How connected is Tao with Buddhism and Confucianism?

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

ciabatta is bread where I come from, SG!

Oops! My bad. I was thinking of halloumi! (Besides, bread doesn't fit in well with the moon analogy.)

[Blizzardry]

Yeah, in a history way, Islam and Christianity and Judaism are really connected, but in a beliefs way, they're incompatible. Was it Ishmael or Isaac? Jesus or someone not yet arrived? Of course, they're all talking about having had direction from a monotheistic deity (is that bad grammar?) experience, but for some reason the Pentacostals won't admit that the Sufis are both filling their heads with the presence of God through singing and dancing...

The enlightenment religions, like taoism or buddhism may have had separate origins, but it always seems to me they're talking about the same thing, and even though meditation practise and philosophy differ, you can see that they're all talking about the same thing. You find it on a mountaintop, I find it eating and drinking with my friends, but the awakeness and fitting your personal life-path with the flow going on "within and without you". They seem to me to be one and the same.

Actually, deep down, an experience of the divine is the same whoever feels it, Moses, Buddha or John Lennon.

For is it not written: "Sass that hoopy frood Blizzardry, there's a man who knows where his Tao is..."

[Netti-Netti]

Buddhism was introduced to Tibet around 800 AD. Zen appears to have evolved starting in the in the 5 or 6th century. It seems to me that if the idea is to make a connection betwen Buddhism, and Taoist, the frame of reference involving Tibetan Buddhism and Zen is too late.

It is quite possible that Guatama Buddha used Taoism as a starting point for developing his philosophy. Trade routes may have given him access to Taoists who provided him with specifics.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

Buddhism was introduced to Tibet around 800 AD. Zen appears to have evolved starting in the in the 5 or 6th century. It seems to me that if the idea is to make a connection betwen Buddhism, and Taoist, the frame of reference involving Tibetan Buddhism and Zen is too late.

It is quite possible that Guatama Buddha used Taoism as a starting point for developing his philosophy. Trade routes may have given him access to Taoists who provided him with specifics.

I wonder if the Taoist teaching of wu-wei might have had an influence/connection with Buddha's concept of nibbana, and cessation?

[Snoopy]

My understanding is that Chinese Daoism had an offspring as a result of the arrival of Buddhism from India. The name of the offspring was Ch’an (Zen to the Japanese).

s.