Human Search For Meaning

According to the earliest taoist sacred texts, when human nature is aligned with the rest of nature, you are able to obtain order and harmony. There are three particular thing things that Taoists search for or try to achieve in life. They try to achieve a lengthened life, harmony with Wu Wei and perfection and achievement. The lengthened life indicates that they are closer to perfection as it is believed the deities are immortal. Harmony with Wu Wei suggests that a person has achieved the path of spontaneity and through this path achievement supposedly comes naturally.

 

In Taoism, human search for meaning is found through the belief of natural course. Once a human is in a mode of nature, meaning can be further understood. Training the body so that it is free to act spontaneously allows the person to fully experience natural order (nature). These physical exercises are designed to improve health and lengthen life. This leads on to the Taoist idea of immortality. The belief that deities come to immortality by becoming in a state of perfection inspires Taoists to become as naturally perfect as possible. Particular exercises that can be legitimately practiced to become closer to meaning. These include breathing exercises, dietary restrictions (drinking talisman water- ashes of a sacred diagram are drawn on paper, then burned and the ashes dissolve into water) and sexual practices designed to generate sexual energy and navigate it to the brain. These practices are believed to help lengthen life, find harmony and assist with natural course.

 

Self cultivation is important to finding meaning in human nature. The purpose of self-cultivation is to return to a mode of existence that is natural, but has been obscured by social conditioning.4 Ultimately, Taoism’s search for human meaning is very naturalistic and internal. The individual is to search for a sense of connectedness to the earth.

 

 

 

 

4 Julia Hardy 2008, ‘Human Nature and the Purpose of Existence’, retrieved 22 March 2014, http://www.patheos.com/Library/Taoism/Beliefs/Human-Nature-and-the-Purpose-of-Existence