Taoism

Taoism is a philosophy, a religion and also the basis for Traditional Chinese Medication. It represents the wisdom accumulated over 5,000 years of Chinese history. Together with Confucianism and Buddhism, it has been continuously guiding Chinese in behaviors and governing.

There are some very basic different approaches taken by the West and Chinese philosophies. The West treats individual as an independent and separate entity. Chinese treats individual as an element in the whole universe and is interrelated. West tends to be self-centered and thus any blame will be first on others. On the opposite, Chinese is taught to merge self into the environment as a whole or there is no self at all. Tao and Taoism are different from "God" and "Bible". To understand Taoism, one has to "unlearn" or break out from own paradigm to view it from a completely new angle.

"Tao" means "behavior, understanding and the constant changing from and to". Taoism is a philosophy and a belief of simplicity and the very nature of universe. There is no absolute "stillness". Everything, including the universe, is changing all the time. The relative "stability" can be achieved when a harmony is reached between "Yin" and "Yang", which are said to be the opposite but related natural forces in the universe.

Taoism teaches Chinese to go alone with the nature, to seek harmony in life and meditate for mental peacefulness and "emptiness". Any act to one extreme will cause the opposite reaction in force until the balance is reached.