Ancient World Civ

I love Ancient World Civilizations. I love history, world or American.

Our most recent project assigned was to research a world religion and report on it. Not sure if it's a paper or a presentation yet, but I'm in the middle of the notes process.

Anywho, I chose Taoism/Daoism. We're on the ancient China unit in class and the book barely touched on this subject, but I decided to dive deeper into the research. When I told my dad about my religion of choice, he said, "alright, but you should have picked Judeism or something easy. Taoism is hard to understand..." I replied, "Good, I don't want something easy."

The opening words of the Tao Te Ching, or the Taoist bible basically, reads:

"The Way that can be described is not the true Way."
"The Name that can be named is not the constant Name."

It's been open for interpretation as long as the Tao Te Ching has been translated into English. Most philosiphers understand this as preparing the reader for things unteachable. Basically, even limiting the religion to a name, Tao/Dao is dangerous, because it's binding something which is all things to a name.

Taoists believe that we are all made up of stars, just like everything else in the universe. There are no Gods, just the ancestors. Tao practices the heavy influence and worship of ancestors past. Just like a peach tree grows from the earth, we are all just products of the earth also. And our stressors or anger are disrupting the flow of the earth, because there is a natural way in which everything is supposed to work out.

I find the religion to be very influencal. I mean, it's already shaped China for several millenia. Many things have been driven from the ancient religion, like astrology and horoscopes, yoga, many forms of martial arts, and even Pokemon!

If I were to be reborn again I would have definitely picked to grow up in this religion. Why do you think the Chinese live to be so old and wise? It's because of all this meditation, one with the earth, self-healing stuff. Obviously they're doing something right...