Chinese religion

Chinese religion has been influenced by three streams of human thought: Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. All three have been inextricably entwined in popular Chinese religion along with ancient animist beliefs.

The founders of Taoism. Confucianism and Buddhism have been deified.

The Chinese worship them , ' their disciples as fervently as they wor- ship their own ancestors and a pantheon of gods and spirits.

Muslims are believed to be the largest identifiable religious group still active in China today, numbering perhaps 2% to 3% of the nation's popu- lation. The government has not published official figures of the number of Buddhists. There are around three million Catholics and four million Protestants. It's impossible to determine the number of Taoists, but the number of Taoist priests is very small.

Taoism

It is said that Taoism (Daojiao) is the only true 'home-grown' Chinese religion - Buddhism was imported from India and Confucianism is mainly a philosophy. According to tradition, the founder of Taoism was a man known as Laotzu, variously spelled in Western literature as 'Laotse', Laotze' and the pinyin variant 'Laozi'. He is said to have been born around the year 604 BC, but there is some doubt that he ever lived at all. Almost nothing is known about him, not even his real name.

At the end of his life, Laotzu is said to have climbed on a water buffalo and ridden west towards what is now Tibet, in search of solitude for his last few years. On the way, he was asked by a gatekeeper to leave behind a record of his beliefs. The product was a slim volume of only 5000 characters: the Dao De Jing or The Way and Its Power. He then rode off on his buffalo. It's doubtful that Laotzu ever intended his philosophy to become a religion. Zhuangzi (399-295 BC) picked up where Laotzu left off. Zhuangzi (also called Chuangtzu) is regarded as the greatest of all Taoist writers and his collection of stories, The Book of Zhuangzi, is still required reading for anyone trying to make sense of Taoism. However, like Laotzu, Zhuangzi was a philosopher and was not actually trying to establish a religion.

At the centre of Taoism is the concept of Tao (dao). Tao cannot be perceived because it exceeds senses, thoughts and imagination; it can be known only through mystical insight and cannot be expressed with words. The opening lines of Laotzu's The Way and Its Power advise that the Tao that can be expressed is not the real Tao. Tao is the way of the universe, the driving power in nature, the order behind all life and the spirit that cannot be exhausted.

Tao is the way people should order their lives to keep in harmony with the natural order of the universe.

Taoism today has been much embraced in the West by many who offer their own various interpretations of what Laotzu and Zhuangzi were really trying to tell us.