Hello dear followers,
We just landed in Hong Kong. I’m getting exhausted from all the
traveling and will take it easy this week. The ideal moment to learn something more
about the beliefs from the local people here.
Hong Kong has a multicultural population with Chinese, Muslims,
Christians, Jews and Hindus with each their own beliefs and philosophy. Today I
will try to explain a bit the popular religions from this city. The Chinese
have three primary religions: Buddhism,
Confucianism and Taoism.
First of all I am going to explain
shortly the Buddhism. More than 300 million people in the world believe in
Buddhism. The word “Buddhi” means “To awaken” and has its origins about 2500
years ago when Siddharta Gotama, known as Buddha, awakened himself by a tree.
Some people consider Buddhism is really a religion because some think it’s a
philosophy “ a way of living”.
It is a philosophy because philosophy 'means
love of wisdom' and the Buddhist path can be summed up as:
(1) to lead a moral life
(2) to be mindful and aware of thoughts and actions
(3) to develop wisdom and understanding
(2) to be mindful and aware of thoughts and actions
(3) to develop wisdom and understanding
Second religion you will find in Hong Kong is Confucianism. I must
admit that I had never heard of this before. Confucianism
is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of
the Chinese philosopher Confucius. There are around 6 million Confucians in the
world. About 26,000 live in North America; almost all of the remainder are
found throughout China and the rest of Asia. Confucian ethical
teachings includes the following values:
Li: includes ritual, propriety,
etiquetteHsiao: love within the family: love of parents for their children and of children for their parents
Yi: righteousness
Xin: honesty and trustworthiness
Jen: benevolence, humaneness towards others, the highest Confucian virtue
Chung: loyalty to the state
Taoism is the last one I am going to
discuss. Neither have I heard of this term so I looked up a defenition: “Taoism
[is] the way of man's cooperation with the course or trend of the natural
world, whose principles we discover in the flow patterns of water, gas, an
fire, which are subsequently memorialized or sculptured in those of stone and
wood, and, later, in many forms of human art.“ (From Tao: The Watercourse Way).
In
short, Taoism is a way of life which tries to accommodate the tendencies of
nature. It’s haracterized by an awareness of man's close relationship with
nature and the universe
Personally, I don’t believe in anything (until
it is proved) but I think it is something beautiful if people find strength
from a philosophy, as long as they don’t exaggerate.
Shari
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