Welcome to The Path of Water

This site is dedicated to exploring the Tao and Philosophical Taoism; and how it relates to everyday modern life in the 21st Century. It also includes posts relating to how I feel Taoism can provide insights for dealing with the problems of everyday living.

The process of writing out my thoughts helps me to explore what I believe and why, so these posts will probably develop over time. I hope that you'll find this site interesting and, for those of you new to the Tao and Taoism, I hope that it can provide you with a first step on the path to a rich spiritual life. If you want to post comments relating to a post or the site as a whole I'd be grateful as all feedback is helpful.

Enjoy your visit - In Tao - Woody



Who would follow the Way must go beyond words.
Who would know the world must go beyond names. *

No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. **


Tuesday 14 July 2009

What is Taoism?

What is Taoism - how to explain it to others - is a question that repeatedly arises. How to explain something that can only really be alluded to, implied, or pointed to, rather than explained. I was reading the "See" page of Deng Ming-Dao's book "Everyday Tao" and something in the words spoke to me....

Deng Ming-Dao talks about Taoism being a direct spirituality. Most religions rely on priests acting as intermediaries between "ordinary" people and spiritual experience. Most religions have holy writings that take spiritual experience and try to structure it as a set of rules to be followed and a set of rituals to be performed. Taoism in contrast is about learning to experience the spiritual on an individual, personal basis. It's about trusting that every person is capable experiencing spirituality themselves. All that books such as the Tao Te Ching do is point the way.

So...

"What is Taoism?"

Direct spirituality.



4 comments:

The Rambling Taoist said...

Simply put.

Nadia said...

Thanks for sharing, Taoism is something new for me.

Woody said...

Welcome aboard. I hope you find some things on this blog that are useful for you.

Richard D Shelmerdine said...

Hey Rambling Taoist. Fancy seeing you in here! Love the direction of this blog. I'm following a similar one with on my blog with a
Taoism 30 day experiment where I aim to learn as much about Taoism as possible in 30 days. Isn't it a beautiful book?

 
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