Taoism

This week, we will be reading comic excerpts from "Zhuangzi Speaks: The Music of Nature" and discussing Taoism. Come on by for a relaxing story time and discussion about how to follow the Tao.

• Relatively speaking… Zhuangzi Speaks: The Music of Nature

• Taoism

• Living in harmony with “the Way” or Nature

• Does Taoism facilitate complacency?

• Western approach for an Eastern Perspective

• Worth and worthlessness are imposed onto situations, but relative with hindsight and application

• Tao and eco-feminism

• Zi Gong’s Snow-White Clothes

• “A person who wears snow-white clothes isn’t necessarily so pure on the inside. Being poor is better than gaining riches through improper acts.”

• Moral intuitionism

• Spectrum of good and bad

• Right vs. good

• Learning to Walk in Handan

• “At the outset, people who study are in search of the essence of nature, but after a while, they get lost in the forest of books and can’t get out.”

• Contradicting your individual nature which will disrupt your natural disposition

• Straying from your nature and going against the Way is discouraged because it goes against a natural state that you’re supposed to be in

• The Little Sparrow’s Small Happiness

• “We shouldn’t laugh at the sparrow in its small, self-contained world; nor should we envy the great peng bird in its grandeur.”

• Taoist goal of following individual happiness regardless of potential comparisons

• Understanding of others and what makes them happy vs. being content with what we have and recognizing others

• Zhuangzi on his Deathbed

• “Death is a natural dispersion and transformation of the body, so why not let nature handle it?”