[awareness]

Originally Posted by zeek

You know, whether Lee was conscious of it or not, there were Taoistic aspects to his thought. Publicly he dismissed Taoism and Buddhism as nonsense. But, his whole professed unwillingness to give advise and the passivity that he professed toward everything as it came to him by the guidance of the spirit was very Taoist. More religious Taoism than philosophical.

When John's Logos is translated for the Chinese version it's translated as the Tao. As a result, in the Chinese mind they picture the Logos as the Tao. So the Chinese syncretize their religious symbols right off the bat when reading the gospel of John. It's cultural. It can't be helped.

I'm just tossing out some thoughts here.

It can't be said that Lee was a Taoist. He was a Taoist like I'm a Southern Baptist. It's instilled in us, unconsciously, so to speak, or subconsciously, prolly, from birth.

To say that we can just uninstall it, like it's a computer program or something, is a fallacy. The culture we're raised in becomes part of our being. It becomes us, and we become it. And we don't see it any more than we can see our eyeballs when looking thru them. We look thru our culture like that.

I'd believe Lee's claim to be free from culture if he could have gotten free from his broken Chinese English. He didn't, and couldn't.

So cuz he couldn't help it, Lee was a Taoist in Christian clothing.

I wish I knew that back then. I should have. I was a fan of C.S. Lewis, who in his book "The Abolition of Man," speaks of the Tao:

"The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar."

And:

"I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself—just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind."

But cuz I was so busy in the local church life I never got around to reading Abolition of Man.

At least C.S. Lewis admitted openly his association with the Tao. Unlike Lee. Who snuck it in on us, importing it from China, into our soul in a hidden subconscious way, subliminally, if you will, culturally. Lee was a closeted Taoist.

To bad. As it turns out, like C.S. Lewis, I love the Tao. And I believe that reading >The Tao De Ching< can improve the Christian walk. Did I get this love for the Tao subliminally, perchance, from listening to Lee for a decade?

Maybe I should be careful. Being raised in a culture of the Tao didn't seem to do much for Lees' Christian walk. So maybe it's not all that.

You decide. Taste and see that the Tao is good. Ha.