The cell group culture is manifest of Tao

Learning Point No 424

In the old days, there was stress in the orient of having extended family, and marriages were arranged to grow the extended family. Extended family favored procreation. Family run business and provided the manpower. 

The young support the old and the old support the young. Whole village became one big super extended family. 

This was ideal and the cohesion of members of the extended family was at its best. But when East met West and whether we like it or not, globalisation and modernisation crept in and the focus shifted from group interest to self centered personal gain and the big and gloorious family structure broke down. 

Nowadays, it is even more difficult to have nuclear family and divorces between husbands and wives are common. It is easier and less burdensome to be single and widowed than to shoulder even a mere nuclear family. 

Gone were the days when marriages they said were made in heaven as they were arranged between big family clans. Divorce would be unthinkable and frowned upon. 

So we have arrived and the modern society of 2013 is the age of liberation where every man or woman is for his or her self, so it seems. 

But by the philosophy of yin yang balance, this cannot be and even singles must live as groups even if they do somehow treasure being singles. To be single is to be richer and to have enough money per individual. 

No longer is it true that the bigger the family and the more the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, the richer the family head as without fail, everyone then chipped in for the big family enterprise. 

Then arose the great revolution of the last few decades. To be single is good but then this runs against human nature and no one can stop force of nature. 

Society innovated the concept of cell groups in churches and even temples to replace the extended family. 

This serves two purposes. One is to facilitate spiritual cohesiveness. The other is to promote social cohesiveness. 

The cell group culture is the manifestation of the innate need for yin yang complementation and grouping in society. 

The early socialists started it but modern day socialists seem to have dropped the culture and are taking on capitalist and free enterprise culture to be more economically viable at the national level. 

Having cell groups ensure members of the cell group stay on in the religion of adoption and not in the religion they are born to as their parents have religion different from them. 

The adoption of cell group is like having a form of extended family albeit the modern way. This is the practice of the age old principle of yin yang balance of Chinese culture. 

Thus the intuitive need to have yin yang cultivation has crept into the modern institutions of more progressive religion and invaded into the churches and temples of modern society of 2013. 

This is in a way no different to the clan and village temples of old in ancient China which were run by dialect groups and members of these institutions were related to one another. 

The cell group culture manifests the gravitation of men towards the same yin yang balance in society. If yin yang culture is Tao, then there is Tao even in temples and churches of religions that do not openly profess to embrace Tao. the Way that is Taoism.

The emblem of yin yang culture and balance is in the Taiji of the Bagua. 

Bagua

Tai ji

Lao Tse stressed that Tao is in every aspect of life and in every society and that means it will be in every religion and sect. It has the quality of water, powerful yet not forceful. 

Like water, it is everywhere, at the highest level and at the lowest level. Those who mock at Tao will end up realising they too practise Tao. 

From Wikipedia