What is today known as Taoism, originated in China about 600 years before our era. As founder appears the figure of Lao Tse ("Old Master"), legendary character to which is attributed to have written the Tao Te King (The book of the Path and it's Power), a book where a spiritual philosophy is delineated that would be the base of all that is known as Taoism.
In the Tao Te King is talked about the TAO as the ultimate, impersonal reality, origin and principle of all that exists, being beyond the human understanding. The Tao is manifested in the material universe by means of the two opposed and complementary energy, YIN and YANG. These energy of YIN and YANG combine in different proportions to form the eight trigrams or PAKUA; these PAKUA expand in the eight directions of the space and combine among them in pairs to form the 64 exagrams, mentioned in the I Chin ("The Book of Changes"), and with them all the things that exist. The TAO is also described as The Path or the way through which the humans can overcome the conditioned reality, to be one with the TAO (ultimate reality) and, in that way, reach the immortality. The TAO, and with it the immortality, are reached achieving in ourselves the perfect balance between YIN and YANG. In order to reach this objective, the various Taoist schools have prescribed different methods that go from prayer, meditation and religious rituals to practices of sorcery and sexual magic.
The Taoism was developed in time in several scenarios. This way, we could speak of a Philosophical Taoism, a Religious Taoism, and a Popular Taoism.
- Philosophical Taoism: Initiate with Lao Tse's writings, it derives in several thinking schools that transcend until our days. This current is interested fundamentally in the cosmological and metaphysical speculation with base in the ideas exposed in the Tao Te King and other later Taoist philosophical writings.
- Religious Taoism: Of very later appearance, this tendency is interested in the moral, mystical and spiritual implications of the Taoist philosophy. By influence of the introduction of the Buddhism in China, some schools of thinking Taoist are organized as churches, assuming popular beliefs and superstitions and creating rituals and a clergy (monks) to administer them. The most influential of these organizations, the Celestial Master's Tradition (Tien Shi), persists until the present, being considered the Celestial Teacher (Tien Shi) as kind of a "Taoist Pope".
- Popular Taoism: Parallell to the academic and clerical currents of the Taoism, it went being developed at common people's level a series of beliefs and practices equally based on the concepts exposed in the Tao Te King. These beliefs and practices go from the cult to Gods and demons of folkloric origin, to the practice of very diverse disciplines as the sorcery, the divination or the alchemy. In this current have their origin very well-known practices that have been spread in occident like Acupuncture, Feng Shui, Chi Kung (Qigong) or Taichi Chuan (Taijiquan).
For the primitive Taoist, the concept of the life beyond the death didn't exist, this was introduced later with the appearance of Religious Taoism. The Taoists pursue the immortality, not in an incorporeal paradise beyond the death, but rather in their present material body; this objective supposedly has been reached by Gods and Saints, which have ascended to the heaven with their physical body. With that purpose in mind, the Taoists have developed a great quantity of techniques to maintain and to improve the health and to prolong the duration of the life; in fact, the whole Traditional Chinese Medicine is based purely on Taoists concepts. As preventive medicine, psycho-physical gymnastic disciplines were developed that involve as much callisthenic movements as control of breathing and mental attitude (meditation), among those we could mention the multiple schools of Taoist breathing gymnastics (Chi Kung or Qigong) and those so called Internal or Taoists Martial Arts (Taichi Chuan, Pakua Chang, Hsing I Chuan, etc.). As healing medicine, they developed no-aggressive methods of healing like herbology and acupuncture.
The Taoism also derived in a search of harmony with the nature and the environment. The Feng Shui, disciplines that have spread a lot in occident in the last years, studies the arrangement and the disposition of the objects inside the housings and the disposition of the housings in the environment to achieve a good flow of the energy of YIN and YANG in the inhabitable space and this way to achieve people that occupy it to reach the maximum development of their potentialities.
The Taoism has influenced all the aspects of the culture of Chinese people during more than 2500 years. Its fundamental ideas have fused with diverse thinking currents like Buddhism and Confucianism to give birth to new philosophical and religious forms. At the present time, we could say that the Taoism, more than a religion or philosophy, constitute an inseparable element in the way of life of Chinese people that is also attracting more and more western searchers.
