Daoism & Confucianism

Daoism & Confucianism

Introduction

Daoism and Confucianism are two religious traditions of ancient china. They coexist for centuries in China and now they have expanded their roots to different regions of Asia. Both of these religions seem to be influenced by Eastern culture. However, their approach to different to religious questions, such as existence of life, and the way to lead life and problems faced by people in normal life is totally different. Both of these religions coexist and the values offered by them are of such nature that can be adopted by a normal person simultaneously.

Taoism (Daoism)

Lao-Tzu is said as the author of Taoism (normally pronounced as Daoism). Taoism is normally translated as “old boy” or “old master”. No one knows a lot regarding the life of Lao-Tzu he may either not exist. According to a myth, he was born around 604 B.C.E. Initially he was appointed as a librarian and soon he left this job. Society disappointed him a lot, and he decided to leave the home in Luoyang. After leaving his home, he spent the rest of his life near Great Wall of China. When Lao-Tzu was passing the city gate for the last time, gatekeeper asked him to write his parting thoughts. After three days of writing, he gave a small book to that gatekeeper. He then left and never came back. “Tao Te Ching” is the book written by Lao-Tzu and is considered as the most important asset of Taoism (Chang, 2011).

It is very difficult to define Taoism clearly. It is not only for Westerners who face difficulty in defining Taoism, Chinese also feel it difficult to sort out what Taoism means for the world. Taoism can be defined as a philosophy, as Chinese religion and series of health practice to lead life healthfully as yoga. The Chinese word Tao, which is normally pronounces as 'Dao' means a way or a path. So it can be referred as the way to lead life and path to the destination. In its higher meaning, Tao means how things are and the way of how universe is. However, spiritually Tao means the way to achieve understanding of the true nature of mind and living life in harmony with respect to changes in the nature. Hence Tao is a vision, a way and the journey all in one (Girardot, 1988).

A Taoist is a follower of the way and the path told by Taoism. Taoist seems to be appeared almost four thousand years ago when people lived near to nature. People used to be frightened by the powers of nature at that time. Seasonal changes in nature such as floods, volcanoes affected the lives and assets of different people. So people treated nature to be very powerful and mysterious. In different religions, people believe that God created humanity, Taoism also believes in such concept. They believed that every person is a part of the universe, and patterns of human societies are small reflections of huge patterns that is a ...