Taoism has a resounding slogan: “My life is in my own hands, not heaven’s.”
The length of one’s life is just determined by heaven but is in one’s own hands.
Taoism teaches the firm belief that man is able to overcome natural hazards and enable his life to grow from weak to strong and from death to life and ultimately to become immortal through active cultivation. It opposes the attitude of non-action or apathy toward death. It admits that “there is life, so there must be death,” but regards this as one result of the course of natural evolution. However, such a course of evolution can be reversed and death can be avoided through one’s initiative.
A famous Taoist tenet says, “If you go along with it, you will remain a man. If you go against it, you will become a deity.”
For centuries, generations of Taoists have striven to experiment again and again and to practice outer alchemy and inner alchemy in the quest to achieve the goal of immortality.
