As of recent I've quite bored and uninspired towards my daily life so I've been trying to add more things that bring me joy into my day. Things like playing guitar, putting more effort into my meals, appreciating music, going on walks.

But I wonder if this type of joy seeking behavior goes against Taoist philosophy. Is putting focus on what brings happiness drawing away from acceptance? Is it creating to much attachment to an emotional state? It feels nice to be happier but am I going about it the wrong way?

As of recent I've quite bored and uninspired towards my daily life so I've been trying to add more things that bring me joy into my day. Things like playing guitar, putting more effort into my meals, appreciating music, going on walks.

But I wonder if this type of joy seeking behavior goes against Taoist philosophy. Is putting focus on what brings happiness drawing away from acceptance? Is it creating to much attachment to an emotional state? It feels nice to be happier but am I going about it the wrong way?

The Dao doesn’t ask how, does it?

It just flows. Zhuangzi wouldn’t say, “Here’s how to be fluid.” He’d laugh and show you a fish swimming, or a leaf drifting down a river. The moment you ask how, you’re already grasping, and the Dao slips through your fingers.

To become fluid like Zhuangzi is to stop trying to become anything. It’s to laugh at the question, let it dissolve, and simply be.

The Daodejing taught me enough about healthy surrender to get me off my addictions, but I feel like I’ve been working for a long time trying to understand the balance between letting go of resentment and allowing people their free will against setting firm boundaries to protect myself and others. I don’t tend to avoid talking about issues in relationships, but I do tend towards flexing my boundaries in order to smooth things over when the discussion exposes conflicts in core values, and I tend to excuse other people more readily than I would myself. I have a lot of doubt of my perception.

“So people say ‘What’s karma about?’ Well, karma is just the automatic energy consequence of spiritual intention and spiritual decision. Well, every decision you make then affects your calibrated level of consciousness, which is a shorthand way of saying your karma. It starts first as curiosity perhaps, or hearsay. Then they find themselves automatically drawn into spiritual growth and spiritual concepts and the desire to understand them and benefit from them. And they begin to realize as they grow, they’re benefiting the world. That which you are doing is affecting everyone. The whole world benefits from it. We can prove that also with quantum mechanics, you know, the Heisenberg principle, the collapse of the wave function then begins to affect the whole field of consciousness. Every individual who commits themselves to spiritual work is benefiting all of mankind. This is an automatic consequence of his choices and decisions, because he is collapsing the potential into the actual, which is affecting the consciousness of all mankind.”

Not a Taoist but am interested. I tried different philosophies including Yoga, Buddhism, Advaita Vedant.

My practice:-

1.I don't try to observe or control my thoughts. I either accept or ignore my thoughts but don't suppress them.

2. I do control a part of my mind that is responsible for voluntary control of muscles. I do it to focus my mind too but without trying to stop the thoughts or emotions. It doesn't matter whether focus is perfect or not I ignore that and do my focusing. I use similar control method to do my work but never suppress the thoughts or emotions. I take them along in my concentration meditation or chores, exercise, gaming.

3. Sometimes a natural desire emerges to control a part of my mind and I allow it to control the parts that I don't like but I don't do it forcefully. It's like taking the audience seat and observing two sides of my mind fight each other out until the side that I wants to win ends up winning. Like I have 3 minds one observer, 1 good, 1 bad.

I have seen similar practices in Buddhism, Hinduism. What do Taoists say?

I prefer advice of those who have more than bookish knowledge of the Dao De Jing and have experienced to back up their claims or they will do injustice to both Dao De Jing and Daoism.

Hey guys. Omg I’m acc so excited rn and wanna just share it!!

Came into thsi sub for advice on channeling the Tao into my art & music. Specifically I am producing music rn and was in a rut. After reading your wonderful comments, dug into a bunch of research & did lots of journalling & notes.

I make uk dance music, and wanted to create something that explored yin & yang, embodied both light and dark. Did shadow work too , this piece was as much as a product of my own inner work and integrating my unconscious.

Was a challenge to sit down and write but after a couple days of letting it flow through me, I DID IT!! And it’s honestly my favourite piece of music I’ve ever written. I’m supposed to be asleep (it’s 3am) but am honestly so elated rn. feel like I can visualise my future just listening to it.

I became super emotional and started thanking the universe with tears in my eyes. I really put myself out my comfort zone (even doing my own vocals , learning new techniques of production) . When I listen to it, it truly feels like a union of my shadow and light, my unconscious and conscious, and I am just so fucking happy. I love Taoism so much. Thank you all . This is just the beginning!!!

i try to forgive, and forgive, and forgive. i don't think i am doing it right as i'm always letting things get to me, always forgiving my family. Do i tune people out, do i block them from my thoughts, do i continue to forgive?

Please, anything you guys have to offer. i'll watch a movie if the message is there, i'll read a book if it will help me find a better path. i do not want to lose the frail relationship that i have with my family, I just want to rebuild.

I've rarely seen posts here specifically by women or for women - I'm sure there are lots of women here, it's just we tend not to expose our womanhood online unless we have to or unless the topic is geared towards the challenges associated with our experiences.

So I had reach out to other ladies here about a Taoist-based book which deeply influenced how I interact with not only men, but everyone, and greatly improved my relationship with authority and power.

The author spent a good chunk of time as a Taoist nun with other powerful Taoist women, which is how she discovered the secrets of how to effortlessly navigate power dynamics so that you can easily get what you want and why others' wants are often ultimately aligned with our own desires (despite their claims).

It's called Unbound by Kasia Urbaniak.

If anyone would like to add other good resources for female leadership in this thread, or to discuss their experiences how Taoism empowered their experience of womanhood, please feel welcome.

There are currently eight absolutely free resources available on my website. I recently completed a fun I Ching divination module. https://qigong-with-carlos.com/i_ching

By "good", I mean is the translation and commentary philosophically and historically accurate? Are there any negatives about this book? If I only read one book on the Daodejing/Taoteching, should it be this book?

One of the very few reviews I found on this book is this, but its a locked journal article (just trust me on what I say it says): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rsr.17181

The reviewer says the author explains textual contradictions in daodejing by inferring Laozi meant to imply the word 'contrived'. The reviewer says sometimes, that explanation can feel like a convenient stretch. The last part of the review suggests the book is recommendable, but it's advisable to read other texts along with this book, because this book focuses more on the philosophy aspect than the book's "collocation" in Chinese religion history.

Would you agree with this review?

If you think there are more accurate books, then please feel free to recommend them to me.

Thank you all in advance.

Edit 1 (Not essential to my question. TL;DR: The reviewer is not bashing Fischer, I just didn't include most of his positive comments about Fischer and his book.): I don't want to get sued by the reviewer or anything because it seems like people think the reviewer is bashing Fischer, so, I want to clarify a few things. I mainly stated the reviewer's criticisms about the book, because that's what I only wanted to inquire about. However, the criticisms are balanced out or maybe even exceeded by positive comments, but I didn't include them before this edit. For example, in the review, the reviewer uses positive words/phrases to describe the book/author, such as "concise", "clear", "coherently constructed", and "this book is a very recommendable introduction".

Of course, I could just paste his review here. However, I won't because it may be considered piracy, and it's very long. I would rather just paraphrase and include snippets.

I was very into Taoism growing up and it has been the philosophy that makes the most sense to me overall. Additionally I was emotionally tortured for the majority of my life by my parents. Most days since I was 12 have been a fight to not end my life. What they did to me was beyond evil & I do not expect any closures or apologies. I also have been harming myself from a young age. I’m reading these Tao Te Ching quotes again and I feel like I have a chance again for the first time in such a long time. I’m haunted by my thoughts, these traumatic memories loop in my mind all day sometimes and drive me to injure myself. The self injury has become its own addiction.

I was wondering if there are any taoists in this sub who are understanding and have any advice for me. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get better. Hard truths welcome <3

https://open.substack.com/pub/billhulet/p/a-celibate-floats-uneasily-on-the?r=25q93&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://preview.redd.it/7exjsapi2y3e1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce242470ab04bce3a215892245c47a405e6db474

We have endured 2 years of obsessive texting and requests from my mother in law, which has now turned into reputation destruction and I am hated by my partners sister and other members of the family who originally loved me. It hurts.

My partner has had a chat with them and cut them off for the time being but he (& I) wonder how do we deal with this envy in a Taoist way?

My partner has a good job and I am able to stay at home with my baby for a few years which seems to be everyone’s problem with me. They expect a lot from my partner and are always angry and complaining that he/we isn’t doing more with and for them. We just want them to understand that we are busy and have a happy household and our own family.

This is a serious question that I have. What are your thoughts about a type of spiritual cultivation study that has the goal of truly figuring out whether or not one can cultivate the three treasures and ascend into a Xian?

(A Xian is an immortal, mythical being with the Taoist pantheon or Chinese folklore.)

And now I’m beginning to think I was wrong on both occasions, and both are equally real and equally divine…

The essence of reality being the clay from which the material world is molded

Maybe in a couple years I’ll change my mind again, but for now this makes the most sense to me

• In ethics Daoism says "follow the Dao." The advice gets more controversial when we try to fill in the details, but most agreed that it means something like "be natural." The rest of the content is identified negatively-don't think or reason as the Greeks and Westerner's do and don't follow conventions or rules like the Confucians and Mohists do.
• In logic Daoism says "P and not P! Who cares?" Then depending of how much Buddhism you mixed in, it might also say "Neither P nor not P" and go on to the four-to-n-fold negation. Its acceptance of this initial logical absurdity then justifies the patently stupid answers it gives to all the other philosophical questions.
• In Metaphysics, Daoism says "Only the Dao exists. It has no parts or divisions and nothing inside or outside it. It both is everything and created everything and transcends both time and space."
• Its epistemology is intuitionist. Stripped of rationalism, empiricism and conventionalist prejudice, we directly grasp in a mystically unified insight both what is and what ought to be. We understand being and how to act in the same mystical intuition-we apprehend dao.
• Daoism's theory of language is that language distorts the Dao. It can't be said, named, described, defined, or even referred to in language. Why? Here the stories get vague. They vary from WangBi's explanation, "because it can't be seen" to a more Buddhist argument that naming implies permanence and Dao is constantly changing (although it never changes) so . . . .well-never mind!
• Its political philosophy was some blend of anarchism, individualism, Laissez Faire economics and government, and incipient libertarianism.

http://philosophy.hku.hk/ch/Status_LZ.htm

I am not a taoist but I find taoistic philosophy very interesting. What are some of the best books on taoistic philosophy? I want to read the tao te ching but I am unsure of what translation to get any suggestions?

I know that many of you must have the stereotyped view of "gnosticism", the truth is that "gnosticism" has never existed and this is just a term invented to try to unite several groups with common elements.

But the reason I came here cordially is not to teach about gnosticism but to know if you noticed subtle or maybe not so subtle connections. First of all, I will use the Valentinian school as an example because it is the one we have the most information, the most successful among the "gnostics", and also the mildest because they did not see the demiurge as evil or ill-intentioned.

I feel like I may not be able to transmit everything as I would like but I will try.

I won't start by comparing protological or cosmological structure because this is the first comparison that many make and in my opinion it is a mistake to compare something that does not have the same direction or intention. Gnosticos myths, more than a cosmology, were ways of pointing to a higher reality to which words are not able to describe perfectly. The Valentinians had a deep understanding of something they referred to as the "Name", in a way it is linked to the Jewish divine name.

The Valentinians drew a sharp distinction between false worldly names and real names. This theme is best developed in the Gospel of Philip. According to that work, "Names given to worldly things are very deceptive since they turn the heart aside from the real to the unreal...The names that one has heard exist in the world[. . .] deceive. If the names were situated in the eternal realm, they would not be uttered on any occasion in the world, nor would they be assigned to worldly things: their goal would be the eternal realm" (Gospel of Philip 53:23-28). False worldly names serve to deceive human beings and distract them from the true Name. The demonic worldly powers took advantage of this: "The rulers wanted to deceive humanity, inasmuch as they saw that it had kinship with truly good things: they took the names of the good and gave them to the nongood, to deceive humanity by the names and bind them to the nongood" (Gospel of Philip 54: 18-25). Thus false names keep human beings attached to the illusion and separated from the true Name.

Valentinus attributes inspired speech to the presence of the Name. The Name causes the individual to "utter sounds superior to what its modeling justified" (Valentinus Fragment 1).

In the Gospel of Truth the reception of gnosis is equivalent to having one's name called by the Father. "Those whose names he foreknew were called at the end as persons having gnosis. It is the latter whose names the Father called" (Gospel of Truth 21:25-28). Receiving a name is equivalent to receiving the Name. The individual name can be seen as an instance of the Name much in the same way as the Aeons are instances of the Name. Thus the Father's self-naming as Son is linked to the Father's self-naming as every individual.

This information was taken from the following link(The Name and Naming in Valentinianism), but if you are interested, I recommend that you read the mentioned scriptures directly (Tripartite Treatise, Gospel of Philip) after quickly reading this link.

It is common that when we see two religious systems we make comparisons between the greatest figures (GOD), Bythos in Valentinianism and Tao in Taoism. But the incredible thing about all this is that it is not a silly comparison.

I have taken some excerpts directly from the Tripartite Treatise concerning the Father, the Son as the self-image of the Father, and the emergence of the Pleroma as the Father becoming knowable through the Son.> Excerpts from the Tripartite Tractate

I feel that I have not been clear enough for this to be a good exchange of information and knowledge. I personally do not know Taoism very well, but I feel that the Tao transcends religions and beliefs. More than that, the Father permeates everything but nothing contains Him. He is in everything but nothing is the Father as a whole. I must make it clear that the Father for the Gnostics is not something like an Old Man with a white beard sitting on a throne in the sky.

Basically the most prominent figures of Valentinian Protology are:

*Bythos/The Father = Unfathomable depth, the unknowable aspect and the Root of everything which I avoid even talking about because any kind of definition is a mistake but I believe that saying that it is unknowable is the only fact because our minds are not capable of understanding or knowing.

*The Son = Bythos himself in his emanation as Father of the Pleroma, the knowable GOD and the means by which everything came into existence and took shape, all the Aeons of the Pleroma are like letters that together form the name of the Father, the Son is the name of the Father (Bythos).

It may be confusing here, but the Father is Bythos and the Son is called Father as well because he is not only the Father of all that came into existence but because in the Valentinian scriptures he is generally said to be the name of the Father, the notion of name was addressed previously and can be explored further by you.

*Sophia/Logos = The Aeon of Wisdom that many know as soon as they hear about Gnosticism, but the interesting fact is that her role is one of the most important because although she is described as an Aeon, she was one of the last after sequences of emanations, it is said that the further away from the Father, the less perfect the Aeon is but I believe that the fall of Logos/Sophia was always a divine plan/Oikonomia in which she would truly obtain Wisdom and Perfection through the fall and return to the Pleroma, similar to what we go through in life.

*Craftsman/Demiurge: The intellect emanated and inspired by Sophia/Logos that gave form to matter and acts in the Universe from the seventh heaven to the earthly plane in which we live as King and Ruler. He was emanated as an image of the Father, but the substance in which he is and reigns is the soul and not the spirit. Therefore, he is blind to what is above, but he is not a demon that is imprisoning souls in the world. He symbolizes justice at any cost, even suffering. He is what many see as the old, bearded man sitting on a throne in heaven, but even that is a mistake to think. If you are interested in learning more about it, there is a good article with good references> (The Demiurge in Valentinianism).

*The Devil/Ruler of the World: This is the "guy" with real bad intentions. In Valentinianism, the devil comes to exist as a substance of suffering and tortuous thoughts that Sophia/Logos had when she fell. In Christianity, there is a notion of 7 deadly sins. The devil represents this corruption that permeates humanity, always pulling towards involution. The devil is always at war with the artisan/demiurge, as reported in Valentinian writings. The demiurge and the devil have always been at war because they are representations of conflicting substances, soul and matter. Inclination towards just actions and ill-intentioned or evil actions, etc. There is a lot of information about the Valentinian devil at this same link >> (The Demiurge in Valentinianism).

The Valentinian view of the material world is: The material world is part of a divine pedagogy. We must all return to fullness and be in communion with the Father, he has never been far away, he has always been everywhere, we do not need to travel to India or to any specific place, it is all here and now.

Obviously there is much more, but I feel like I am writing too much and that this way I will not be as clear about what I want to bring here.
I'm not coming here to try to "convert" any of you, just bringing a more accurate view of Valentinian "gnosticism" so that you can find parallels yourselves and foster this post with information you already have.

Why have I only spoken about Valentinianism all along and not mentioned anything about Taoism? Because I would like you to do so by enriching this exchange of information.

Welcome everyone to this topic! (I hope I was clear enough and brought enough information)

I tried looking in the Livia Kohn book 'Daoist Identity: History, Lineage and Ritual', but I couldn't find anything.

I've heard it was performed to honor the lunar deity, but I'm not sure about this. It was supposed to start the day auspiciously, so the next rituals are also performed well.