Taoism is about balance between the forces as said above yin and yang is the symbol for good and evil, or black and white, or whatever opposites you want to imagine, and as you can clearly see they are equal. So for example if you say an optimist sees the glass as half full and a pessimist as half empty to a Taoist that would say only one thing, that you are unbalanced in your ethos. It's a very Eastern way of looking at things, a Taoist for example believes that when in a new situation one should do nothing so as to weight up the proper course of action, rather than rush in and "play it by ear".
It's a fascinating religion if a little off to Western sensibilities.
The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei
I've done a little reading on Taosim and find it much more insightful than say Confuscionism. Although as an atheist I suppose I can take the wheat from the chaff.
jackles wrote:Tao is a word representing nonlocality .all things move as a flux around tao.the yin and yan are a differentual in tao the one.all things come out of tao and then go back to tao.
No jackles it is not it is about balance not difference, hence differential is probably the complete opposite of Tao, calculus would probably intrigue a Taoist but differential calculus would probably be an anathema to his beliefs, and non local would probably leave him not only cold, but in need of some reason.
It's a religion very much based on earlier religions about proper conduct, proper action, and paucity, it is not a religion based on change, and in that respect it reflects wholly the Middle Kingdoms ideology, aka China. Essentially China has always been very much non interventionist, believing that the
gweilo, were not really people and hence not something they should care about.