This research examines ways in which the thought systems of Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto demonstrate a reverence for nature. The research will set forth in broad outline the fundamental tenets of each system of thought and then discuss how they are operationalized with respect to the natural world.
In religions of Asian origin, a concept that touches many different thought systems is that of the Way, or the Tao (Dao). The concept is elusive even as it is specifically described in the Tao-Te-Ching, Taoism's most important document. The Tao is called the Principle, which is the origin of all beings in the cosmos, and the Principle is made visible "through te, its virtue (its unwinding)" (Lao-Tzu, 1999, p. 30). Yet the nature of the Principle is that it is "indistinct and indeterminate . . . mysterious and obscure" (p. 30). Even so, it is the fundamental reality. Implicit is the idea that the "beings in force," which are embedded in reality, are meant to unpack meanings from what is indeterminate. Yet as the Tao-Te-Ching makes plain, Lao-Tzu has eliminated virtually all force, or "uselessness" (p. 28) from his life, "concentrated in myself. Indeterminate, like the immensity of the oceans, I float without stopping. They are full of talent, whereas I seem limited and uncultured" (p. 28). Repeatedly, the Tao-Te-Ching returns to the idea of rejection of material goods, material ideas, in particular artificial, conventional, and political "wisdom and prudence (in order to return to primal natural uprightness)" (p. 27). The notion of return is bound up with the reverence for nature. Taosim, says one commentator,
It is a philosophy of the essential unity of the universe (monism), of reversion, polarization (yin and yang), and eternal cycles, of the leveling of all differences, the relativity of all standards, and the return of all to the Primeval One, the divine intelligence, the source of all things. (Yutang, 1947, p....