TAOISM  an introduction            Taoism was seen as responses to the philosophical, religious, and physical conditions of life two and a half millennia ago in China.  Although Confucianism was also a major philosophical movement at that time, the two religions weren't alike.  Confucianism dealt with using man to explain conditions of nature while Taoism answered the questions that were influenced nature.
 
        Taoism generally dates back to about B.C. to a great philosopher named Lao Tzu.  In Lao Tzu's view, things were said to create "unnatural" actions by shaping desires.  The process of learning the names in the doctrine of wu wei, helped one to make distinctions between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, high and low, and "being" and "non-being", therefore shaping desires.  To abandon knowledge was to abandon names, differences, feelings, taste, and desire.  That way it results into a spontaneous behavior.  He also taught that all straining, all striving are not only vain but it lacks value.  One should attempt to do nothing and go with the flow.  But many people ask 'how do you go with the flow?'  Lao Tzu explains that "it means not to literally do nothing, but to discern and follow the natural forces to follow and shape the flow of the events and not to pit oneself against the natural order of things."  Most important is to be casual in ones action. Next Page     By Minely and Seary Vue