A COMPARISON OF THE DOCTRINES OF TAOISM AND JAINISM

The purpose of this research paper is to compare the essential doctrines or fundamental tenets of both Taoism and Jainism. To begin with, I should like to proffer what I regard as the essentials of both religions. The term Taoism refers to a movement that was developed alongside Confucianism into both a philosophy and a religion, becoming one of the major belief systems in traditional China. The Tao te Jing, sometimes called the Lao-tzu after its legendary author, and the Zuanjzi stand as the core texts of Taoism. The Taoism movement began during the Eastern Chou Dynasty (c. 770-256 B.C.), when religious hermits challenged Confucius’s socially responsible Tao. Early Taoist iconoclasts advocated asceticism, hedonism, and egoism as the Way. Mature Taoist theory, however, began with the slogan “abandon knowledge, discard self,” as advocated by Shen Tao (c. 4th century B.C.). He argued that there is only one actual Tao and that to follow several prescriptive ways is a distraction from this natural, inevitable course of action. The philosophy of the Lao-Tzu developed Shen-Tao’s slogan into a psycholinguistic theory in which doct...