Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST, Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life (Register here), a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living! This week begins an exploration into Taoism through Tao: The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts (initially published in 1975).
What is Taoism?
Taoism (or Daoism) stands alongside Confucianism as one of China's two great religious/philosophical systems. Although traditionally traced to the mythical Laozi “Old Philosopher,” Daoism owes more to the “philosopher Zhuang” (Zhuangzi). Daoism is an umbrella that covers a range of similarly motivated doctrines. “Daoism” is also associated with assorted naturalistic or mystical religions. Listen to my conversation with Bryan Van Norden (author of Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto) to learn more.
Definitions of Daoism are controversial because of the complex twists in its development as it played a role in China's long history. Even the coining of the term creates ambiguity about what counts as ‘Daoism’. Three to seven centuries after they were supposed to have lived, historians of the Han dynasty (around 100 BCE) identified Laozi and Zhuangzi as Daoists. […]
Learn more: Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy
Seeing Beyond Words — According to Watts
Alan Watts once stressed that we have forgotten that thoughts and words are conventions and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.
In his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts put it this way,
To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words — to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, only through silence can one discover something new to talk about.
This video titled Life is NOT Complicated (by the folks at After Skool) sets a talk by Watts into animation.
Seeing the world beyond words brings us closer to perceiving reality. Shunryu Suzuki (author of Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind) explained that emptying water from a cup does not mean drinking it. “To empty” means to have a direct, pure experience without relying on the form or color of being. So, our experience is “empty” of our preconceived ideas, our idea of being, and our idea of big or small.
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