The sign on the front of the Center for Taoist Thought and Fellowship.

The Center For Taoist Thought And Fellowship, founded in 1982, is a California non-profit religious (Taoist) corporation. It is located at 406 Lincoln St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060.

Our Sunday Meetings

Folks who find the Taoist perspective appealing are probably few and far between, which may be one factor in the absence of a world wide Taoist religious organization like the other faiths experience. It can be a little lonely sometimes, like a fish swimming upstream. We invite the general public to join in with us on Sunday morning for Taoist fellowship at our home in Santa Cruz. A brief description follows:

Taoist meetings are held on the 1st Sunday of the month at 10 a.m. The general public is welcome. The 30 minute meeting is divided into 4 parts, each divided by the ringing of a bell.

1st bell: A silent period begins.

2nd bell: The Minister (and then the group) reads a chapter from D.C. Lau's translation of the Tao Te Ching. After the reading those who wish comment on the chapter.

3rd bell: Another short silent period begins.

4th bell: The end of the meeting.

Those who wish stay on after the meeting to explore, in depth, how the current chapter relates to their personal experience.

About the Spokesman

This is a brief personal history of Carl Abbott, who founded the Center and authors much of this web site's content.

My name is Carl Abbott, born in Arizona in 1943. I never really felt connected to the mainstream culture (music, sports, dating, etc.) around me during my childhood, which is probably why I ended up in Taoism. After an otherwise normal childhood I emigrated to Australia at age 19. Soon though I was drawn to Asia where I spent most of the next 15 years wandering, working and 'soaking it all in', i.e., growing up. Weary of always being 'the foreigner' I returned to America to find a comfortable level of anonymity. I settled here in Santa Cruz, married and had a family.

My innate 'lone wolf' nature along with all those years of other culture experience had left me extremely ecumenical and non-partisan. This, I felt, might be of some service to the community. Therefore, in 1982, I opened the Center for Taoist Thought and Fellowship to provide church-like place for like-minded—Taoist minded—folks to meet, contemplate the Tao Te Ching, and share with each other how a Taoist world-view relates to their personal life.

Finally, it is only fitting that I refer to my role here as that of a 'spokesman' considering the Taoist view on speaking. :-)

Sunday Meeting Retrospective

The old sign (until the early 2000s).

The Center's milestones can be summed up by saying that attendance took the lower position, to paraphrase our good book. We started out with weekly Sunday meetings with around a dozen folks attending. This gradually dropped to one or two folks coming intermittently to what is now a once-a-month meeting. We went from a stream, to a trickle, to drops. Why? Did we stop taking baths, or become otherwise nasty? I suppose the answer probably lies somewhere in the nature of the Taoist world view itself. This verse comes to mind: The multitudes are joyous, as if going up to a terrace in spring; I alone am uncouth, and value being fed by the mother. Let me pick it apart a little:

Religion, as a social institution, must conform to some innate human needs and biases to attract people. The non-worldly bias busting view of Taoism runs counter to our instinct-induced mind set. It can help counterbalance this innate mind set and any of its resultant behavior, which under civilized (i.e. tool using) circumstances, creates unnecessary woe.

This sounds pretty good in theory. However, the question is, how many of us want to trade 'down' to a Taoist view in exchange for the 'highs' of our instinct driven life. Those 'highs' have their lows, of course, but the promise of the 'highs' keeps us hanging on. It all comes down to 'paying now' or 'paying later'. We tend to opt for 'paying later' don't we? Thus, we get fat, pollute, waste, procrastinate and 'shop' until we're forced to do otherwise.

The self-empowering promises of 'product'—which include most every aspect of civilization—attract us like moths to a flame. We hear the siren's call, "You can be superior"; "You can go to heaven"; "You can be enlightened"; "You can be a winner, smarter, stronger, and 'cooler'"... and so on. 'Sexy fantasy' always appears better than mundane reality. And so we keep chasing tomorrow's fantasy and missing today's eternity. If we actually had free will we might do otherwise, i.e., act more wisely. Well, this leads right into Core Issues of Human Nature in case you're interested...

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