-Can a Christian convert to Taoism or Buddhism?
Sure why not?
I support you in your conversion to Taoism/Buddhism.
The Tao
and the Buddha
![[for Buddhists]](http://www.thetao.info/images/iconbudd.gif)
The Attraction
Buddhists are often attracted to the Tao and visa versa.
Both paths accent happiness through intellectual cultivation, and
they both originated around the same time historically.
While Buddhists are often encouraged to read alternative ideas and
religions, following another path while trying
to be a Buddhist is specifically discouraged.
Early, close relationship
In China, Buddhism and Taoism, grew up together.
In
fact, according to the Platform Sutra, transcribed from the words
of the great Zen Master Hui Neng in the 8th century, Taoists
attended least one, and probably many other, of his lectures.
Since Buddhism arrived in China well after Taoism had developed,
the Chinese used familiar Taoist terms to describe similar Buddhist
ideas.
This has led to countless poor translations of Sutras from Pali,
Sanskrit and Tibetan into Chinese and caused a lot of
misunderstandings. The Tao even has a similar writing style to
Chinese Zen (actually called Ch'an in Chinese) writings.
Emptiness
The most common misunderstanding people have about the Tao is that
"Emptiness" in the Tao has a similar meaning to "Emptiness"
(Sunyata, Chinese: Kung, Japanese: Ku) in Buddhism.
This is because different words in Buddhism and Taoism were all
translated as Emptiness in English.
Several different
Chinese characters are used for Emptiness in the Tao, but Chinese
Buddhists mostly use the character on the right (pronounced
'Kung').
'Taoist Emptiness' is completely different to 'Buddhism
Emptiness'. The Emptiness in the Tao is about restraint,
patience, frugality, simplicity, lack of worldly desire
etc.
These are all good things for Buddhists, but they have nothing
whatever to do with Buddhist Emptiness, which is about the
inaccuracy of our "externalist" perceptions of reality and the
fictional objects that are created from that misunderstanding.
The Meeting?
Some Taoists believe that when Lao Tzu left LuoYang, he travelled
to India to tutor the Buddha.
It's an interesting idea, but no serious historian would look at it
because of timing, distance, language and credibility barriers to
this possibility. Instead this legend probably grew out of the
complex relationship between Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism that
existed in the 1st millennium.
This relationship is probably also responsible for the legend of
Lao Tzu's meeting
with Confucius that is detailed in the section on Lao
Tzu.
If Zen Buddhism is
interesting to you, About the Tao has a sister
site, About
Zen(http://www.aboutzen.info).
http://www.thetao.info/tao/buddha.htm
