rsl12

Storm: I don't think you could call it a religion you can practice. I often say i'm taoist because it puts a nice label on a type of belief/philosophy. But the actual evolution of Taoism from the princples of Tao te Ching is long and branched. Arts, including Tai Chi (the martial arts), I Ching (the divination method), Feng Shui (the furniture arrangement art) can all be considered as being derived from Taoism, and though there are schools for these disciplines, I don't think there has ever in history been a Taoism church, or some sort of social organization based solely on Taoism beliefs. Random philosophers along the way have commented on the original taoist text (Tao te Ching) but, due to the ambiguous nature of that work, it's hard to see how Taoism could ever be unified into one set of dogma, or even a few branches.

The crux of Taoism is very similar to existentialism; that is, existence precedes essence. This is in contrast to Plato's idea that for any given object, say, a chair, one can imagine an idealized form of it, the perfect chair. Plato believed that, by analogy, one can imagine a perfect person, and that perfect person is the being we should all aspire to be. In Taoism and existentialism, this idea of an ideal is abolished and you're left with only what exists around us, without thinking of this ideal plane and, by extension, without having to depend on God (who would exist in the ideal plane) for us to have meaning in our life. Whether or not God exists is immaterial in both existentialism and Taoism--what is important is what we are and what our environment is.

Existentialism and Taoism differ, I think, most fundamentally in that existentialism has a sort of despair to it, whereas taoism is optimistic about the situation. The most popular existentialist philosophers tend to emphasize the loneliness of people, due to their realization of their isolated situations, away from God and from meaning. On the other hand, Taoism finds that the meaning is the existence, that being part of the environment around you, which is all you have, makes you part of it and that is the best you can do.

I think it's possible a person could hold Taoist beliefs along with the principles of other religions. However, I think one of the most fundamental beliefs in Taoism is that your actions should be performed because they are right, and not because there is some expectation of a reward from God, or because God says such and such is right. In other words, there ought to be a logic apart from God's scriptures, inherent in nature and the universe, intimately known to us, that guides the way we live. If that can be reconciled with the religion of your choice, then all the more power to you.

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