Taoism (World Religions: A Whirlwind Tour)

The Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life offers a series of short classes this spring designed to teach participants about the origins, beliefs and practices of various faith traditions.

LD Russell, in the Department of Religious Studies, leads this weekly Monday program to teach the concepts, ideas and practices of several of the world's biggest religions.

[tanushreenadir]

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it."

[lemon]

I love how this channel's popular content is 50%religious lectures n 50%electrical setup

[roiferreach]

Trust the Universe, it has much much intelligence than we know, overcome the mind and flow like a river, accept life as it is, don't resist but be responsible, do not attach your heart to anything happening, be happy when you are happy, be sad when you are sad and let it just flow as life flows like a river, let silence gives you true peace and happiness. And most of all be Thankful for everything after all and trust the way of the universe.

[Unfamous_Buddha]

"Those who speak [of the Tao], do not know; those who know, do not speak ." And in response to Lao Tzu's dictum, Alan Watts chuckled: "But he SAID that!"

[debashispurkait]

To Whom It May Concern.,
I Hope that I Can Be Financially Strong Enough At The Earliest Possible To Meet Mr. L.D.Russel Personally To Talk/Discuss About Anything / Everything In That Meeting As Long As I Can As I Think I Can Talk & Listen To Him Eternally..

Feeling Blessed To Watch This Video.., Namaskaaram Sir As I Bow To The Divine Self In

[chrisbrownaz]

I've now watched all of the videos in this series. Fascinating stuff. Great storytelling.

[amitawasthi]

There is a couplet in sufi tradition of India "Bhika baat adham ki, Kahn Sunan ki nahi
Jo jane so kahe nahin, jo jane so bole nahi" meaning exactly same as your favorite saying from Taoism.

[zeratulofaiur]

It is interesting that you say that the book is hard to understand. When I read it, it was as if somebody was reading my mind directly (after around 25 years of thinking about the world, without reading any book on the topic due to my ignorance, it would've been way faster). Everyday I wake up, I see that 1+1 is still 2 which I find amazing, and the fact that there is existence by itself, a triviality, is in itself amazing. We forget that and get caught up in dealing with daily "problems". To find the Tao, you don't need books. Just look inside you and around you!!

Don't meditate by focusing on breath, that is B.S. When you meditate, just try to be. Don't "do" meditate. Meditate by not doing! You will realize you are breathing, yes, but don't focus on it or on anything else. Be neural! Be in the center of the circle so to speak. When you just are, you will get a hint of the Tao.

It is like seeing number 2, but you don't know if 2 is from 4 -2, 8 - 6, 8/4, ... You just know that 2 exists, but not much about it. Is the Tao conscious or whatever? It doesn't matter what we believe! The truth is what it is! Why try to quantify it? I see even Taoist gurus who I am exposed to on the web not mentioning this.

Everybody who drives a car believes partially in the Tao. If not, why do you think the laws of physics will still apply when you brake to stop the car? That is not science. Science predict but does not guarantee the future. Only when the science prediction fails people will try to see why and quantify it in theorems.

[joyofD]

If you were in a sensory deprivation tank, let's say for like 10 years, within the first ten MINUTES you might start hallucinating. Random voices or shapes or colors. Whatever. In 10 years, what would you do? What kinds of hallucinations would those be? You might, by then, have given up your sense of self or ego and instead imagined that you were two people so that you can have a conversation or interaction with yourself because you are so bored in that tank (the same way we talk to ourselves or an imagined someone else in our heads when we're left in confinement). You might forget, after 10 years!, who you were originally. In 10, 000 or 10, 000, 000, 000 years, how would your hallucinations have developed? To what ends would your imagined world have grown? What natural laws would define your psychological dreamscape? And where/who are you in all this? I think this is what the Tao Te Ching means in its opening about darkness within darkness, or how things come from nothingness, and to attempt to define it as one entity (to "speak about it"), would risk waking it up and reminding it who it was from the start, and thus it would be suicide for all the life imagined by it, and more than that it just fundamentally wouldn't make sense for a fragment of a being trying to forget itself to remind it who it is. The only reason we were split into pieces is so that we could be anyone and anything, and I can only type that out in words because I don't take it all that serious in my waking life, I still believe I'm some YouTube commenter right now at my core. This is the fundamental backbone of Taoism, which urges us to go along with the story and with the toil of life, to just be ourselves as we are and do as we would do in the dollhouse as if there isn't a child's hand moving us between the rooms, because that is how we get closer to whatever it is we come from or whatever it is that we are. It's like Fight Club. Know about it, but don't talk about it. One foot in, one foot out. It's not that we don't have free-will, per se. It's that we are playing make-believe. Taking it too seriously OR not taking it seriously at all ruin it completely.

[diolee]

I would like to comment, humbly, on what I got from that reading of the first chapter. It was both moving and very intriguing to me. I believe that the section in which he is referring to named and unnamed things he is saying not only that we lose view of God or The Universe or Divinity, by limiting it with a specific name, but is also saying that anything that is nameable - including us humans and our religions - is a visible, albeit more faded and smaller, version of the unnameable thing. Secondly I think that he goes further by saying that darkness is the pathway to understanding because it is when we are willing to say that we do not know that we come to the place where we can know. This also lends towards our human experiential evidence that when things are at their most confusing and most dark and difficult that we learn the most and become stronger and better individuals.

[dwaynedeslatte]

Just fantastic...loving these lectures and passing them along

[gamingwithar]

Sir thank you for explaining these stuff in such a simple way, i respect you a lot, u r not just explaining religion but giving different perspectives and getting our mind out of the little box in which we r trapped. I now see a wider world. I would've loved to be your student if that was possible, and learn & engage more with you. Again thanks a lot sir russell. 😊🙏

[GURJARkabir]

17:20 it looks like Hinduism ADWAITA VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY

[rohitashkhaitan]

Two things u said about toaism was what I found particularly interesting. 1) Tao cannot be explained. It cannot be named 2) those who know it don't say it.. Those who say it don't know it.

That's what I have been hearing about brahm all my life, being born and raised in a hindu family.

Did lao tzu and buddha and adi shankaracharya refer to the same thing? Well I don't know. But the similarity often amaze me.

[kasturiswami]

I am a 74 year old home maker in india. I have been listening to your fascinating talks about major religions. I studied Upanishads and the Gita from a good teacher. The truth is so easy we miss it. To be born in this country you are surrounded by stories from childhood which are glimpses of this truth. If you want to know more there is help. Hinduism explains by saying bethi bethi. This is not this is not. That which is beyond words can words describe?

[plsmith]

Once you give God or Tao a name, you can no longer be speaking of God or Tao because even an explanation begins to limit what they are. Also, Genesis begins in the Darkness not in the light.

[sprasad]

Dear Mr Russel, I have been following your lectures and I like it your way in most of the cases. I have felt that from eastern concepts, there is a difficulty in your making people understand the concept of divinity as a part. Your example of concentric circles might not be best way to make people appreciate it.

Therefore, I share with you another metaphor that you may like to use. Divinity / Brahman / God is like an ocean whereas all of us are as its waves. Now every wave has its own life, own energy and its own history but then also they remain part of ocean. They exhibit all the characteristic of ocean but then also it is different from ocean. And considering your deep understanding, I believe this is a metaphor, much easy to appreciate by western audience. Sanjeev

[renehenriksen]

How surprisingly difficult it can be to try to extract the truth and the historical facts about the religions and their founder. Taoism is the gladest and most optimistic of all religions so in itself it contains a good reason for study.

[Stormyrevenge]

Great teaching! What religion would say we are both the butterfly and the man?

[anticapital]

Dr. Russel's reference to the Brahman is that of the view of Advaita Vedantists; which is to say that the Brahman and Atman are one and the same or rather that collective individuals constitute a
Singular whole. I think from this view he is not mistaken.