Thoughts on Buddhism

[Angrboda]

That's true apophenia, and I confess that this is one area where I personally have difficulty with accepting philosophies like Taoism too literally.

If you're were a German in Nazi Germany should you "go with the flow" to persecute Jews and contribute to trying to conquer and enslave the entire world?

If you live in the buckle of the Bible Belt should you "go with the flow" and become a highly zealous Christian bigot and support that mentality?

These kinds of concerns do cause one to question precisely what is meant by "flow with the Tao". Is that basically the same thing as "When in Rome do as the Romans do?"

I personally feel that it should be taken in a different light. And I'll confess that it's not easy to decide precisely what it should mean exactly.

But then again, if the secular atheists are right it doesn't truly mean anything. It's just philosophical mumbo jumbo spouted by mere spiritless mortal men who will soon perish and may as well have never existed at all.

You need to fortify that Taoism with "wu wei", which is normally translated as "no action" or "inaction". Perhaps a better translation would be "right action", similar to that in the eightfold path of Buddhism. One of my favorite passages from the Tao Te Ching asks, can you remain still until the mud settles. Inaction when inaction is called for, right action when action is called for. You don't stand there, stuck in the mud forever — act when acting is worthwhile, but don't fill life with action because you have no stillness inside you. Another relevant quote, which will be bungled because I'm not going to look it up, but basically it says that sometimes the sage is ahead, and sometimes the sage is behind. I have a couple of bronze statues of Nataraja, which is Shiva in his role as Lord of the Dance. The Dance is creation, and in one hand, Shiva has a drum with which he beats out the rhythm that propels the unfolding of creation. I think in more direct terms, the Taoist sage attempts to attend to the rhythm of creation, and act in tune with that, instead of his own vain rhythms of greed, fear, want, and so forth. Now, I'm not gonna pretend to be an imitable sage; many of the questions you ask, as you asked them, or as I see them in my own life, make me stop and scratch my head at times. I spent 12-13 years puzzling over a question about life that I didn't feel was adequately answered by the texts I follow as a Taoist. In the end, I pulled in some strands of Buddhism and Sun Tzu to patch up the hole. I still am uncertain whether I accepted that patch because it fit the hole, or rather because I needed - wanted - to fill that hole, even if I had to lie to myself and pretend that it fit when it didn't. Anymore i don't worry too much about my beliefs, as they serve me well from a functional aspect, and my life's focus is on human minds' function, irrespective of the beliefs they are shuffling around at the bottom level - I'm looking for the constants in human behavior and psychology, irrespective of belief content, with an aim for improving all people's ability to reason about their beliefs in productive and useful ways, regardless of whether those beliefs are Christian, atheist, Buddhist or whatever. So I don't worry as much about "what's true" any more - as there's a heavy load of irrationality in them all - I'm looking for ways to improve function across the board.

Anyway, sorry for the tl;dr.