DragonballZ and Taoism
One of the central tenets of Taoism is the concept of flow, a state of joy, unparalleled, when all of your mental faculties come to focus on a task, your sense of time goes away as you feel the joy that comes from being in love with what you are doing. It is in these states that your mind is doing some of it's most unperturbed, creative, and efficient thinking. You are going with the "flow" - not planning ahead, not superimposing your fears and anxieties, being totally present and taking every moment in as it comes, staying genuinely curious. You give in, and you do some of the best living of your short life.
Dragonballz has had a childhood hold on me. Grew up watching, some of the most rewatched anime of my life (and i used to watch a lot). It is still on air and recent arcs have been awesome! Some of my favorite of the long series. There is much more thought given to power, and how "screaming into the air" for an episode, while the villain just looks on politely waiting. It is deeper. The final form is called "Ultra Instinct" in this state the fighter gains the ultimate speed by giving up on control and just letting the body be. It was mucles and senses taking control, reacting to senses and not to the plannings of the mind. Forget the speed advantage from removing brain from the loop, it was a whole new way of fighting, even the gods were amazed.
I would not be surrpised to find out that Akira Toriyami (author) may have drawn inspiration from the Taoist principles.
So yeah, this guy Goku is a deeply practicing Taoist and i thought that was interesting enough to record for posterirty.
