Tao, the emptiness, is the source of everything.
Everything in the universe is created from emptiness through yin–yang interaction.
Yin and yang are the two basic elements that makeup everything.
Yin and Yang are opposite, relative, cocreated, inseparable, and co-dependent..
Taoism holds that humans and animals should live in balance with the Tao, or the universe.
Taoists believe in spiritual immortality, where the spirit of the body joins the universe after death..
The Tao (or Dao) is hard to define but is sometimes understood as the way of the universe.
Taoism teaches that all living creatures ought to live in a state of harmony with the universe, and the energy found in it.
Ch'i, or qi, is the energy present in and guiding everything in the universe..
In later devel- opments, the yang and yin came to be regarded as two cosmic principles or forces, the yang representing masculinity, activity, heat, brightness, dryness, hardness, etc., and the yin femininity, passivity, cold, darkness, wetness, softness, etc. (Fung 138).
They are opposite but interdependent..
The cosmos generated by the Dao ("Heaven and Earth") and the heavens inhabited by deities that personify the Dao take an intermediate position between the absolute principle and the human world.
These two domains overlap to a significant extent, for deities and features of the cosmos often correspond to one another.
In traditional Taoism, this cosmology is uniquely devoid of symbolic deities, focusing instead on energetic and elemental principles.
The basics are as follows:
Taoist cosmology is based on the beliefs of the School of Naturalists.
In this spirit, the universe is seen as being in a constant process of re-creating itself, as everything that exists is a mere aspect of qi, which, "condensed, becomes life; diluted, it is indefinite potential".
Cosmos and Gods The cosmos generated by the Dao ("Heaven and Earth") and the heavens inhabited by deities that personify the Dao take an intermediate position between the absolute principle and the human world.
These two domains overlap to a significant extent, for deities and features of the cosmos often correspond to one another.
