I bought my first copy of the Tao Te Ching at age 22, and upon first reading, only a chapter or two rang true — no others resonated with me as I recall. I don’t even remember which ones did, actually. Yet that one or two chapters must have really struck me, for I kept returning to it over the decades, and with each decade more of the Tao Te Ching revealed itself to me. Or did it? I’ve found that the evolution in understanding actually hinges upon the self-understanding accumulated through a life’s accumulating experiences, with the painful ones being the most scale-tipping.
The legendary author of the Tao Te Ching was Lǎo Zǐ (Lao Tzu), which translates as: 老 lǎo (old; aged; of long standing) + 子 zǐ (son; child; person; virtuous man; seed). I see that as perhaps literally — rather than just metaphorically — saying that Taoist thought comes more naturally and readily as we age. That only as we grow into an ‘old child’ are we able to access within ourselves an intuitive sense of what the Tao Te Ching points to. In other words, the Tao Te Ching simply mirrors the depth of your own intuitive knowing. The deeper you know, the deeper the meaning you will find there.
If you are young and new to this, plan on being bewildered. Unlike me, it may not take you some fifty years to all but fully appreciate the Tao Te Ching’s deepest meaning, but it will take a while. Being comfortable with uncertainty is a fundamental aspect of Taoist thought. And with aging comes a deeper sense of uncertainty that youth walls over with certainty. Ironically this means that any full appreciation of the Tao Te Ching becomes less certain, but more innate. To paraphrase chapter 2, Certainty and doubt produce each other. In other words doubt is the innate inborn evolved sense of uncertainty that keeps a wild animal alive to the constantly changing and uncertain real world — something that human culture tries hard to protect humanity from.
What Taoism Actually Says
The word Tao means way in Chinese. Anything said beyond that is tentative, because the opening verse states it plainly:
The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way.
The name that can be named is not the constant name. — #1
So consider everything that follows with that in mind.
We react to life according to how we perceive it. If a perception is out of touch with natural reality, we react in unbalanced ways that waste time and energy and bring about unnecessary chaos and suffering. Taoist thought seeks to solve this problem at its perceptual source, but not cover it up by comfortable ideals which are more often than not at odds with the real world.
The core Taoist observation is that reality is complementary — nature is inherently cooperative, not competitive. The Chinese yin-yang circle symbolizes this. What appears as opposites are actually two sides of the same thing, each producing the other:
Something and Nothing produce each other. — #2
Knowing this circular relationship moderates extremes and allows us to look deeper. Easing the distinction between opposites helps us sense a deeper reality:
Untangle the knots; soften the glare; settle the dust. This is known as mysterious sameness. — #56
Even more challenging to our idealized view of life:
The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad. — #2
And perhaps deepest of all is how chapter 40 frames existence:
In the opposite direction, of the way moves.
Loss through death, of the way uses.
All under heaven is born in having.
Having is born in nothing.— #40
Life is always pulling us this way or that, requiring us to choose, to take sides, to be for this and against that. Taoist thought is an invitation to stop taking sides — to see the whole rather than the half we prefer.
The Direction It Points
Taoist thought doesn’t offer a new belief to replace old ones, or a set of rules to follow. It points in a quieter direction — toward what chapter 16 calls returning to the root:
Devote effort to emptiness, sincerely watch stillness.
Everything ‘out there’ rises up together, and I watch again.
Everything ‘out there’, one and all, return again to their root cause.
Returning to the root cause is called stillness; this means answering to one’s destiny.
Knowing the constant is called honest. — #16
The return it describes is not to a place or a doctrine. It is to what was always already there — the original self, before the noise of partisan belief, rigid habit, and self-story accumulated on top of it. Taoist thought offers some rest from the stress this causes.
Where This Leads
That raises an obvious next question: if our difficulties arise from the commotion happening between our ears — the way we think — what actually drives human thought in the first place? That question may go deeper than you expect. The next essay takes it up directly: What are the Roots of Thought?