The big idea: Taoism does not begin with a problem to be fixed. It begins with something already there — the Tao, the Way — and with the claim that human beings have wandered away from it.
The tradition took shape in China and is associated above all with the Tao Te Ching, attributed to Laozi, and with the writings of Zhuangzi.
Two strands are usually distinguished: a philosophical Taoism concerned with living in accord with the Way, and a religious Taoism with temples, priests, deities and ritual. Both are real, and students who know only the first often misread the second.
What the Tao is said to be
- The source everything flows out of, and returns to
- The way things move when nothing forces them
- Our original nature — not something to acquire
- Held to be beyond words: the Tao Te Ching opens by saying the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
What went wrong, in Taoist terms
- Nothing is evil — things are out of balance
- Human beings departed from the Way
- Civilization tried to improve on nature
- The result, the guide says, is conflict and chaos
A different shape of answer: Most traditions in this course describe a condition, a destination and a route.
Taoism accepts the first, and then says something unusual about the second: we are already there. What is missing is the realising of it.
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The guide's first question: The Tao is our original nature. Nothing is evil — but things are out of balance, because humans departed from the Way.
That first clause is worth pausing on. Taoist teaching does not describe a fall into wickedness, an inherited stain or a debt to be paid. It describes a loss of balance.
The cause the guide names is striking too: civilization has tried to improve on nature. Rules, cleverness and ambition are presented not as the cure but as part of what went wrong.
How the imbalance is described
Departure from the Way
Not disobedience to a lawgiver, because Taoist teaching does not centre a commanding God. It is described more like stepping off a path and then struggling through undergrowth.
Forcing what should flow
Effort applied against the grain of things. The Tao Te Ching's water images run through here: water yields, and wears away stone.
Conflict and chaos
The guide's own words for the result. Taoist writing tends to point at over-managed societies and over-anxious people as the evidence.
Nothing evil — just out of balance, and trying too hard.
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The guide's answer, almost word for word: "We are already there, but we have to realize it by becoming fully in accord with the Tao."
The destination is not elsewhere. It is this, seen rightly.
The guide then gives the second half: everything flows out of Tao and will return to Tao. That returning is called fu — the invariable law by which things come back to balance.
So where Hindu and Buddhist accounts describe a cycle to be escaped, Taoist teaching describes a return to be trusted.
How Taoism answers the guide's three questions, in its own terms.
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Say "realise", not "reach": An answer that describes Taoists as travelling towards a distant goal has imported a shape from somewhere else.
The Taoist verb is closer to recognising than to arriving.
The guide gives five practices. Each of them is about doing less forcing, not more effort.
The guide's five
- Living a contemplative life in nature
- Taking no action — the guide phrases this as "not interfering with wu-wei (nature)"
- Balancing yin with yang — yin being female, dark and receptive; yang being male, bright and assertive
- Reconciling opposites on a higher level of consciousness, or at an intuitive level
- Releasing ch'i, the life force
Wu-wei — get the term right: wu-wei literally means non-action. It is usually explained as acting without forcing, in accord with how things already move — not as doing nothing at all.
The guide's own phrasing glosses it as nature. Learn the accurate meaning, and you will recognise the guide's wording when it appears.
Yin
- Described as female, dark, receptive
- Yielding, still, inward
Yang
- Described as male, bright, assertive
- Active, warm, outward
The point students miss about yin and yang: They are not good and evil. They are complementary, each contains a seed of the other, and neither is to be got rid of.
Balance is the aim, and saying so is the single most useful sentence you can write about Taoism.