Christ the Eternal Tao

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Summary: I've Been Waiting for this Book for a Long, Long Time
Review: This is an interesting book if you have an evolutive historical view of cultures believing that they will all culminate in Christ sooner or later. The author presupposes this view. If you don't think that all religions and cultures -specially Taoism- are only a means of reaching Christ, or at least think that this is a matter that requires deeper critical analysis, you won't like the book.

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Rating:
Summary: not well done at all
Review: why would the tao manifest itself as man to become the messiah? i don't understand this at all because it goes against everything taoism is about. and if christ was the tao why would he care about saving the souls of men if there are no such things as souls in the end? taoism states that our very essence is tao, so why would we have to come down in a separate form to come down and die on a cross for our sins? lao-tzu a prophet? in all likeliness lao-tzu never existed. findings have shown that the tao te ching was a collaborated project that spanned over hundreds of years before existing in its complete form. i've read through the book and the ideas expressed aren't thought out well and the translations from the chinese are atrocious. this book makes absolutely no sense. i could see where one might say that christ was a taoist master. but not the tao. christ's teaching don't even compare to the teachings in the tao te ching or chuang tzu. if this book were true wouldn't christ's words be far more expansive, wouldn't they go beyond the tao te ching? think what you want, but don't base your beliefs on the inane conclusions made in a book like this.

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Summary: Lao Tzu: Ego Death and Mystical, Otherworldly Christianity
Review: _Christ the Eternal Tao_ by Hieromonk Damascene (Serbian Orthodox) examines the philosophy of China's ancient sage Lao Tzu, and how it is a precursor to the Revelation of Christ. Lao Tzu lived in China about 500 years before Christ and is known by his metaphysical work, _The Tao Te Ching_, which translated can mean _The Way and its Power_. The first part of the book is an introduction explaining how ancient traditions not specifically Christian can be said to speak of Christ in mystical terms, based on human intuition but not Divine Revelation. The high point of human intuition lies in the _Tao Te Ching_, an indefinite yet profound document, which is as far as a human philosopher can approach the Truth without Divine Revelation. The highest Revealed Truth is in the Gospel according to John, "In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The ancient Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato shared many similarities to the Chinese, and there are also many parallels between the Byzantine Empire under an official Christian Emperor and Imperial China. Heraclitus developed the idea of the Logos or Word in Greece. Lao Tzu's "Tao" is translated from the Chinese as the "Way" or the "Word", both of which are titles of Christ. "Te" is similar to the concept of "grace" in Christian theology, an energy from God. The ancients before Christ had traditions that were handed down from generation to generation, but they became more diluted as time passed. The wise Chinese teacher Confucius confessed "that the great Sacrifice to Heaven had been corrupted and that its meaning had been lost." The introductory material also covers the phenomenon of Westerners becoming more interested in eastern religions, Taoism among them. Conversely, many Chinese today are converting to Christianity en masse. The _Tao Te Ching_ represents a human wisdom and insight uncorrupted by modernity and distortions of original Christian teachings, a pristine philosophy according to the interpretation here points to Christ. _Christ the Eternal Tao_ will probably not appeal to Protestant evangelical Christians; another commentator noted "there is no in-your-face theism here." In addition to evangelicals/fundamentalists the book will not appeal to people who consider themselves "Taoists." Many "Taoists" today are those searching for an alternative to Christianity, and are generally predisposed against a specifically Christian interpretation of Lao Tzu. The second part of the book is composed of a poem written after the style of the _Tao Te Ching_, intentionally rewritten to make it explicitly Christian. This "Gospel According to Lao Tzu" assimilates ideas from the Chinese scholar Gi-ming Shien whose exposition of classical Chinese philosophy (not the contemporary Western-liberal interpretation) influenced Fr. Seraphim Rose. This poem contains an explanation of the Trinity and how the three persons relate to one another, described in a way that almost approaches a rational explanation (of course a religious doctrine can never be explained "rationally"). The second half of _Christ the Eternal Tao_ goes into Chirstian mysticism and how hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer/Prayer of the heart relate to Lao Tzu's teaching. This section was not as interesting as the first and but would appeal to a monastic audience. The ascetic, suffering, all-loving, self-emptying ideal is the one most revered. To overcome worldly passions one must experience "ego-death", the total loss of self: "The Way...may also work through physical pain, or through emotional pain arising from the loss of a loved one or any other of our earthly attachments. At the time, we may find this to be terribly and unnecessarily cruel..." Life in the Divine "required the slow, painful, merciless death of the ego...with that true life begins." Damascene, in another section, draws from Fr. Seraphim's work and explains the enigmatic meaning of Christ's statement referring to Himself as the least in the kingdom of Heaven in addition to Lao Tzu's concept of "nothingness." "...'Nothingness' in the meaning that Lao Tzu gives it, is the `point of convergence' or axis of the universe...If nothingness or self-emptying is the axis of the universe, then the Cross of Christ, the greatest sign to man of the self-emptying of God, now becomes that axis. Christ the Tao/Logos stands at the axis; and there, in the `space where there is nothing,' we find not an impersonal void, but the personal heart of the selfless, self-forgetting God." In all I recomment _Christ the Eternal Tao_ as an insightful, if sometimes tedious read, about the "esoteric core" of the _Way and its Power_.