Chapter 9: Daoism "The Way of Flourishing"

The Way of Flourishing

• ==Daodejing== “Scripture on the Way and its Virtue”: is the most influential text in Daoist history and one of the world’s most frequently translated books, traditionally attributed to Laozi and also called the Laozi

  • On the way to the temple complex on Crane Call Mountain (Heming Shan) on the sides of the arch are imprinted the first 2 lines of Daodejing:
  • “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name”

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Our Story

• Before heaven and earth, there was only the silent and shapeless, unknowable and unnamable ==Dao==: the “Way” as primordial soup and fertile chaos, dark, wet, and deep

  • ==Dao== is the ultimate reality and its manifestations in everyday life, the preexisting source of everything in the cosmos, and the process through which everything in it is transformed

• Out of this void, the One spontaneously emerged, breathing ==qi== (“vital energy”) into being

• The One generated the Two. the vital energy of heaven descended and the vital energy of earth ascended

• The competing yet complementary principles of sunny ==Ying== and shady ==Yang== began to interact, producing patterns that went on to generate the four seasons, the eight cardinal directions, and the ten thousand things, which is to say everything in the universe, human beings included

  • ==Ying and Yang== are the ancient Chinese concept in which two complementary principles interact with one another to create individual, societal, and cosmic change

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Daoism in Today’s World

• In China, Daoism is one of the five religions recognized and regulated by the Communist government (Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and Buddhism are the other four)

• Stands alongside Confucianism and Buddhism as one of China’s ==Three Teachings==

  • According to a widely circulated maxim, they are Confucians on the weekdays, Daoists on the weekends, and Buddhists when they die

• Daoism flourishes in less institutionalized forms, through a variety of popular practices, including tai chi (taiji quan) and qigong, that are linked in some way to the Daoist tradition

  • ==Tai Chi== (taiji quan) is a Chinese martial art that features slow, circular movements. Though widely associated with Daoism, it is a broader Chinese practice
  • ==Qigong== “wind and water” was initially a method for determining the best placement of a grave, this method is now used to find sites for homes and to place objects inside homes

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Two Daoist Schools

• There are 2 main branches of Daoism in China: ==Orthodoxy Unity== (Zhengyi), a tradition of householders (as opposed to monastics) that dates to the second century, and ==Complete Perfection== (Quanzhen), a monastic tradition that dates to the 12th century

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Daoism 101

• The term Daoism is derived from the concept: the Dao

  • The term means “path” or “way”; therefore, Daoism is the Way of the Way. this metaphor suggests both movement and change, taking us from one place to another, one state to another, one identity to another

• Dao is understood as the unchanging reality behind our changing world, and Daoists assume that change is inescapable. The question is how to live with change, how to work with it, and how to find some sort of equilibrium along the way

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Daoism at a Glance

• ==Problem==: lifelessness
• ==Solution==: flourishing
• ==Techniques==: various methods designed to allow the practitioner to revert to the Dao, including meditation, visualization, internal alchemy, healthful eating, breathing exercises, and bureaucratic rituals
• ==Exemplars==: sages, immortals, and Perfected Persons

Daoism is a tradition in which practitioners seek long life and human flourishing through various techniques designed to align human beings with the Dao

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