/lit/ - Literature

>is blah blah blah the blah blah blah of blah blah blah?
go to bed

>>18716726
If you read the Dao de jing, you will see that it has nothing to do with the alchemical and magical horseshit of later centuries

>>18716744
>you will see that it has nothing to do with the alchemical and magical horseshit

If ignore the mystical religious and alchemy bullshit and go to back to the philosophy of Laozi, you will find that he is literally and unironically a Libertarian. The dao is literally the free-market, or rather Hayek's concept of emergent order and dispersed knowledge.

>>18716726
Daoism is a lot more retarded. No Hermetic taught people to drink mercury and sulpher to become immortal. You can forgive pre-modern man for believing in aome degree of dopey magic spells but not when they kill dozens of emporers and the same Daoist circles keep advising to drink the same mercury elixers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemical_elixir_poisoning
https://www.goldenelixir.com/jindan/jindan_intro.html

>>18716780
The tao that can be named is not the eternal tao

>>18716931
Who gives a fuck? Anyway, since you like aphorisms so much:
> Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

>>18716950
>who gives a fuck
You, apparently. You replied and tried to name the tao.

>>18716726
I want to practice Daoism so bad, but it never left Asia the way Buddhism did, so I will never have the chance.

>>18717016
You can't not practice it

>>18717016
damo mitchel
bonus: if you remove the m from his first name it spells dao.. must be legit!

>>18716744
This. Lao Tzu literally says to avoid being taken in by religious rituals/pageantry

>>18716726
>Dao and Nous
Dao and One you mean.

>>18716744
So it's less tamed and advanced? We are talking about a system that acknowledges the oneness of things but doesn't get into detail about the study of technique or language like Hermeticism does? Then it is dogshit. No different from Stoicism

>>18716744
Depends on the translation you read. Many translations strip out all allusions to magic and transcendence because they simply don't like it and consider it "accessory" and "non-essential." It's a similar situation with certain translations of Buddhist texts like the Dhammapada. Many people aren't aware, or choose to ignore, that Buddha explicitly affirms the existence of magic, gods, demi-gods, mind-reading, and so forth, and that it is not just an arbitrary addition to his teachings. He also states that he does not perform miracles because it would cause people to doubt his teachings (which is funny in comparing him with Jesus).

>>18716726
There are two varieties of Daoism. Philosophical and religious, many people will tell you that the distinction doesn't exist but it fucking does.

The magical religious bullshit comes LATER. In many aspects hundreds of years later. My advice? Stick to the Daodejing and maybe the Chuangtze.

Daoism became infested with the local Chinese folk religion and it's seeped into all of it's aspects.

There are Gems of wisdom to be found, but like so many other things they are awash in oceans of bullshit.

>>18717365
>I understand Taoism better than the Chinese people that have practiced it for nearly two thousand years and the priests/monks that have devoted their lives to it

>>18717377
I didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth.

>>18717365
>many people will tell you that the distinction doesn't exist but it fucking does.
Sure it does, in your mind. The Chuang-Tzu has obvious mysticism all throughout, by the way.

>>18717381
No, that's exactly what you said

道家, "philosophical Taoism", is Feng Shui, one becoming two then the two becoming the ten thousand things, but it's also the elixirs and internal alchemy shit. 道教, "religious Taoism", is about interacting with entities, either via worship, exorcism, veneration, getting secret knowledge, etc. You cannot do one without the other, it's an applied monistic whole. All you can do is argue that the Mercury Elixirs don't work.

Which essentially all Taoists agreed upon around 200BC when they came up with internal alchemy (tl;dr using the elements within the body to achieve alchemical effect due to the danger of using elixirs). The mercury dudes were always a minor sect that only kept existing due to the royal patronage of emperors. Of course, if you're not a retard, you'll understand that what they're actually doing is providing essentially an assassination service for Chinese bureaucratic forces who want to prevent hereditary nobility from being a bit too stable.

>>18717365
daoism in its earliest form was shamanistic

>>18717320
Is the Dao De Jing anti-religious?

>>18716780
I like anything posted with that particular frog next to it

>>18717341
>He also states that he does not perform miracles because it would cause people to doubt his teachings
Buddha also relies on miracles/superpowers to show people that he is right, like in his debate with Brahma-baka. It seems that Buddha contradicted himself and couldn’t make up his mind.

>>18717528
Skillful means.

>>18717684
>dude I can just contradict myself whenever I want and do something that I elsewhere stated I wouldn't do because everything I do even my contradictions are secretly designed to transmit muh enlightenment

>>18717694
The Buddha says that some people get things intellectually.
The Buddha says that some people need to experience things for themselves.
The Buddha says that some people need to have things demonstrated for them.
Not everyone is the same, so not everyone gets the same treatment.

There's no contradiction here, because everyone is different. What you're really upset about is that the Buddha is saying that everyone isn't the same. He's contradicting the Modernist line that you've been fed. There's a reason that he, and all religious traditions, do this.

>>18717888
>There's a reason that he, and all religious traditions, do this.
All religious traditions are false, as is expressed by the elephant simile or what jainism calls anekantavada, except I'm even less optimistic about our possibility to know the truth of existence than their assessment

>>18717365
That's like saying there is a philosophical Platonism without theurgy. Yes there is a philosophical system on which the, now embarrassing to modern ears, magic supervened, but magic was always the practice, the practical praxis, of the philosophy. Philosophy is the 'whatness', magic is the 'thatness' of what the system actually is in the acts and life of the adherent.

Perhaps the magic is accidental and can be dispensed with to recover an essential philosophy unblemished by the magic that now embarrasses us, but it is silly to deny that philosophy always needs a practical side, and for most of history that practical side has been magical-religious. To create a post-magic Daoism you will need to supervene a new praxis onto the philisophical essentiality you hope to recover.

>>18717888
>Not everyone is the same
I never said or indicated that I believed everyone was the same, I simply just pointed out a contradiction in Buddha’s behavior without me being emotionally involved in this observation, which you are attempting to rationalize away