406 Lincoln Street, Santa Cruz โ home of CenterTao since 1982
CenterTao โ formally the Center for Taoist Thought and Fellowship โ is a California non-profit founded in Santa Cruz in 1982. It is a small, informal gathering place for people drawn to the Taoist perspective: those who find more truth in honest observation than in doctrine, and more peace in conforming to reality than in fighting it.
If that sounds like you, you’re welcome here.
Our Sunday Meetings
On the first Sunday of each month at 10 a.m., we hold a thirty-minute meeting at our home at 406 Lincoln Street, Santa Cruz. The format is simple and has remained so for forty years.
The meeting is divided into four parts, each marked by the ringing of a bell.
First bell: A period of silence begins.
Second bell: The spokesman reads the next chapter of the Tao Te Ching aloud, followed by the group. Those who wish to comment may do so. For the past decade we have used the Word for Word translation; before that, D.C. Lau’s translation for thirty years.
Third bell: A brief silence.
Fourth bell: The meeting ends.
Those who wish to stay on afterward are welcome to explore how the chapter relates to their own experience. This is often where the most useful conversation happens.
About the Spokesman
Sitting quietly doing nothing, very early on, before the onset of life’s commotion really kicked in.
My name is Carl Abbott. I was born in Arizona in 1943 and spent fifteen years wandering โ working and wondering โ across East Asia, India, Europe, and Africa before settling in Santa Cruz in my mid-thirties. Many years of living outside any single cultural mainstream left me with what I can only call an ecumenical and non-partisan view of life, which turned out to be useful for understanding the Tao Te Ching.
I opened CenterTao in 1982 to provide a place where like-minded people could meet, read the Tao Te Ching together, and share how a Taoist worldview relates to actual daily life. It is fitting, I suppose, that I call my role here that of a spokesman โ given the Taoist view on speaking. ๐
For the fuller story, see see my biography.
A Word on Attendance
CenterTao’s history can be summed up by saying that attendance has taken the lower position โ to borrow a phrase from the Tao Te Ching. We began with a dozen or so people at weekly Sunday meetings. Over the years this dropped to a few people coming intermittently, to what is now a once-monthly gathering. From a stream, to a trickle, to drops.
This is not surprising. The Taoist worldview is genuinely fluid and resists the structures that attract and hold people to most religious institutions. Many people, while seeking a better spiritual fit, are reluctant to actually trade the familiar for something as indistinct and shadowy as Taoist thought. The verse that comes most 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.
Religion as a social institution must conform to innate human needs to attract people. It must offer the siren’s call โ you can be superior, enlightened, saved, a winner โ because the alluring ideal always appears preferable to the mundane real. Taoist thought offers none of that. It offers instead an honest look at what things actually are, which turns out to be a much smaller market.
Those who stay tend to stay for a long time. That, in its own way, is the point.
Contact
The Center for Taoist Thought and Fellowship can be contacted directly in the following ways:
Email: carl (at) playingbyear (dot) com
Postal: Center for Taoist Thought and Fellowship, 406 Lincoln St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060-4335