What is the Tao?

Relating to the Tao

Ceiling in 10,000 Buddhas temple in Hong Kong ©

Many Taoist ideas come from other Chinese schools of thought. It's not always easy to draw accurate distinctions between ideas that are fundamentally Taoist and those that Taoism took in from elsewhere, especially Buddhism.

The Tao cannot be described in words. Human language can only give hints that may help the mind to form an idea.

The most important thing about the Tao is how it works in the world, and how human beings relate to it. Philosophical speculation about what the Tao actually is, is less important than living in sensitive response to the Tao.

The most useful words to stimulate an idea of the Tao are found in the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu:

The Tao is not a thing

The Tao is not a thing or a substance in the conventional sense.

It cannot be perceived but it can be observed in the things of the world. Although it gives rise to all being, it does not itself have being.

Although it's conventional to refer to The Tao, some writers think that the "the" should be dropped because it isn't in the original Chinese term.

They feel that using 'the' gives Westerners the idea that the Tao is a metaphysical reality, by which they mean a thing (in the widest sense) or an absolute being like a god.

But even the name Tao can lead Westerners to think of Tao in the same way that they think of objects.

That sort of thinking is misleading: Thinking of the Tao as some sort of object produces an understanding of the Tao that is less than the reality.

It might be more helpful to regard Tao as a system of guidance. And if one does this one can translate 'achieving union with the Tao' into 'developing oneself so as to live in complete conformity with the teachings of the Tao' which is easier to understand, and closer to the truth.

Glimpsed only through its effects

A good way of avoiding the Tao-as-object error is to see the various concepts of the Tao as doing no more than describing those effects of the Tao that human beings are aware of. They do not describe its reality.

The Tao is not God

The Tao is not God and is not worshipped. Taoism does include many deities, but although these are worshipped in Taoist temples, they are part of the universe and depend, like everything, on the Tao.

The Tao includes several concepts in one word:

• the source of creation
• the ultimate
• the inexpressible and indefinable
• the unnameable
• the natural universe as a whole
• the way of nature as a whole