12/6/2019 at 2:12 PM, SirPalomides said:

Super edgy take, bro. Take it to a Christian forum, they'll be really impressed.

BTW, I actually tried searching for a few Christian forums to spread the gospell...

 

It was an exercise in futility.  The top ones are all the definitions of cults - extremely insular, restrictive, intolerant, heavily modded with thought police, and closed to outsider input.

Quote

The forums in the Christian Congregations category are now open only to Christian members.

In Worthy Christian Forums, you basically get blocked from posting once you get labeled a nonbeliever.

 

This is in stark contrast to non-Christian forums like this one, or Buddhist forums, which generally have generic TOS and welcome all traditions, if anything...

 

This is not cool.  While many spiritualities are playing nice and exercising tolerance, Christianity is nonreciprocally treating all others like the Plague.  It's like everyone else is playing by the rules..while Christians are flagrantly suckerpunching with low blows.

Edited February 10, 2020 by gendao

[Maddie]

What I find kind of interesting and baffling at the same time is while I share a lot of the hesitancies about Christianity already mentioned in this thread by many, but in my experimentation with chanting I have tried the Catholic rosary and to my surprise it did seem to have an effect.

[Maddie]

I think one thing that would help when it comes to trying to understand the Bible is to remember it's not one book written by one author but it's actually more like a library avascollection of books with many authors spanning of time frame of roughly a thousand years at least.

 So yeah in the pentateuch there is some very cruel and primitive stuff which isn't surprising for a bronze age culture.

 On the other hand you have some of the prophets like Isaiah that in my opinion tend to anthropomorphise the effects of collective karma into a personal judgment from a personal deity. I might not think that they got all the details right but at least they were picking up on the causes and effects of collective societal actions.

 Then you fast-forward to the New testament and you have Jesus saying a lot of things that sound much more like the Buddha and Lao Tze than the bronze age era pentateuch.

 I just think it gets more complicated when you look up the Bible as one entity as opposed to a collection of very different sources.

[Maddie]

With the quarantine as I've been scrolling through YouTube on Sunday mornings I noticed there are a lot of church services live so being the curious person I am I clicked on a few to try to see if I could make any sense of it, but try as I may I come away with the impression basically no matter which service I listen to that God is a very angry being and his son is trying desperately to calm him down, and that God's followers kind of have a collective Stockholm syndrome or even though they're threatened with hell if they don't do what he wants or believe in him they praise him anyway.

 Now my apologies in advance to any Christians who I would say that I'm not understanding this correctly and all I would have to say is if I'm not then please correct me where I'm wrong but I have tried very hard to understand this for an extended. Of time and tried to approach it with an open mind but this is still what I consistently come away with.

[flowing hands]

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by flowing hands

[doc benway]

On 4/19/2020 at 1:41 PM, dmattwads said:

With the quarantine as I've been scrolling through YouTube on Sunday mornings I noticed there are a lot of church services live so being the curious person I am I clicked on a few to try to see if I could make any sense of it, but try as I may I come away with the impression basically no matter which service I listen to that God is a very angry being and his son is trying desperately to calm him down, and that God's followers kind of have a collective Stockholm syndrome or even though they're threatened with hell if they don't do what he wants or believe in him they praise him anyway.

 Now my apologies in advance to any Christians who I would say that I'm not understanding this correctly and all I would have to say is if I'm not then please correct me where I'm wrong but I have tried very hard to understand this for an extended. Of time and tried to approach it with an open mind but this is still what I consistently come away with.

 

I think there is a lot of beauty and wisdom in the teachings of Jesus.

Christianity, especially in America, seems to have little or no connection to those teachings.

It's all about tribalism and a particular political agenda.

God for them now has pockets stuffed with cash and a gun in each hand.

It's unfortunate.

 

One of my favorite wisdom teachers was a Jesuit named Fr. Anthony Demello.

His teachings were rooted in Eastern wisdom as he was Indian, and he was able to express and apply Christian teachings and principles masterfully.

Here is a little parable of his that touches on this point:

 

A long time ago, there was a man who invented the art of making fire. He took his tools and visited a tribe in the north, where the climate was bitter cold. The man taught the people how to make fire. And the people were spellbound. He showed them many uses for fire -they could cook, keep themselves warm, keep predators at bay, dance by firelight. So they built fire and were very grateful. But before they could express their gratitude, the man disappeared, because he wasn't concerned with recognition or gratitude. He was concerned only with their well-being.

The fire-making man visited a different tribe, and began to teach the art of making fire. Like the first tribe, this tribe was mesmerized. But the tribe members' passion unnerved the tribe priests. It didn't take long for the priests to notice that the fire-making man drew large crowds, and the priests worried about lost influence and power. Because of their fear, the priests determined to kill the fire-making man. Worried that the tribe people might revolt, the priests devised a clever plan.

Can you guess what they did? The priests made a portrait of the fire-making man, and displayed it on the main altar of the temple. The instruments for making fire were placed in front of the portrait, and the people were taught to revere the portrait and to pay reverence to the instruments of fire. The veneration and the worship went on for centuries.

But there was no more fire.