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2011/10/15

Water in Taoism: No. 1


In Tao* scriptures, it reads “closest being to Tao is heaven and earth, and closest movement to Tao is water.

How Tao treats water?  First, it is explained as noncompetitive.  In other words, it does not compete with anything.  It accepts everything, and emerges into objects.  Yet, it does not lose its identity.

If a person applies this way of life to this real world, one is regarded as a looser, and people would blame one’s naïveness.  However, is it really so?

Since individual statements are so prevailed in the society, a person can stand alone and does not loose one’s identity even one is mingling with others; even then, the one is still sure which way one should go.  If the person can recognize it as a noble way of thinking, one is a person of Tao.

A person of Tao is flexible and soft.  Therefore one cannot easily be toned apart, never gives up and makes steady efforts to achieve the will.  Water is guardian for the freedom, tolerance, and purification.

*Tao: One of the Chinese philosophical traditions. Please refer to Tao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism)