What is Taoism (Daoism)?

sunwukong said:
Finding the True Self is the primary way which can lead one to the world of Dao. People, who live in the Dao, will stay away from suffering, and enjoy happiness.
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How can we find true happiness in ourselves without connecting to a God. What about true self, that would mean that there is a false self, suffering is something which comes to everybody. Its why the world has problems believing in God. How would a taoist connect to the spirit. How can a taoist enjoy happiness, what makes one different from a successful atheist or agnostic?
 
Prycejosh1987 said:
How can we find true happiness in ourselves without connecting to a God. What about true self, that would mean that there is a false self, suffering is something which comes to everybody. Its why the world has problems believing in God. How would a taoist connect to the spirit. How can a taoist enjoy happiness, what makes one different from a successful atheist or agnostic?
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Much of the world finds happiness without connecting to G!d, or without consciously connecting, without praying, without temples.

We find happiness within, happiness in observing nature, happiness in our children's growth, happiness is a choice, an opportunity to be taken
 
Prycejosh1987 said:
How can we find true happiness in ourselves without connecting to a God. What about true self, that would mean that there is a false self, suffering is something which comes to everybody. Its why the world has problems believing in God. How would a taoist connect to the spirit. How can a taoist enjoy happiness, what makes one different from a successful atheist or agnostic?
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While I'm not a Taoist, maybe I can help a bit with translating concepts:

True Self: to a Christian, maybe the Still Small Voice.

False Self: what we want others, and ourselves, to believe about us.

Suffering: Taoists tend to think in terms of the way of responding to suffering, of the dynamic, the personal, rather than a static abstract "problem of suffering".

Taoists have their own ways of connecting to the spirit. Plenty of rituals and practices, from what I've seen.

Your last question, I have no answer for. But a Taoist might ask in return, whether the existence of Taoists diminishes your own happiness?
 
Nick the Pilot said:
The second group of three Chinese characters is 非常道 (fēi cháng dào). The two characters 非常 (fēi cháng) translate in everyday conversational Chinese as “very”. But in this context they mean “change” or “non-eternal”. The idea is that this aspect of the Tao is manifesting and mutable.
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After reading post number 18, I myself was confused by the use of 非常 here until I read your other post.
 
Nick the Pilot said:
If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
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Well, I was reading the commentary from the link to the website you shared earlier. It says "there is no idea of 'telling' or 'being told' in the verse":

The first verse is as follows (in pinyin): “dào kě dào, fēi cháng dào”. A common translation is something like this: “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” (tr. Stephen Mitchell). However, if we look at the text closely we will immediately see a problem with this. Let us break down each term.

dào: the mysterious term, which HPB equates with Anima Mundi. We have given our own interpretation of its esoteric meaning here: The Meaning of Tao.
kě: can; may; able to
dào
fēi: non-; not-; un-
cháng: always; ever; often; frequently; common; general; constant
dào

If we were to follow the common method of translating this verse we would be required to give it more literally as “The tao that can be taoed is not the eternal tao.” There is no idea of “telling” or “being told”, etc., in this verse—the common translations attempt to give a certain meaning, as the translators see it, but in their attempt they fail to follow the very terms themselves. However, as HPB hints at above, there is another way. Her translation of this opening verse is: “The Principle which exists by Itself, developing Itself from Itself.” Ours follows a similar approach.
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The translation I have states: "The Tao that can be Told is not the True Tao." I was trying to find the reasoning behind the translation. Where does "told" come from? According to one page I was reading, one translation of 道 is "told" in this context. "Most importantly for this text, the word dào itself can refer to a path or road, but it can also be a verb meaning to say or tell." This meaning is uncommon in modern usage. Any thoughts on that?
 
It is true that 道 (dao) can mean to say, speak, talk.

www.mdbg.net

MDBG English to Chinese dictionary

English to Chinese dictionary with Mandarin Pinyin & Handwriting Recognition - learn Chinese faster with MDBG!
www.mdbg.net www.mdbg.net

But I do not think this is the meaning of 道 in 道可道, (Dao ke dao), I think it only means the way or path, that we are on the path (Dao) to somewhere, but we are unable to truly understand what that final destination is.
 
Nick the Pilot said:
It is true that 道 (dao) can mean to say, speak, talk.

www.mdbg.net

MDBG English to Chinese dictionary

English to Chinese dictionary with Mandarin Pinyin & Handwriting Recognition - learn Chinese faster with MDBG!
www.mdbg.net www.mdbg.net

But I do not think this is the meaning of 道 in 道可道, (Dao ke dao), I think it only means the way or path, that we are on the path (Dao) to somewhere, but we are unable to truly understand what that final destination is.
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What is this path in Taoism?
 
Prycejosh1987 said:
What about true self, that would mean that there is a false self
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Even facing completely secular, social interactions, people may have a "false self" in terms of behaving as they think others will accept, saying and doing one thing while thinking and feeling another. Sometimes people do this so much (maybe to gain popularity, maybe to appease others or avoid 'rocking the boat' and simply lose touch with what they really think and feel. A lot of this is at the heart of what people address in therapy.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm fascinated with what the spiritual implications of this may be.
 
Nick the Pilot said:
(Taoism is quite vague on answering this question.)
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Taoism seems vague on many things, doesn't it? After all, it is a "wordless teaching" that resides beyond the contradictions of hard and easy, long and short, high and low, being and non-being, and so on.

"The Taoist dwells in
Non-Action,
Practices
A Wordless Teaching."
 
In life we put on multiple personas just to get through the day eh? The mask we wear at home differs from the one st work or the one st the grocery store or the one that argues with the cable company.
 
Ahanu said:
Taoism seems vague on many things, doesn't it?
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I think there is a reason for this vagueness. It is fun to think about things that happened billions of years ago or will happen billions of years from now. But Dao de-emphasizes this and has us only think about what is ‘important’ right now, what we need to do right now to get us to the next level (to get us to nirvana once we have achieved enlightenment). Dao emphasizes this, and only uses vagueness to answer any questions about happenings billions of years in the past or future.(For example, asking Dao to describe events which occur during the time interval between universes is something that Dao considers to be waaay off topic and distracting to our real goal right now.) It is also important to remember that the Daoist teachings were given many centuries ago, when such cosmic discussions would have been wasted on the average person.
 
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