“As the origin of heaven-and earth is nameless.Īs ‘the Mother’ of all things is nameable.” 3Ģ5. “The valley and the female, like the infant and water, are Lao Tzu’s favorite symbols for Tao.” 2ġ. The Tao te Ching frequently likens the Tao to the female/mother, not the male/father. The Master provides aspiring Taoists with a verse from the Tao te Ching that they commit to memory, presumably to facilitate understanding. Indeed, this practice continues into current times. Composed in a primarily oral culture, Taoist practitioners were probably meant to memorize and recite the verses, as most people couldn’t read 1. The modern version of the Tao te Ching consists of 81 numbered song-poems of varying length. To avoid over-generalizing the woman metaphor in Taoism, let us look at some specific examples from the Lao Tzu to refine our understanding. The dichotomy between the 2 gender perspectives could be generalized to a few polarities – domination vs. This does not mean that Taoism values women more highly than men, just some of their characteristics. In contrast, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism all look to man, whether god or human, as an exemplary metaphor of our relationship to the universe. It could even be argued that one of the unique aspects of Taoist philosophy is that it employs the woman, not the man, as a metaphor for living. The importance of the mother-son relationship between Mother Li and Lao Tzu symbolizes the significance of the feminine in Taoism. Taoism: Female Fertility over Male Militarism.Could the Taoist Cultivation Metaphor derive from the Neolithic Fertility Culture?.
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