/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>14520518
For what you say about Taoism, don't get yourself mistaken by such trivial points of view. It's more complex than that.

Same for what you said about conficianism, you need to replace the context, and things in China back then weren't that easy, there were a lot of barbaric dynasties, and these thought were really important back then.
And that's because things weren't right that the taoism is pretty interesting, because they tried to reject the wicked rules in days of yore, and also try to respect the individual liberties of people.

And for what you say about "you can't describe the tao" that makes you think it's retarded, actually it's not retarded, you seem to judge too superficially things and claim things very fast.
They added intentionally paradoxes and contradictory things "as a teaching", to make you learn to "change the conventional way of thinking and logic", and that's something today's society cruelly lacks. Everyone is pre-formated like a sheep in our society, and people forget to "think different".

And that's where taoism is the most different from confucianism because confucianism likes doctrins, and taoism rejects them.

They want to be in harmony with everything, let things happen naturally, empty yourself to be like a dead leafs in the flow of life.
If you're in a bark on a river and on the way of a small boat, you'll get yelled or insulted to move, but if the bark is empty, the boat will simply avoid and get around you.

They also let man organize by himself without being governed and oppressed.
And when you see how is our society, I think some of these ideas are really more than interesting.
We're all slaves of the things we own, yet we don't know why and they don't make us happier, we work more and more "for progress", but it only makes rich people richer, and doesn't get much people happier, because most of the people think about their personal interest and money, material things, etc... And they don't try to "progress" inside themselves...
(and our society's rules are more and more not made "to protect everyone" but to enrich people who bribe the ones who decide the rules, the justice is not a justice anymore either, but that's another story...)

Well, I didn't say I was agreeing with everything in taoism, and even less that I was a taoist, many of the things they do are kinda weird too, their refusal of technology is kinda exaggerated I agree for that (but it's also very interesting to see how today's society is on the other extreme, where people only think through that, and are totally dependent and slave of these same technologies). Their "diet" are also kinda weird, and their alchemical things too.

But many things in this philosophy is really very interesting and our society lacks of some of them, unfortunately.
There are a lot of other interesting things, like all the works on energies, meditation, there are a lot of things in taoism, especially the work on your respiration and breath that you only find in yoga and nowhere else.

Something also very important, they might reject social constraints but they are still very moral and benevolent. It's a philosophy/religion that pushes people to do good, and always try to help people. That's how you become a Xian (sennin), by doing good actions.
Their goal is immortality (not for selfish purposes but more like en enlightenment), and each time they do good, they gain "days of life", and doing bad things and harming people means losing days of life and get closer to death. (And they don't have netherworld or hell, when you die, it's over. That's why they try to avoid death.)

And actually, you shouldn't think "hermits are evil" because of Seiga, because I read you said that you think Kasen is the only good hermit.
Seiga is weird, but hermits are good in general.
Miko looks "evil" in hopeless masquerade because tasofro took too much liberties and deformed her to make her look "dark" but she's not evil.

Actually, in Gensōkyō's mythology, Sennins (hermits) who are transcended humans, ascend to higher classes, like celestials or divine spirits.
So hermits are supposed to become celestials or divine spirits, that's why you don't see so many of them (well, you wouldn't see so many of them anyway, since they're hermits).
But like I said, Seiga is weird, and that's why she can't become a celestial, because of her personality.
(talking about Seiga, let's not forget that Symposium of Post-mysticism are texts or dialogs coming from other characters of gensōkyō, so they might be very subjective and oriented, and I personally don't believe she's "that" evil, or at least I take things with hindsight and distance. )

But please don't make one case a generality and don't hate hermits without knowing them...