kctan

This won't sit well with his taste in Daoism though. Immortality in an everlasting cycle of ends & beginnings. A school of thought in the Dao.

triplew00t

Once again, as best as I can tell, the original philosophical school of Taoism views death as the end of our personal existance. Only later were other ideas of life after death added. The flow of nature continues unabated, our parts go to new beings and our actions live on in an infinite chain of cause and effect, but we, as perceiving beings, wont be around to know it.

I find others of this same view both in Philosophical Taoism and certain Zen masters.

I want a religion that teaches to live in the now, to accept the flow of life and death without fighting it, and to not fear. But I do not want a religion that views life as unending (in the personal, I never die, sense. A pantheistic view of it is fine).

Nero

Vajradhara

Namaste all,

first, let me offer my greetings as i'm a new forum member


there are two main traditions of Taoism that continue today, a deriviative of the religious Taoism that was repleat with Gods/Goddesses and various other immortal beings. it is from this tradition that the "physcial immortality" teachings were derived.

we also have the Alchemical traditions that are generally split into the Northern Complete Reality School and the Souther Complete Reality School, with an emphasis being different between the two. the Alchemical traditions all roundly as false teachings and byways the practice of physical immortality.

many teachers, such as Lui-I Ming, also discount the waterwheel exercise as a minor technique not be be bothered with.

in any event, i've found the Northern Complete Reality School to be quite wonderful and thorough and it provides, in my opinion, the most complete form of Taoism today.