Principles

Principles

Taoism understands that the divine laws can be known through three instances:
The first is the cosmic order or universal legislation impressed by God on nature; the second are the norms or codes of the religions inspired by God to the prophets, which adhere in everything to the laws of nature or cosmic laws; and finally the exemplary lives of the masters and patriarchs, true cosmopolitans or citizens of this world, wise and good men who subordinated their lives to the divine will and the cosmic order, even before the existence of written legislation, and, although they did not know it, they were the living law, because they adjusted their thoughts and actions to the guidelines printed by the Creator in the universe.

Taoism also accepts and respects the commandments of other religions, and it is not that Taoism wants to mix or dress the doctrines with the clothing of the concepts and terminologies of other religious beliefs: the purpose is to demonstrate the harmonious relationship existing between Taoism and the most important doctrines of the world, not to frame Taoism in the rational molds of the other religions, but to prove that there is no opposition between one and the other and that there is in many points a congruent correspondence, the differences being only the result of two different ways of presenting things, but not of conceiving them.

There is a total conformity between the ancestral Taoist norms, the laws of nature, the harmony and complementation that directly relate the doctrines contained in the ancient treatises on health, sexuality and science, with the sacred books of the Vedas, Hinduism, Judaism and primitive Christianity, and the relationship is so close that it is easy to transfer the former to the schemes and nomenclatures of the latter.

This coincidence does not mean that there are mixtures or religious syncretism as some have tried to demonstrate, rather it proves the immense superiority of revealed knowledge over that reached only through merely human intelligence and also demonstrates that divine providence has been in all cultures and races as the light of a new day that passes illuminating Gaea in its roundness.

The arguments with which Taoism expounds the truth, the method of teaching, the interpretation and applicability of the laws, plus its philosophical and religious legacy, are of a hierarchy comparable to the wisdom of the world’s major religions, with the difference and benefit that Taoism is a doctrine that is constantly renewed and updated according to the requirements of the time.

Taoism is based on the premise that truth is universal and no culture or religion can arrogate to itself the right to be the bearer of it; proof of this are the commandments and postulates of religions which in some cases are not only the same, but are closely related or lead to the same goal.