mal4mac wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2017 11:49 am
Coëmgenu wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2017 10:42 pm
You could apply the same critique you apply to the no-work hippy-dippy Daoist to the vinaya-observing monastic.
Hardly ... alcohol is banned to the monastic, and following the path is hard work!
The taoist license to act with "wu wei", to act without "without effort" and "without control", seems a license to do just what you feel like in the moment. For an alcoholic that would be "have another one", repeat ad infinitum, which perhaps explains Alan Watts, and many hippies.
The other sense of wu wei; "action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort" seems a license to continue being an alcoholic, as getting off alcohol is a struggle for most.
No doubt there is some wisdom in Tao Te Ching ... "diminishing doing" and "diminishing will" would be useful in many contexts... but not in others, so it is a limited wisdom, hence we need the dhamma (or some other more comprehensive system...)
I am an alcoholic, sober since 91. I have read the ttc completely through at least 10 times. Quite often its in my pocket on the way to work or im reading it on public transportation, the PDF of the Red Pine translation is open on my desktop now.
The ttc is an important part of my spiritual program and you have completely mis interpreted an important taoist touchstone.
I suggest that after you have some more practice under your belt you give the ttc another look, it is a map of the relationship of humanity to mind (in the sense that huang po used the concept of heart-mind in the cleary translation of The Zen Teachings of Huang Po) and self to Self. (for various meanings of Self including but not limited to: emptiness, the deathless, rigpa, the One, etc, etc, ad infinitium.)
Oh and btw i am probably what you would call a hippie
i dont use drugs or alcohol now, but took lots of LSD, smoked lots of pot and drank lots of alcohol in my youth and just to reiterate:
41
When a superior man hears of the Tao,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Tao,
he half believes it, half doubts it.
When a foolish man hears of the Tao,
he laughs out loud.
If he didn't laugh,
it wouldn't be the Tao.
~from the mitchell translation
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.” ― Robert M. Pirsig