Compass of the Way

We could say that Taoism is the compass that points towards the right direction in the "magnetic" field of the Tao, helping us to chart the correct path through reality... Words, of course, are just that: words. Siddharta once said that "Every teaching that aims at relieving and ultimately ending the suffering of all livving beings" is part of his school He also said that his students in fact are warriors (ksatryias) who fight for moral (sila), meditation (samadhi) and wisdom (prajna). Guatama Buddha is also known as the Jina - or the Victor. In Asia a Buddhist traditionally often is called "a follower of the Dharma", and Dharma simply is teaching, according to the unfaltering faith that a right path can be pointed. My feeling is that everyone who self critically strives for light and the right path can be seen, then, as a follower of the teaching, because philosophically most mystic traditions are astonishingly similar, even though they might differ tremendously in cultural details. Our culture is that of nihilistic postmodernism - and would add that it has a strong timocratic tendency (a culture ruled by money, not be the democratic will of the people). When I say "our culture" I mean of course the entire Euromarican complex. There is a person whom I have come to see as a role model for every seeker of wisdom, and that is the German Medical Doctor and religious scholar Albert Schweitzer. I shall attempt here a crude translation of one of his enlightened quotes: "What is the insight both child like and most scholarly: Reverence for life, for the unfathomable that reaches out to us from the universe and which is like ourselves, albeit different in appearance yet identical in its innermost nature, terribly closely related to us - lifting the strangeness between us and all other living creatures." Albert Schweitzer