Taoisism And Confucianism Research Paper

Taoism and Confucianism are two major Chinese philosophies. I say that they are philosophies because religions tend to worship deities and Taoism and Confucianism don’t seems to worshiping anything. To some they appear to be different, even clashing but to me, they seem very much alike but they come at it from different points of view. Both philosophies strive to reach harmony but in to very different ways. I do believe the reason they can co-exist is because they see Tao from two different ways.

Lao Tzu believed that Tao is a natural thing. He believes that you come by it or you realize its presents and experience it. The best way for me to explain how Lao Tzu perceives the Tao is to take it directly from our reading in Molloy, “The Doa cannot be named because it has no form. But the Dao can be experienced and followed by every individual thing that has a name (213).” Lao Tzu used Tao as a way of being and living in harmony with nature. Lao Tzu believed that Tao came to you by using his teaching of Wu Wei, Simplicity, Gentleness and Relativity (217-218).

Confucius believes that you have to work to gain Tao in the human world (227). Confucius used Tao in a very structured way to bring order to society by shaping the way people lived their lives. Confucius believed that you needed to build on social relationship to build yourself and achieve Tao. According to Molloy, Confucius believe that Tao could be achieved through excellence and “excellence come partly form the cultivation of and individual’s virtues and intellect. Thus education is essential (230).”

The both function together because they are both trying to reach the goal of harmony, but they are trying to do it two different ways. In the video clip it is said that the ...

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...on to someone that has grown up practicing multiple religions, there answer would be opposite of mine, they would say that it is completely possible. If you would ask someone who lives an eastern society, let say China, if they could every practice in more than one religion, they answer would probably be, “Yes I do.” They would answer yes it is not a foreign concept to them. They could probably tell you that they practice in Tao and Buddhism, Buddhism and Confucianism, Tao and Christianity or they could even say Tao, Confucianism and Buddhism.

One thing that I do have to not that was very interesting to learn from this chapter is the meaning of the yin and the yang. I had been taught growing up that it stood for good and evil but it was nice to learn that it actually doesn’t stand for that and it stands for “complementary but opposing forces of the universe (208).”