TAOISM

• Taoism currently has about 20 million followers, and is primarily centered in China. But Yin/Yang far older in Chinese thought than Taoist / Confucian schools.

• Contemporary Taoism• Popular and Philosophical

Taoism• The pill of immortality.• Divination• Acupuncture• Herbalism• Holistic medicine• Meditation • Martial arts• Tea Art• Chinese gardening...

• Mysticism and the Limits• Mysticism in the ‘coincidence of

opposites’ • Cosmogony in the Tao Te Ching

• Taoism and ethics• Western science and Eastern

mysticism?• Zhuangzi and the Butterfly• Y/Y and the Five Elements

Creedal statement of contemporary Taoism:

"We believe in the formless and eternal Tao, and we recognize all personified deities as being mere human constructs. We reject hatred, intolerance, and unnecessary violence, and embrace harmony, love and learning, as we are taught by Nature. We place our trust and our lives in the Tao, that we may live in peace and balance with the Universe, both in this mortal life and beyond.” --Creed of the Western Reform Taoist Congregation

• Laozi and Zhuangzi are both figures of the “axial age” (800-200 BCE), along with Confucius, Buddha, and Greek progenitors of philosophy.

• Laozi is held to be the author of the Tao de Ching;

• Zhuangzi is author of the Zhuangzi.

Laozi (Lao Tze) the “Old Master” on his water buffalo

• Whether he existed or whether the Tao te Ching is a composite work is contested.

• But approximately a contemporary of Confucius and of Greek pre-Socratic philosophers.

• Taoist symbol. "It represents the balance of opposites in the universe. When they are equally present, all is calm. When one is outweighed by the other, there is confusion and disarray."