Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!udel!princeton!phoenix!kentvax.kent.edu
From: bridean@kentvax.kent.edu (Brian Dean)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Taoism
Message-ID: <14593@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 16 Mar 90 14:32:12 GMT
Sender: mukund@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
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  As far as I know, Taoism is not to organized of a religion.
You don't have a direct line of successors like you do in
Buddhism or Christianity which has the distinct disadvantage
that the teachings of Taoism weren't passed down in any form
as unperverted as we have in Buddhism and Christianity (not
that these two aren't perverted from the original form, just
that these religions are less perverted).  So actually, there
is a very wide disagreement among scholars as to exactly what
the early Taoists believed.  As far as the teachings of Taoism
that you get in various books, these are more often than not
the authors own opinion and it is possible that Lao Tzu (assuming
he was a real person, which scholars don't know for sure about)
would disagree with everything everybody says about Taoism at
one level or another.  But since we don't know, we can't say
for sure about these types of things.  
  I practiced zen buddhism (with a mixture of Jodo Shinshu) for
about three years, but I quit out of dissatisfaction.  I am now
in the process of becoming an orthodox catholic although I still
have great respect for the eastern traditions.  I would still like
to learn more about the spirituality of the religion that I left
along with other eastern religions under the understanding that
I can no longer practice such traditions.  
  How do you people react to this?

- Brian M. Dean -