Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:For the Christian, God has a specific name and each person can establish a personal relationship with him.
~ King James version ~
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
~ from Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching ~
For the Taoist, the Way has no name -- we merely call it Tao -- and there is no entity to form a personal relationship with.
If you're interested in reading more from this experimental series, go to the Tao Bible Index page.
While I don't want to get into a discussion of the historical derivation of "Jehovah", and I do not dispute the Christian insistence on personal relationships with God, I think the notion of each person following his own Taoist path is not unlike having a personal relationship with God.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those places where I think there is more similarities than divides in the Judeo-Christian and Taoist texts.
IMHO, It is the nature of humans to try understand themselves in a relationship with something they sense as larger and overarching, through religion, philosophy and/or science. And we participate in that overarching thing through literature, art, music, and perhaps, DNA analysis. (I consciously leave out politics, economics and the so-called "social sciences.')