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Death

Death in Classical Daoist Thought

Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death.

Daoism (or Taoism) is both a religion and a philosophy. The religion mixed magic, alchemy and shamanism with the search for immortality, while the philosophy was born with the collection of aphorisms, anecdotes and stories known as the Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tzu) in about 320BCE and the epigrammatic poem the Daode-jing (Tao Te Ching) – probably collectively authored but given the named authorship of Laozi (Lao Tzu) – around 250BCE. The two books are both literary masterpieces and well worth reading for the quality of their writing.

They have also enabled millions of people to see themselves and their age more clearly and to transcend their sense of personal identity. An illustration of this is the story told about Bo Juyi, a poet-official, who was exiled in 815CE, because of his outspoken criticisms of the government.

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