Sunday, December 5, 2010

Chinese Traditional Religion

This one is the next largest religion,and it is comprised of many different religions."Chinese traditional religion" is meant to categorize the common religion of the majority Chinese culture: a combination of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, as well as the traditional non-scriptural/local practices and beliefs.
Fifty years ago religious Taoism was one of the largest, strongest institutions in China. Since the Cultural Revolution and the government's campaign to destroy non-Communist religion, Taoism lost, for the most part, the main mechanism through which it remained distinct from the larger Chinese religious environment: its large numbers of temples and Taoist clergy.You  can read more about Chinese religion here.

I have been consulting the I Ching ( prounounced ee-ching) for the past several years. Brian Browne Walker's  version is simple and concise and has been a grest help for me in times of uncertainty. Coins are thrown 6 times to create an odd or even number, to create trigrams. The combination of the two trigrams create a hexagram -there are 64 different readings possible.
It is an ancient form of  divination and philosophy. The qualities the I Ching counsels one to embody are modesty, awareness, acceptance, adaptability, compassionian, restraint, innocence, perserverence, tolerance,  reticence, devotion to inner truth, conscientiousness, balance and inner independance. The qualities the I Ching urges us to let go of are fear, anger, desire, arrogance, aggressiveness, anxiety, harshness, cunning, goal orientation and self indulgence.
Also the book refers to the "Sage". "the Creative" "the Higher power" and so on. One can put the word "God", "Allah", "my Higher Self", "the universe" "the great spirit" or what ever term suits. It is for anyone to use.

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