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Essay / Taoism and Confucianism Research Paper - 685
Taoism and Confucianism are two major Chinese philosophies. I say they are philosophies because religions tend to worship deities and Taoism and Confucianism don't seem to worship anything. To some they seem different, even contradictory, but to me they seem very similar but they approach things from different angles. Both philosophies strive for harmony, but in very different ways. I believe the reason they can coexist is because they see the Tao in two different ways. Lao Tzu believed that the Tao was a natural thing. He believes you are going through it or realizing his gifts and experiencing them. The best way for me to explain how Lao Tzu views the Tao is to take it directly from our reading in Molloy: “The Doa cannot be named because it has no form. But the Tao can be experienced and followed by each individual thing that has a name (213). Lao Tzu used the Tao as a way of being and living in harmony with nature. Lao Tzu believed that the Tao came to you using his teaching of Wu Wei, Simplicity, Gentleness and Relativity (217-218). Confucius believes that you must work to gain the Tao in the human world (227). Confucius used the Tao in a very structured way to bring order to society by shaping the way people lived their lives. Confucius believed that one must rely on social relationships to build oneself and achieve the Tao. According to Molloy, Confucius believed that the Tao can be achieved through excellence and that “excellence comes in part from the cultivation of the individual's virtues and intellect. Education is therefore essential (230). “The two work together because they are both trying to achieve the goal of harmony, but they are trying to do it in two different ways. In the video clip it says that the...... middle of paper ...... on someone who grew up practicing multiple religions, the answer would be opposite to mine, they would say it is completely possible. If you ask someone who lives in an Eastern society, say China, if they can practice more than one religion, they will probably say, “Yes, I do.” They would say yes, it's not a foreign concept to them. They could probably tell you that they practice Tao and Buddhism, Buddhism and Confucianism, Tao and Christianity or they could even say Tao, Confucianism and Buddhism. One thing that I must not forget and that was very interesting to learn from this chapter is the meaning of yin and yang. I had been taught growing up that it represented good and evil, but it was nice to learn that it actually doesn't mean that and that it represents "the complementary but opposing forces of the universe ». (208).”