Expert: Joe McSorley - 7/27/2006

Question
A couple of questions;  I know Taoism is not a religon but does Taoism believe in God (it talks of Heaven and earth)?
Also, Buddhism speaks of compassion, Taoism speaks of being compatible with nature (whatever "nature" means) and heaven and earth viewing people as "Straw dogs" Nature is not compassionate.  Yet I noticed you write of both the Tao and Buddhism, is this not some contradiction.  Where is the compassion in Taoism?  Please explain.  Thanks  

Answer
You didn’t say what it was you saw as contradiction so I don’t know what to address there.  I don’t know that Taoism does speak of compassion.  Taoism is concerned with the individual realizing the interpenetration of all things, that everything defines everything else.  Here again is self as other and other as self.  There are many ways to define compassion but it might be seen as seeing other as self and reacting with this knowledge.  We humans think of compassion as letting something live and having feelings for it, being kind to it, but that does not work in nature.  The natural process involves creation and destruction, you can’t have it one sided.  To realize life as both life and death is to realize the root of yin yang and interpenetration.  An anthropomorphic view of compassion does not work here.
 Take care,
      Joe