Daoism

• Living in harmony with Dao
  • Dao = the way
  • Dao, as described by daoism itself, = the way of Nature; ultimate source/principle of order in the universe
    • An unseen force; less like a God, more like an energy
    • The origin of the universe
• Story of Lao Tzu, “founder” of daoism
  • Born in 604 BCE after being conceived by a shooting star
  • Born 82 years old → very wise
  • Age is a mark of wisdom in China
  • Sought out during his time for his wisdom
  • Worked as a government archivist
  • Eventually got frustrated with corruption → left
    • Came across Han-Ku Pass, told to write down his teachings:
• Tao Te Ching = foundation of daoism text, supposedly written by Lao Tzu
  • Brief to read, hard to dissect
  • Filled with many paradoxes
  • Name = “book of the way”
  • Helps with te → virtue acquired by being harmonious with dao
• Chuang Tzu, “second founder” of daoism, 369-286 BCE
  • Wrote the text Chuang Tzu → filled with stories and lessons
  • Mainly about relativity of different things
• Balance of yin and yang = daoism
  • Yin = negative, feminine, dark, weak, passive
  • Yang = positive, masculine, light, strong, active
  • Need both for balance
  • Advocates more of a need for yin since yang is found more often in sages (since they were all male)
  • One cannot exist without the other
• Depicts death as one’s return back to dao
• Sage = master of daoism; sees the basic foundation/unity of nature, not distracted by the complications of it
  • Wuwei = the act of harmony by not doing anything
  • Teaches to embrace the passive side of yin, suppress the active side of yang
  • Requires humility and noncompetition
  • Naturalness = being the way nature intended, not being pressured by social or personal standards
  • Naturalism = resisting the urge to meddle with nature
  • Nonagression

\