Adored the video, I'm a South African student who's been studying Mandarin for a few years and I'm reading the Dao De Jing for the first time. Your videos have been very helpful for me in understanding them! Thank you for your work.🌻
Hope you enjoyed studying Mandarin, and I’m really glad you found interest in Dao De Jing! We are thinking about doing a video talking about Dao De Jing based on commentaries from famous Taoist cultivators from the past. Would you be interested in such topic? Thank you for your support and we appreciate your feedback a lot : )
I feel like some of the passages you mentioned within the Tao te Ching are a bit of a stretch, but there are plenty of more mystical daoist works from that early period even if they are less famous. And many of the famous mystical works predate Daoism. It could be what they mean. But it seems like reading into the text. My personal theory is that the early daoists were religious, but were more focused on the persuit of the truth and moral cultivation in a practical way, but that by the time the Han Dynasty started, that the folk tradition of Wizards, geomancers, and medical practitioners discovered and adopted the broader works. But, I don't know enough to verify it. If we look at the story of Laozi, he didn't set out to create a philosophy, but rather someone happened to ask him to write down his Thoughts. Zhuangzi was more intentional, but was more focused on specifically refuting the Confucians and Mohists, within the context of the School of names. Regardless, Zhuangzi in particularly advocates fairly strongly for a moral form of cultivation, and his Talk of immortals and such clearly refute the more biased view that it is incompatible with a pursuit of immortality, because he expresses death as something to be accepted. Regardless, even before religious daoism was instiutionalized. It was still closely tied with traditional medicine and folk classics. And pretty much all philosophies of the time were also heavily influenced by religious and folk aspects. The original 5 classics of Confucianism included the Yi Jing. And to a broader extent, many early Philosophies before the Han Dynasty could be viewed as alternative methods and theories about what nature is like both outside and inside of people. And there is general agreement for the most part that trying to get to the core nature is good. And there was also a notable period before Daoism was institutionalized where it was commonly syncretized as a more personal or metaphysical element underpinning Confucianism. Where Confucianism is like the branches of a tree and Daoism was the trunk or roots. And that is was the growing influence and contact with Buddhism which actually spurred Daoism to become organized, it was still to an extent religious, and involved meditation and magical practices before that point. (Part of the issue is what practices.) From what I can tell chanting, talismans, and a greater focus on internal vs. external alchemy in comparison to geomancy and divination is part of the Daoist Response to Buddhism. If there was a distinct "philosophical Daoism" historically, it clearly merged with and joined up with Zen Buddhism. And wouldn't have been a pure version of the classics, but rather an retroactive reflection during the Han Dynasty.
I would really love to dive more into the religious form of Taoism. It's sadly almost seems inaccessible and unheard of by people in the West. A video on it and learning more about it would be highly interesting.
Thanks for the feedback! Is there specific things about religion Taoism that you’re interested? Like sects? Practice? Scriptures? Chanting? Or, is there a question/questions you’d like an answer about it?
@ShengxuanDaoism Hello! Well overall I'm very interested in all of it. It's really a topic, when I think of Taoism, that isn't mentioned by lots of people that I know of. I would say I'm curious about the practices, chanting, and scriptures. I find this wonderful and interesting to me seeing that there's a whole other side to Taoism.
@@ShengxuanDaoism quick 2 questions how does Daoism and Yi Jing tie in together? Then also what does Sincerity mean in Daoist context. I am learning Yi Jing and feel like an energy that makes me feel calm , joyful and smarter comes into my body its like a big consciousness enters my body how does this work?
@@WiseFool888 Not sure how is it translated and arranged in English, but basically, Yi Jing is the script that has the 64 hexagrams and explanation of each hexagram and yao. Besides that, there's also the Yi Zhuan, which is the interpretive commentary of Yi Jing by Confucius. Yi Jing and Yi Zhuan together is called Zhou Yi, which is a Confucian classics. However, Yi Jing was passed down long before Confucius, dating back to the ancient Chinese wisdom. So it's shared by all schools in China. It not only captures the changes in the natural and human world, but also contains secrets about cultivation. That's why you can also see hexagrams in Taoist cultivation text and symbolisms. Glad you found calmness and joy through the reading. That probably means you have connection to Taoism and should explore more about it : )
@@ShengxuanDaoism What do you think are the best Taoist Commentaries on the Yi Jing/I Ching (I have seen it written either way. But from what I heard the second matches how it sounds better.) I have been reading about it a bit as well. Although, weirdly I found some areas where the cosmology of the Yi Ching, seems to conflict with the Yellow Emporer's Classic to an extent.
I think this video is the best I've found on the topic, and I agree with most of it, but disagree on a couple points. Because the DDJ and Zhuangzi offer a consistent theory of the world that can answer many different important questions, you can be Daoist without believing any other doctrines or areas of Chinese thought - in the same sense as you could be empiricist, pragmatist, marxist etc. So I wouldn't go with "philosophical vs religious" but I would go with "Daoism and its religions". Allowing the works of Laozi and Zhuangzi at least, to have their own term "Daoism" recognises what a massive leap in Chinese thought these works were. I don't think anyone (except maybe Wang Bi) who adopted this daoist view in this sense, didn't also believe in the supernatural stuff that was mentioned throughout. But I think you can believe in this world view without believing in anything supernatural. I think if the argument is that Daoist religions are just evolved Chinese folk religion, then yes there's no really important difference. In that case I'd say people who want to say they're Daoist for following this "world view" just pick a different word. I like Xuan Xue, but I am not good at pronouncing it (EDIT: now I think about it Shengxuan actually is a pretty great name for it too...) I just mention this because I worry the "philosophical vs religious" debate seems to have just two sides. 1 side that seems to not know about the religious context of when these works were written (i.e. pro philosophical side), and 2 side that seems to see a continuous thread in Chinese thought from well before Laozi to present day. 1 I reject because it's just wrong, many of 2 I reject because they don't even recognise as you do that there was a long path of evolution to explicitly Daoist organised religions, but I can't settle on the good side of 2 myself, as I think it does gloss over just what a giant leap in ideas these two works were. We might disagree about how much value is lost when you remove the supernatural parts, but even just the non-supernatural parts I think we should be able to agree are extremely valuable leaps in human thought, not just Chinese thought. I get a little annoyed when people point at what I see as sophisticated logical arguments (though hard to understand if unfamiliar with context) and say "wow how deep and meaningful this mysterious and impossible to understand text is!" (though that view has always been there) and I think these people have had it downplayed to them just what an achievement these Daoist works are (and probably share similar views of all Chinese thought).
Do you have book recommendations for authentic Taoism? I am reading the biography of Wang Liping, 18th generation Dragongate transmitter but is the book genuine? Also, can you recommend books on lives of the Taoists especially modern ones if not, I’ll take book any recommendations you have. Thanks!
For Taoist tradition, books are usually written in secret expressions and those who only have correct lineage could “de-code” the content. This is the case especially when it comes to the actual cultivation method. Moreover, most of those are still untranslated to English, so i would say it’s not an ideal way to know Taoism. What specific aspects do you want to know about Taoism? Maybe we can come out with new videos about those. For lives of Taoists, the classic one is 《历代神仙通鉴》& 《列仙全传》. For the more modern one, no one made collections about the story, as a result of Qing Dynasty’s governing and modern wars and revolutions in China. But I would recommend checking out the the story of Zhang Sanfeng, which you could find in 《张三丰全集》.
How would daoism coherently explain already existent Metaphysical realities like Logic, and give a coherent account for Morals? In other words, what is Daoism/religious daoism Metaphysics’s. Both about deities But also Natural metaphysics like, again, logic or Higher mathematics or Morals.?
@@WiseFool888 sadly the vast majority of the daoist cannon isnt and most likely wont ever be translated but Ive read the Stuff everyone would like the Dao de Ching and i am currently reading the Zhuangzi.
Hey, interesting question, but also a big question that obviously cannot be fully explained with a sentence or two. However, in short, there are several points that could be made. Firstly, logic is a human construct rooted in human language. It's an abstraction of the world, but cannot capture all there is. That's why the opening chapter of Dao De Jing states that language is limited. Morality too is something of the "human Dao" (人道), created by human beings and change according to time and space. So for Taoism, everything in the world is in a flow of change, and even the principles themselves are changing "slowly" (not in a temporal sense). Deities, in short, are created and depending on sentient being's faith. Without the feeding of faith, deities perish. It's also worth mentioning too that Taoist world view is organized not in the same frame as western philosophy, because through out thousands of years, it's fair to say Taoists are more like scientists than philosophers. We are more interested in the "how to" than to give a complete account of "what is," as again how the first chapter of Dao De Jing has already set the tone. However, there definitely is a world view, which we will be introducing one by one in the channel. If you're interested, you're welcome to subscribe us.
@@ShengxuanDaoism The reason Greek philosophy wasn't 'practical' is that it was for wealthy aristocratic elites who could dedicate themselves to lives of contemplation. But the same is true in some sense for Buddhist monks so this 'philosophy vs religion' split that only developed in the west in the last 400 years and was imported into Asia under anti-religious Marxism makes haphazard sense at best. Greek philosophy had its own concept of 'cultivation' in (using the exact same English word to translate the concept) in the kind of Virtue Ethics you find in Aristotle. Aristotle believed in 'natural slaves' who would be incapable of cultivating excellance by definition and since Greek aristocrats saw practical work as being for slaves the idea of slaves being capable of cultivating excellance would undermine Greek society. But Aristotle was also a botanist and a physicist which were both classed as 'natural philosophy' in Europe until 'Science' became the standard term in the late 1800s. Modern Academic philosophy was invented by Protestant German University Professors who were fighting with Catholics over who was the legitimate inheritor of the legacy of ancient Greece. Virtue Ethics was very popular in the middle ages so Protestants had to reject it and with anti-clerical movements growing even in Catholic countries the Protestant opinion generally won out. Protestant Enlightenment Philosophy culminated in Kant who created new ethical ideas that didn't rely on cultivation and was very anti-Chinese to the point that Kantian curicula in American Universities reject the idea of Chinese philosophy even existing. So the main reason why Academic philosophy generally doesn't talk about cultivation is mostly just politics. The idea that early Taoist thinking was corrupted to become more religious sounds like it was directly copied from Protestant historians of philosophy who invented the same narrative about Greek Platonism to discredit the so called 'Neo-Platonists' popular with Catholic Philosophy professors. Modern historians accept that 'Neo-Platonism' was a distinct period of Greek philosophy but the old arguments about it being an inferior degraded version are harder to defend now the Catholic/Protestant rivalry had lost most of its relevance..
Very good information. For the division of Taoist, it certainly is a very modern result. For thousands of years in Chinese history, Taoism has been viewed as a continuing tradition from a local perspective. The separation of “philosophical” vs “religious” happened only at the late Qing Dynasty which is about early 1900s. It was a time after China was invaded and partially colonized by the West. The intellectual at the time decided that China needs to get westernized and so they basically invented and remodelled Chinese culture, history, narrative etc from the lens of western tradition. Only after this was Taoism being segregated. As Taoist cultivators we believe this division is misguiding and blind people from what’s most important and beneficial about Taoism. And that’s why we are doing this channel. We hope to introduce a more organic Taoism to the world and make cultivation accessible and beneficial to all. People would be shocked because meditation, breathing methods, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, internal martial arts were all coming from the cultivation tradition. At the end of the day, Taoism is not interested in pure thinking and elaborating, it’s interested in transforming and transcending both the body and mind.
Adored the video, I'm a South African student who's been studying Mandarin for a few years and I'm reading the Dao De Jing for the first time. Your videos have been very helpful for me in understanding them! Thank you for your work.🌻
Hope you enjoyed studying Mandarin, and I’m really glad you found interest in Dao De Jing! We are thinking about doing a video talking about Dao De Jing based on commentaries from famous Taoist cultivators from the past. Would you be interested in such topic? Thank you for your support and we appreciate your feedback a lot : )
I feel like some of the passages you mentioned within the Tao te Ching are a bit of a stretch, but there are plenty of more mystical daoist works from that early period even if they are less famous.
And many of the famous mystical works predate Daoism. It could be what they mean. But it seems like reading into the text.
My personal theory is that the early daoists were religious, but were more focused on the persuit of the truth and moral cultivation in a practical way, but that by the time the Han Dynasty started, that the folk tradition of Wizards, geomancers, and medical practitioners discovered and adopted the broader works. But, I don't know enough to verify it.
If we look at the story of Laozi, he didn't set out to create a philosophy, but rather someone happened to ask him to write down his Thoughts.
Zhuangzi was more intentional, but was more focused on specifically refuting the Confucians and Mohists, within the context of the School of names.
Regardless, Zhuangzi in particularly advocates fairly strongly for a moral form of cultivation, and his Talk of immortals and such clearly refute the more biased view that it is incompatible with a pursuit of immortality, because he expresses death as something to be accepted.
Regardless, even before religious daoism was instiutionalized. It was still closely tied with traditional medicine and folk classics.
And pretty much all philosophies of the time were also heavily influenced by religious and folk aspects.
The original 5 classics of Confucianism included the Yi Jing. And to a broader extent, many early Philosophies before the Han Dynasty could be viewed as alternative methods and theories about what nature is like both outside and inside of people. And there is general agreement for the most part that trying to get to the core nature is good.
And there was also a notable period before Daoism was institutionalized where it was commonly syncretized as a more personal or metaphysical element underpinning Confucianism.
Where Confucianism is like the branches of a tree and Daoism was the trunk or roots.
And that is was the growing influence and contact with Buddhism which actually spurred Daoism to become organized, it was still to an extent religious, and involved meditation and magical practices before that point.
(Part of the issue is what practices.) From what I can tell chanting, talismans, and a greater focus on internal vs. external alchemy in comparison to geomancy and divination is part of the Daoist Response to Buddhism.
If there was a distinct "philosophical Daoism" historically, it clearly merged with and joined up with Zen Buddhism. And wouldn't have been a pure version of the classics, but rather an retroactive reflection during the Han Dynasty.
Yes 🫡💫💫💫💫 Dyer talked a0bout often 💜
I would really love to dive more into the religious form of Taoism. It's sadly almost seems inaccessible and unheard of by people in the West. A video on it and learning more about it would be highly interesting.
Thanks for the feedback! Is there specific things about religion Taoism that you’re interested? Like sects? Practice? Scriptures? Chanting? Or, is there a question/questions you’d like an answer about it?
@ShengxuanDaoism Hello! Well overall I'm very interested in all of it. It's really a topic, when I think of Taoism, that isn't mentioned by lots of people that I know of. I would say I'm curious about the practices, chanting, and scriptures. I find this wonderful and interesting to me seeing that there's a whole other side to Taoism.
Thank you for the video! 😊
Hey, thanks for supporting us!
@@ShengxuanDaoism quick 2 questions how does Daoism and Yi Jing tie in together? Then also what does Sincerity mean in Daoist context. I am learning Yi Jing and feel like an energy that makes me feel calm
, joyful and smarter comes into my body its like a big consciousness enters my body how does this work?
@@WiseFool888 Not sure how is it translated and arranged in English, but basically, Yi Jing is the script that has the 64 hexagrams and explanation of each hexagram and yao. Besides that, there's also the Yi Zhuan, which is the interpretive commentary of Yi Jing by Confucius. Yi Jing and Yi Zhuan together is called Zhou Yi, which is a Confucian classics.
However, Yi Jing was passed down long before Confucius, dating back to the ancient Chinese wisdom. So it's shared by all schools in China. It not only captures the changes in the natural and human world, but also contains secrets about cultivation. That's why you can also see hexagrams in Taoist cultivation text and symbolisms.
Glad you found calmness and joy through the reading. That probably means you have connection to Taoism and should explore more about it : )
@@ShengxuanDaoism What do you think are the best Taoist Commentaries on the Yi Jing/I Ching
(I have seen it written either way. But from what I heard the second matches how it sounds better.)
I have been reading about it a bit as well. Although, weirdly I found some areas where the cosmology of the Yi Ching, seems to conflict with the Yellow Emporer's Classic to an extent.
I think this video is the best I've found on the topic, and I agree with most of it, but disagree on a couple points.
Because the DDJ and Zhuangzi offer a consistent theory of the world that can answer many different important questions, you can be Daoist without believing any other doctrines or areas of Chinese thought - in the same sense as you could be empiricist, pragmatist, marxist etc. So I wouldn't go with "philosophical vs religious" but I would go with "Daoism and its religions". Allowing the works of Laozi and Zhuangzi at least, to have their own term "Daoism" recognises what a massive leap in Chinese thought these works were.
I don't think anyone (except maybe Wang Bi) who adopted this daoist view in this sense, didn't also believe in the supernatural stuff that was mentioned throughout. But I think you can believe in this world view without believing in anything supernatural.
I think if the argument is that Daoist religions are just evolved Chinese folk religion, then yes there's no really important difference. In that case I'd say people who want to say they're Daoist for following this "world view" just pick a different word. I like Xuan Xue, but I am not good at pronouncing it (EDIT: now I think about it Shengxuan actually is a pretty great name for it too...)
I just mention this because I worry the "philosophical vs religious" debate seems to have just two sides. 1 side that seems to not know about the religious context of when these works were written (i.e. pro philosophical side), and 2 side that seems to see a continuous thread in Chinese thought from well before Laozi to present day. 1 I reject because it's just wrong, many of 2 I reject because they don't even recognise as you do that there was a long path of evolution to explicitly Daoist organised religions, but I can't settle on the good side of 2 myself, as I think it does gloss over just what a giant leap in ideas these two works were.
We might disagree about how much value is lost when you remove the supernatural parts, but even just the non-supernatural parts I think we should be able to agree are extremely valuable leaps in human thought, not just Chinese thought. I get a little annoyed when people point at what I see as sophisticated logical arguments (though hard to understand if unfamiliar with context) and say "wow how deep and meaningful this mysterious and impossible to understand text is!" (though that view has always been there) and I think these people have had it downplayed to them just what an achievement these Daoist works are (and probably share similar views of all Chinese thought).
Do you have book recommendations for authentic Taoism? I am reading the biography of Wang Liping, 18th generation Dragongate transmitter but is the book genuine? Also, can you recommend books on lives of the Taoists especially modern ones if not, I’ll take book any recommendations you have. Thanks!
For Taoist tradition, books are usually written in secret expressions and those who only have correct lineage could “de-code” the content. This is the case especially when it comes to the actual cultivation method. Moreover, most of those are still untranslated to English, so i would say it’s not an ideal way to know Taoism. What specific aspects do you want to know about Taoism? Maybe we can come out with new videos about those.
For lives of Taoists, the classic one is 《历代神仙通鉴》& 《列仙全传》. For the more modern one, no one made collections about the story, as a result of Qing Dynasty’s governing and modern wars and revolutions in China. But I would recommend checking out the the story of Zhang Sanfeng, which you could find in 《张三丰全集》.
Nei gong pls
👍 thank you for the feedback!
How would daoism coherently explain already existent Metaphysical realities like Logic, and give a coherent account for Morals?
In other words, what is Daoism/religious daoism Metaphysics’s. Both about deities But also Natural metaphysics like, again, logic or Higher mathematics or Morals.?
Have you read any Daoist texts yet?
@@WiseFool888 sadly the vast majority of the daoist cannon isnt and most likely wont ever be translated but Ive read the Stuff everyone would like the Dao de Ching and i am currently reading the Zhuangzi.
@@Sagemazeyeah nice! reading about Yi jing and Nei Ye as well as Huangdi Nei Jing. You start getting a sense of its metaphysics, morals, logic etc
@@WiseFool888 i will But a video would also help to interpret and for those who cant afford the Books
Hey, interesting question, but also a big question that obviously cannot be fully explained with a sentence or two. However, in short, there are several points that could be made.
Firstly, logic is a human construct rooted in human language. It's an abstraction of the world, but cannot capture all there is. That's why the opening chapter of Dao De Jing states that language is limited.
Morality too is something of the "human Dao" (人道), created by human beings and change according to time and space.
So for Taoism, everything in the world is in a flow of change, and even the principles themselves are changing "slowly" (not in a temporal sense).
Deities, in short, are created and depending on sentient being's faith. Without the feeding of faith, deities perish.
It's also worth mentioning too that Taoist world view is organized not in the same frame as western philosophy, because through out thousands of years, it's fair to say Taoists are more like scientists than philosophers. We are more interested in the "how to" than to give a complete account of "what is," as again how the first chapter of Dao De Jing has already set the tone.
However, there definitely is a world view, which we will be introducing one by one in the channel. If you're interested, you're welcome to subscribe us.
👁💥💜🐚🐉🦋🐣💎🙏
❤❤❤🙏🙏🙏
The assumption that Greek philosophy is merely theoretical without any practical application is quite wrong.
Perhaps both ancient wisdom suffer from modern misconceptions
@@ShengxuanDaoism The reason Greek philosophy wasn't 'practical' is that it was for wealthy aristocratic elites who could dedicate themselves to lives of contemplation. But the same is true in some sense for Buddhist monks so this 'philosophy vs religion' split that only developed in the west in the last 400 years and was imported into Asia under anti-religious Marxism makes haphazard sense at best.
Greek philosophy had its own concept of 'cultivation' in (using the exact same English word to translate the concept) in the kind of Virtue Ethics you find in Aristotle. Aristotle believed in 'natural slaves' who would be incapable of cultivating excellance by definition and since Greek aristocrats saw practical work as being for slaves the idea of slaves being capable of cultivating excellance would undermine Greek society. But Aristotle was also a botanist and a physicist which were both classed as 'natural philosophy' in Europe until 'Science' became the standard term in the late 1800s.
Modern Academic philosophy was invented by Protestant German University Professors who were fighting with Catholics over who was the legitimate inheritor of the legacy of ancient Greece. Virtue Ethics was very popular in the middle ages so Protestants had to reject it and with anti-clerical movements growing even in Catholic countries the Protestant opinion generally won out. Protestant Enlightenment Philosophy culminated in Kant who created new ethical ideas that didn't rely on cultivation and was very anti-Chinese to the point that Kantian curicula in American Universities reject the idea of Chinese philosophy even existing. So the main reason why Academic philosophy generally doesn't talk about cultivation is mostly just politics.
The idea that early Taoist thinking was corrupted to become more religious sounds like it was directly copied from Protestant historians of philosophy who invented the same narrative about Greek Platonism to discredit the so called 'Neo-Platonists' popular with Catholic Philosophy professors. Modern historians accept that 'Neo-Platonism' was a distinct period of Greek philosophy but the old arguments about it being an inferior degraded version are harder to defend now the Catholic/Protestant rivalry had lost most of its relevance..
Very good information. For the division of Taoist, it certainly is a very modern result. For thousands of years in Chinese history, Taoism has been viewed as a continuing tradition from a local perspective. The separation of “philosophical” vs “religious” happened only at the late Qing Dynasty which is about early 1900s. It was a time after China was invaded and partially colonized by the West.
The intellectual at the time decided that China needs to get westernized and so they basically invented and remodelled Chinese culture, history, narrative etc from the lens of western tradition. Only after this was Taoism being segregated.
As Taoist cultivators we believe this division is misguiding and blind people from what’s most important and beneficial about Taoism. And that’s why we are doing this channel. We hope to introduce a more organic Taoism to the world and make cultivation accessible and beneficial to all. People would be shocked because meditation, breathing methods, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, internal martial arts were all coming from the cultivation tradition. At the end of the day, Taoism is not interested in pure thinking and elaborating, it’s interested in transforming and transcending both the body and mind.