A Taoist Easter

    As I have done for Thanksgiving and Christmas, let me put down a few thoughts here about Easter from a Taoist perspective.

    Easter may be the most Taoist of the three holidays.  Of course, Taoists would not embrace the central story of the Son of God rising from the dead to return to his place at the right hand of the father.   That fundamental act of transcendence in the Resurrection is alien to Taoist thought, which, in its philosophical form, holds out no promise of an after life and no image of an omnipotent God.  So, how can you have Easter with no Resurrection?

     It is in a more abstract manner that Easter is Taoist.  If we think of Jesus's rise as a return of sorts, his return to a non-material form, then we might keep passage 40 from the Tao Te Ching in mind:

 In Tao the only motion is returning;
The only useful quality, weakness.
For though all creatures under heaven are the products of
Being,
Being itself is the product of Not-being.

     - Waley translation

Turning back is how the way moves;
Weakness is the means the way employs.

The myriad creatures in the world are born from
Something, and Something from Nothing.

 - Lau translation

     "Returning" is the central event of Easter.  In Taoist terms, Jesus could represent the continual and inevitable returning of all things to Tao.  We all emerge from non-being, we find an integral existence in being, and then return to non-being. Jesus moves in a similar manner, reassuring us that life is greater than our earthly experience, just as a Taoist might believe that Way is greater than our life.  In both cases, we needn't fear death.  For a Christian our fear is assauged by the promise of life everlasting; for a Taoist our fear is relieved by our knowledge of the ubiquity of the passages from non-being to being and back.  In both cases, return is a soothing transformation.

     The Spring setting of Easter is an exhilarating physical reminder of the beauty and promise of return.  The birds are returning with their song; the flowers are returning with their fragrance; the sun is returning with its warmth.  And it is precisely those sorts of natural patterns, the movements of the seasons, the ebb and flow of demise and return, that animates so much of Taoist thought.

     So, happy Taoist Easter.  He has returned!

Comments

[Dan tdaxp]

Would this mean that Easter is the least Taoist of all Holidays? Not only is the Resurrection a rejection of "returning to Spirit," Christ's bodily ascention into Heaven (the spirit world) seems to break the distinction entirely.