Yes. Our task is to unify them.
Hart would agree. So do I. It's methorios, again.
Well there is n-number of metaphorical permutations, some accurate, according to the Revelation, some less so.
What do you think Taoism is?
- Thread starter mchang
- Start date
I don't think doctrine, I'm not a dogma guy. i think it is an attempt by the ancients from many cultures to tell us what is going on energetically in the universe within us and between us and heaven and earth. There is an energetic relationship between us, it affects us and we affect it. The flow comes from aligning the three. thanks brian
Agreed, but it is two different things, but the same thing. if you are seeing/experiencing the world through your projected reality how do you really know you are in the flow? How do you know you have aligned your energy and cleared the interference to be ONE with the Source? We can tell ourselves we are, but this doesn't make it so, it could be our human brain perception telling us this because there's this thing over here we don't want to see? How do we know what's buried in our subconscious that distorts our view like a pencil in a glass of water, how do we change this without setting our intent to do so? thanks brian
wil
UNeyeR1
If I am not harming anyone. If I am appreciated by friends, family and associates. If for the most part I have avoided conflict and or accept my existence as is...why should i care?
Why does what you are selling require such advertising?
wil
UNeyeR1
All cool dude, you are just the first proselytizing Taoist I have come across.
If ya provide a quote, and your thoughts on a topic of the way i will read and comment...
But maybe it should be me that avoids it when it becomes class in session with master chang vs discussion amongst friends on an interfaith site.
wil
UNeyeR1
It will be the way...it is how I know. Thanks brian.
LOL ...
First let me apologise for a long-winded Christian commentary on a Taoist Board.
Secondly, without offence, let me suggest that everyone has a doctrine and a dogma, whether they admit to it or not.
Doctrine: from the Latin doctrina, 'teaching' or 'instruction', "whatever is taught or laid down as true by a master".
Dogma: from the Greek δόγμα dógma, 'opinion', 'tenet', from δοκέω dokéō, 'to seem good, think', literally "that which one thinks is true".
The Tao is a classic example.
I rather see that as assuming 'many cultures' in line with what you think, I would suggest you're retro-fitting Taoist dogma onto a non-Taoist culture.
I would also point out the Doctrine of the Trinity is unique to a particular culture, so to understand it, the first step is to understand what that culture thought about it, and meant by it.
Same with the idea of the Garden and the Tree.
Having had a look round, I found these references on sites about Taoist mythology:
In Taoism, peaches symbolize immortality, longevity, and spiritual wisdom, appearing in legends, alchemical practices, and teachings across various sects. Known as the fruit of the gods, peaches are central in Taoist folklore, especially in Southern and Eastern China, where they’re associated with the Queen Mother of the West and Taoist immortals.
The "Peach of Immortality" (仙桃, xiāntáo), are believed to grant divine gifts, such as wisdom, or eternal life, to those who consume them.
Xiwangmu (西王母), the Queen Mother of the West, in "The Classic of Mountains and Seas” (山海经, Shanhaijing), has her garden on the Kunlun Mountains, containing peach trees that bloom every 3,000 years. When harvested, she hosts a 'Grand Banquet of the Gods' known as the "Feast of Peaches" (蟠桃會, Pántáo Huì), where gods partake in these fruits to gain immortality.
"The Peaches of Heaven that bloom once in three thousand years grant life to the gods and vitality to all creation."
(from the Taoist canon "The Perfected Scriptures" (真經, Zhēnjīng).
+++
Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen sect, saw the peach as an emblem of harmonising body, mind, and spirit. His disciples used peach imagery to describe the "ripening" of wisdom and enlightenment.
As with the slow maturation of a peach tree, spiritual enlightenment in Taoism is a gradual process, nurtured over time through cultivation and reverence for life’s natural cycles.
Eating the Peaches of Immortality confers profound transformations. For gods, it reaffirms their eternal nature; for mortals, it breaks the cycle of aging and death. Sun Wukong’s consumption of the peaches dramatically increases his strength, invulnerability, and spiritual resilience – making him nearly impossible for celestial armies to subdue. However, this unauthorized act brings chaos to heaven, illustrating the Taoist moral that immortality without discipline leads to disorder.
Another notable story involves Dongfang Shuo, a court trickster who steals peaches during a celestial feast. Though he gains longevity, he is eventually banished from heaven, demonstrating that the blessings of immortality come with strict conditions and cosmic balance must always be maintained.
+++
So there is an obvious correspondence here between the fruit of the tree in both Jewish and Taoist lore – and the matter of the fruit being forbidden to humanity is the point.
The subsequent Taoist exegesis on the harmonising of heaven and earth uses the peach motif, but does not contradict the Queen Mother of the West idea.
I am not aware of any such corresponding teaching in Jewish exegesis – perhaps someone else knows, or perhaps it simply is not there in those terms.
+++
The story of the paradisical Eden is a fairly common myth of a tree or trees whose fruits nourish and preserve the gods. In the Biblical version, the two trees – one of knowledge of good and evil, one of eternal life – are the trees that grant the gods their powers, and the fruits of those particulat trees are not for human consumption.
(Q: Why plant a tree is a paradise garden if it is so dangerous to human existence?)
In the Genesis account, after eating of the Tree of Knowledge, and having had curses heaped upon them, the Deity says "Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever... And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:22, 24).
So the Lord God threw Adam and Eve out before they could eat of the other tree, and gain longevity, if not immortality, and put a guardian there to make sure they never got back in.
In Epic of Gilgamesh, which most scholars read as drawn from the same pool of ancient mythologies as Genesis, Gilgamesh seeks to escape death by finding a magical plant at the bottom of the sea known as the "Plant of Rejuvenation". He succeeds in retrieving the plant, but it is stolen by a snake while he bathes, the moral being the futility of the quest.
In the Greek we have the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, a fruit granting immortality, kept by the nymphs of that name, in a garden at the far western edge of the world (or near Mount Atlas), guarded by the never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon Ladon.
In Taoism, peaches symbolize immortality, longevity, and spiritual wisdom, appearing in legends, alchemical practices, and teachings across various sects. Known as the fruit of the gods, peaches are central in Taoist folklore, especially in Southern and Eastern China, where they’re associated with the Queen Mother of the West and Taoist immortals.
The "Peach of Immortality" (仙桃, xiāntáo), are believed to grant divine gifts, such as wisdom, or eternal life, to those who consume them.
Xiwangmu (西王母), the Queen Mother of the West, in "The Classic of Mountains and Seas” (山海经, Shanhaijing), has her garden on the Kunlun Mountains, containing peach trees that bloom every 3,000 years. When harvested, she hosts a 'Grand Banquet of the Gods' known as the "Feast of Peaches" (蟠桃會, Pántáo Huì), where gods partake in these fruits to gain immortality.
"The Peaches of Heaven that bloom once in three thousand years grant life to the gods and vitality to all creation."
(from the Taoist canon "The Perfected Scriptures" (真經, Zhēnjīng).
+++
Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen sect, saw the peach as an emblem of harmonising body, mind, and spirit. His disciples used peach imagery to describe the "ripening" of wisdom and enlightenment.
As with the slow maturation of a peach tree, spiritual enlightenment in Taoism is a gradual process, nurtured over time through cultivation and reverence for life’s natural cycles.
Eating the Peaches of Immortality confers profound transformations. For gods, it reaffirms their eternal nature; for mortals, it breaks the cycle of aging and death. Sun Wukong’s consumption of the peaches dramatically increases his strength, invulnerability, and spiritual resilience – making him nearly impossible for celestial armies to subdue. However, this unauthorized act brings chaos to heaven, illustrating the Taoist moral that immortality without discipline leads to disorder.
Another notable story involves Dongfang Shuo, a court trickster who steals peaches during a celestial feast. Though he gains longevity, he is eventually banished from heaven, demonstrating that the blessings of immortality come with strict conditions and cosmic balance must always be maintained.
+++
So there is an obvious correspondence here between the fruit of the tree in both Jewish and Taoist lore – and the matter of the fruit being forbidden to humanity is the point.
The subsequent Taoist exegesis on the harmonising of heaven and earth uses the peach motif, but does not contradict the Queen Mother of the West idea.
I am not aware of any such corresponding teaching in Jewish exegesis – perhaps someone else knows, or perhaps it simply is not there in those terms.
+++
The story of the paradisical Eden is a fairly common myth of a tree or trees whose fruits nourish and preserve the gods. In the Biblical version, the two trees – one of knowledge of good and evil, one of eternal life – are the trees that grant the gods their powers, and the fruits of those particulat trees are not for human consumption.
(Q: Why plant a tree is a paradise garden if it is so dangerous to human existence?)
In the Genesis account, after eating of the Tree of Knowledge, and having had curses heaped upon them, the Deity says "Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever... And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:22, 24).
So the Lord God threw Adam and Eve out before they could eat of the other tree, and gain longevity, if not immortality, and put a guardian there to make sure they never got back in.
In Epic of Gilgamesh, which most scholars read as drawn from the same pool of ancient mythologies as Genesis, Gilgamesh seeks to escape death by finding a magical plant at the bottom of the sea known as the "Plant of Rejuvenation". He succeeds in retrieving the plant, but it is stolen by a snake while he bathes, the moral being the futility of the quest.
In the Greek we have the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, a fruit granting immortality, kept by the nymphs of that name, in a garden at the far western edge of the world (or near Mount Atlas), guarded by the never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon Ladon.
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