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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Tree" data-source="post: 2266140" data-attributes="member: 1455">The Jedi code seems to be based much more on Buddhism than on Taoism, though the two are similar in many ways.Taoism teaches a person to go with the flow, to accept and embrace change.  Too much intellectual thought, too much striving, and too much stubbornness, force and desire make a person lose contact with the Tao. Two of Taoism's fundementals are intuition and flexibility.    It uses water as a prominent symbol: Water flows around obstacles, rather than trying to force its way through them, yet it is the strongest element, able to erode anything given time.  The Jedi "letting themselves go" and giving in to the force is very Taoist, as is their trusting in their feelings, rather than trying to intellectually work through everything. There are also very strong elements of Buddhism in the Jedi.  One of its core tenets is that desire and attachment inevitably bring pain, confusion, and conflict, and blind you to the world.  Rise above desire and attachment, and center yourself to clear yourself of all your preconceptions and emotional blindspots, and think and feel clearly.  The aim isn't to become a coldly logical vulcan, as some have suggested on ROTS threads, but to become a calm and peaceful person who acts according to his wisdom and clear perceptions,  unlike people who struggle with their conflicting desires and respond in knee-jerk reactions according to their preconceptions.These are gross simplifications, of course, and there are a lot of different forms of Taoism and Buddhism that differ, but these should be sufficient to understand the origins of the Jedi anyway.  (They're oversimplifications, but Lucas based Jedi on oversimplifications, so they fits. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )</blockquote>

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