lao zi; did he exist?

[aspergers_anomalous]

no one has ever been able to identify conclusively WHO Laozi was. Different men have been identified. In fact, some think that the Dao De Jing may be an anthology by multiple authors. Your thoughts? Laozi was regarded as a manifestation of the Dao, so would I be correct in assuming that his authorship is a fundamental aspect of the faith to many Daoists?

 

[Sunstone]

no one has ever been able to identify conclusively WHO Laozi was. Different men have been identified. In fact, some think that the Dao De Jing may be an anthology by multiple authors. Your thoughts? Laozi was regarded as a manifestation of the Dao, so would I be correct in assuming that his authorship is a fundamental aspect of the faith to many Daoists?

That's a new one to me. I've never before heard that it was important to any Daoists whether Laozi actually existed or not.

 

[Master Vigil]

The thing that I enjoy about Taoism is the fact that the Tao Te Ching stands no matter who or who didn't write it. It's no the author that's important, it's what it says that's important. You see, if Jesus wasn't the son of god, than the majority of Christianity is bunk. But if Lao Tzu didn't exist, the Tao Te Ching still stands.

After (as the legend says) Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching. He left, never to be heard from again. He never taught, he never preached, he never performed miracles, he never converted people, etc... Because he was not important. Talk about humility.

 

[Quagmire]

The thing that I enjoy about Taoism is the fact that the Tao Te Ching stands no matter who or who didn't write it. It's no the author that's important, it's what it says that's important. You see, if Jesus wasn't the son of god, than the majority of Christianity is bunk. But if Lao Tzu didn't exist, the Tao Te Ching still stands.

After (as the legend says) Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching. He left, never to be heard from again. He never taught, he never preached, he never performed miracles, he never converted people, etc... Because he was not important. Talk about humility.

Yes

No image to consign responsibility to, so it remains ours.

 

[Valjean]

A lot of folklore becomes popular history over the ages. There are no primary sources for the existence of Jesus, either, and didn't the Roman Church recently repudiate the existence of St. Patrick?

 

[Pariah]

Someone told me a tale about how the Tao Te Ching came into existence. I love these sorts of stories.

One day there was an old man who knew he was dying, so he decided to return to his ancestral home to die. As he came to a bridge, the guards stopped him and asked him for a fee.

The old man said, "I have no money and nothing to trade and I need to pass."

One of the guards said, "Alright. Did you have a trade?"

The old man said, "Yes, I was a librarian."

The guard replied, "Okay. Write down what you learned as a librarian and we will let you pass."

What the old man wrote came to be the Tao Te Ching, but in the time it took him to write the passages he died before he could pass the bridge.

Tragic yet beautiful.

 

[anders]

Does it matter who wrote what? The books named (after) Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, Lie Zi and others will be as useful whoever wrote them.

How much does it matter to a Christian if a certain "Paul" wrote any or all of those letters in the Bible? Won't the message be the important thing?

We know nothing about any one of the multiple writers of the Jewish Tanakh or the Christian Bible, not even their names. They are unimportant to believers; the message contained in the book is what matters.

Many parts of the Sikh Sri Guru Granth Sahib are told like "Guru Nanak says", but nobody really belives that the founder of the religion himself uttered those words. It's more or less a statement that he might have said so.

Muhammed (pbuh) isn't in himself too important. His importance is in his conveying God's truth in the Qur'an.

The message is more than the messenger.

 

[aspergers_anomalous]

:yes:
Yeah, i mean it's proven that several of the epistles in the New Testament are too different from each other linguistically to have been written by one author. I think the story of 'Paul's scribe' needs to be put to bed. Then you've got multiple authorship of Isaiah, etc. Just interested to get a few different perspectives from you guys.

 

[ChrisP]

The thing that I enjoy about Taoism is the fact that the Tao Te Ching stands no matter who or who didn't write it.

After (as the legend says) Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching. He left, never to be heard from again. He never taught, he never preached, he never performed miracles, he never converted people, etc... Because he was not important. Talk about humility.

I agree with all of this M_V

Just have to add, it's fairly certain it has been added to over time, and it gradually gets more involved. It's the simplicity and the total essence of life and living that stand out (IMO) in the Tao te Ching.

Life and living. Flow of both existence and non-existence. in 80-something short poems.

Simplicity itself.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

There probably was a Lao Tzu-like individual around when Confucius was alive because Confucius wrote an account of meeting him. As others have said though, who wrote the Tao Te Ching isn't a theologically important issue to Taoism. The Tao as a symbol or term for how nature moves was around long before the Tao Te Ching too.

 

[aspergers_anomalous]

actually, i think the book Zhuangzi contains a fictional encounter between confucius and laozi, is that what you mean? confucius never wrote about meeting laozi.

 

[Francine]

actually, i think the book Zhuangzi contains a fictional encounter between confucius and laozi, is that what you mean? confucius never wrote about meeting laozi.

Probably because there was no one person called Laozi, more like a committee.

 

[Somkid]

Lao Tzu did exist and was a friend of [SIZE=-1]Confucius he is considered to be the only author of the Tao however Zhuangzi wrote a book with stories in it about the Tao and is sometimes considered to be one of the authors of the Tao but I'm not sure why.

Huandgi (the Yellow Emperor) is considered to be the first Taoist but nobody can verify if he actually existed. These three factors are the reason I believe that the Tao gets confused.

[/SIZE]

 

[PureX]

no one has ever been able to identify conclusively WHO Laozi was. Different men have been identified. In fact, some think that the Dao De Jing may be an anthology by multiple authors. Your thoughts? Laozi was regarded as a manifestation of the Dao, so would I be correct in assuming that his authorship is a fundamental aspect of the faith to many Daoists?

I can only read a western translation of the Tao te Ching. However, even still, I believe I can intuit the keen sense of humor of a single author within the translation. I believe the "old boy" was a specific person, and not an amalgamation of characters or ideals.

 

[Francine]

I can only read a western translation of the Tao te Ching. However, even still, I believe I can intuit the keen sense of humor of a single author within the translation. I believe the "old boy" was a specific person, and not an amalgamation of characters or ideals.

Even if there was a single author I think Lao Tzu would have been gratified to have been erased in favor of an "anthology" hypothesis, it would be a manifestation of the following thought from the TTC:

The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, "Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!"