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Originally Posted by thankyousir
The Taoist version of morality, at least from how I see it, is: "If you want to be one with the Tao, accept where life takes you and do what your heart (the internal Tao) tells you. If you don't want to do that you don't have to, it is also a part of the way of things for you to not be "one with the Tao". the Taoist is content even with this.
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Well, first of all, I'm not sure I'd call that Taoist
morality, per se. The space of Taoism is all-encompassing and all-accepting. In my opinion, it's not quite accurate to call Taoism a religion, and comparing it with Christianity is a little bit unfair.
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Originally Posted by thankyousir
The Christian version of morality is "love your neighbor as yourself. and love God with all of your heart and mind. which means following all of the commandments. Try to be perfect even though there is no possible way for you to even try to be perfect, so drive yourself crazy trying to be perfect"
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Pretty sure Jesus never said that last part. In fact he never said "following all of the commandments". What Jesus actually said was: Love God with your whole heart, and love your neighbor as yourself, and all the rest will flow from that.
It's like Rabbi Hillel's famous statement on the essence of Judiasm, "That which is hateful to you, do not do it unto your fellow man. That is the entirety of the Torah; the rest is just commentary."
I've found that the closer you get to the source document of any religion (and you're holding one in your hand with the
Tao Te Ching) the simpler and more, well, Tao-like the message gets. Jesus was way Taoist. Including tearing up the Temple. If you read some of the Taoist parables and stories, that sort of thing happened a lot. If the WWJD crowd actually ever READ the bible, they'd be hanging with harlots and publicans a whole lot more than they do. But they depend on the church-interpreted version of Jesus with the glowing long hair and the beatific smile and the lambies and babies around him.
On a side note, I was watching one of Michael Palin's BBC travel shows yesterday, and he was in a Zen monastery in southern Japan and was going to join them for a meditation session. He asked the master of the monastery, "You and your monks sit for 18 hours a day every day. What am I going to get from meditating for such a short time?" The monk said, "You?" Pailn said, "Yes, me." The monk said, "Don't ask me. That's your problem." It was like watching a zen teaching story happen right there on TV. Very cool.