TAOIST HISTORY: Laozi & Tao Te Ching | Insider's Perspective

[@HEROFrogman69]

Very insightful and i feel these videos are more scholarly here because of the insiders perspective.

[@goddess749]

Very good, thanks

[@aliri3]

I highly respect you for your work. Thank you very much, I greatly look forward to more. As someone who is just starting learning about Chinese culture and language, I would greatly appreciate more context around the Chinese words used and especially the stories that capture the essence of these concepts and masters.

[@WajidAli-np6xx]

Hi. Your videos are very interesting and answer several of my questions. Please do tell something about the symbol of your channel what it means. Also do you have any plans to start webinars where participants can ask some questions as well.

[@ShengxuanDaoism]

Hi there, thanks for the feedback! We'd love to share the concept behind our symbol in the following uploads. Currently we don't have plans for webinars yet, but you're welcome to post questions in the comments, which can also give us a better sense about what to talk about.

[@HEROFrogman69]

@@ShengxuanDaoism could you maybe give us an inside into the historical figure of zhungzi?

[@ClaimClam]

Great video, but what is The Dao?

[@clayrab]

Subscribed. Recommend you to buy a better mic. A decent Shure is not that expensive. The quality of your voice is quite bad, there is a reverb perhaps from the walls behind you and and there is a strong noise also.

[@ThihaLinn-b9c]

What I want to know about Daoism is that why do Daoist texts sound anti-wealth? Yet at the same time, Chinese worship the god of money and pay homage. Why is that?

[@ShengxuanDaoism]

This is actually a great question. In short, there are two main reasons. First, as you will start to see from the Zhuangzi episode, Taoist tradition has different branches and approaches; each has its own set of variances. There are Zhuangzi, Liezi, Yangzhu etc on the one side who adore more a hermit style of self cultivation (and texts from this tradition generally sound more anti-wealth), while you can also see Huang-Lao school taking on a more worldly engagement who cultivate themselves through governing a state like a body, as well as Fan Li, who was an extraordinary cultivator, a successful minister, and a legendary businessman at Pre-Qin era. Those directions in cultivation created a culture ground for worldly engagement. Taoist religions later on also inherited those variations, which will be clear as we move to the episodes on Taoist religion. Second, there are stages to Taoist pursuit. Those "anti-wealth" passages speaks directly to the ultimate goal: transcending our fundamental existence. Hence from this perspective, wealth, power, anything from human society, and even the natural world, are fundamentally illusional. Attachment to those things is therefore discouraged. However, there is also elemental stage. Transcendence is valued because Taoism thinks this state allows infinite possibility. But an expansion of current possibility is also valued. For most people, being better off economically generally opens up possibilities. So at this kind of stage, Taoism is not anti-wealth. When they can better take care of themselves, their possibility increases, which is already something good.

[@ThihaLinn-b9c]

@@ShengxuanDaoism Thank you for your explanation