CHAT: Tao Te Ching

>From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
>
> > Yeah - I remember hearing a joke in my Taoist philosophy class - if
>Taoism
> > is all about wordless teaching, why did they need to write the book of a
> > thousand words (the Tao Te Ching)?
>
>Because it is poetry and not philosophy, religion, or ethics.  (The same
>can be said of the Bible, or much of it.)
Well - I do think it is those things - but it certainly is poetry, that is
for sure - that's why it's so interesting.  The Chuang-Tzu is even better -
but they work because they are almost like poetic myths.  The philosophy
only comes out by engaging the text - like a kind of Socratic dialog.

>"[The TTC] ...
(For a second I read that as "Toronto Transit Commission")

>... is the most lovable of all the great religious texts, funny, keen,
>kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly refreshing. Of
>all the deep springs, this is the purest water.  To me, it is also the
>deepest spring."
>         --Grandmother Little Bear Woman
>
Amen to that!  (BTW - does anybody know the etymology of Amen?  I read
someplace that the word amen had a common Indo-European heritage as Sanskrit
om - can anybody confirm or deny this? and are there any other similar
words? in other IE descended languages?)

>Or as the book says about itself (poem 41):
>
>         Thoughtful people hear about the Way
>         and try hard to follow it.
>         Ordinary people hear about the Way
>         and wander onto it and off it.
>         Thoughtless people hear about the Way
>         and make jokes about it.
>         It wouldn't be the Way
>         if there weren't jokes about it.
My Taoist philosophy teacher once said he believed a good sense of humour is
essential to any kind of spiritual growth.  I can't help but agree with him.
  Life is absurd, but that's life... sometimes all you can do is laugh about
it.  I just wish it were as easy to practice as it is to say... LOL

Andy

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