Hacker News Reader

Comment by bowsamic | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

> I just don't get what westerners get out of reading the Tao Te Ching.

I really don't understand how ethnicity or provenance has anything to do with this. This is a philosophy book from more than 2000 years ago, the person(s) that wrote it is as different to today's Chinese as to westerners or anyone else. It just talks about the human condition and as such anyone can relate to it.

And about the appeal of Daoism versus, for example, Buddhism I would refer to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters. Laozi just smiles, Daoist writings have a kind of humor and lightheartedness to them that make them much more appealing to me. I don't concern myself with enlightenment, I just want to smile.

The Tao Te Ching(or at least parts of it) speaks from the place of truth, independent of doctrine or creed. Independent of Taoism, ultimately. As such it will always find appeal across cultures.

  The great Tao is broad and plain
  But people like the side paths

Does a long history of Taoism and all the traditions and beliefs that arise around it make it easier to discern the Tao?

Taoism explained by a Buddhist:

https://youtu.be/Ql4wGGTDapA?si=v7C0s1LYPQ08CddJ

The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao. :)

It's a very accessible exploration of attachment and offers some great insights on things like ego, virtue and leadership.

EDIT: Deleted as can no longer reply due to being blocked by /u/dang

I found it to be extremely woo until I sat down for many weeks with an advaita Vedanta tutor. Revisiting the Tao after spending some time with the crest jewel of discrimination and some other texts convinced me it could be mediated on. What it holds I could not understand before some guidance, but I have to accept others may be more ready to discover the truth hidden in there. To me still the Tao merits meditation though my approach is taking short passages at a time (perhaps like Buddhists mediating on Koans? I don't know the practice so perhaps I'm way off base here)

Totally agree. Speaking from the western perspective, it's short and poetic, and it introduces concepts that people aren't familiar with in a brief and accessible way. I don't think anyone in the west is becoming a Taoist in any meaningful sense because of it.

EDIT: Deleted as can no longer reply due to being blocked by /u/dang

It loosens the grip of the Western narrative re: destiny, individualism, control, rat race, etc. Similar to Stoicism in its initial incarnations but with another perspective that IMO has more universality.

Your dismissive tone is curious because the same kind of dismissal can be made of the absurd and outlandish belief systems and mythologies of Mahayana. "Perfected wisdom" is hard to imagine when basing it on stories of stories of myths of god-like beings.

EDIT: Deleted as can no longer reply due to being blocked by /u/dang

Why don't you try it out for yourself and let us know. You seem to worry about other people's interests more than usual.

I get the pragmatism coming from a Buddhist, but not everything can or indeed needs to be brought down into a "path". I'm sure you are fully aware of this.

Now I am fascinated by your consternations. Whatever the answer, whatever people get out of it. What's it to you?

I dunno, what do you do with it?

That's what I just asked.

I'm pretty curious what got deleted. This thread seems to be some argument between Tao and Buddhism? That seems like a silly argument to have. There are a lot of branches of Buddhism, some are similar to Tao, some far apart. Just like any religions. If you zoom in too close they seem very different, if you zoom far out they start to look similar.

They were asking, as a Mahayana Buddhist, what westerners get out of reading the daodeing. Implying that it is a a somewhat pointless philosophy that does not provide a path to follow (comparing it to nihilism). Also pointing out the different currents (philosophical daoism vs religious/magical daoism) as you mentioned, which most westerners are not aware of.

A somewhat out of place critique coming from a lack of understanding IMO.

Ah got it. Was pretty curious, since as religious conflicts go (or disagreements), I thought buddhism and taoism were pretty far down the list of groups that were antagonistic.

This isn't a wrong view in an absolute sense (Taoism and Buddhism I suppose "agree more" than say, Taoism and Baha'i - though as soon as you have diverging metaphysics "distance" becomes very hard to characterize). But, it's heavily colored by the fact that one of the earlier popularizers of Buddhism in the English language was also an advocate of Zen as an ideological evolution of Taoism; so he is often selective in how he portrays both leaving many in the West with a view that these ideologies are much closer than have been historically or are in practice today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._T._Suzuki

Reply on news.ycombinator.com