Month 4, Day 17: The Tao

Most people would probably name one guy—Lao-Tzu, the philosopher credited with writing the Tao Te Ching, the central “scripture” of Taoism—as the founder of the Taoist religious tradition. But scholars debate whether Lao-Tzu was actually just one man, or even whether he was a real person at all. Many believe the Tao Te Ching was really written by several people, and some even say that the “real” founder of Taoism is another philosopher, Chuang-Tzu.

(Just a side note: "Lao-Tzu" is often spelled "Laozi" these days, and "Chuang-Tzu" is sometimes written as "Zhuangzi." Even "Taoism" is often spelled "Daoism" and the title of the book Tao Te Ching is written Daode Jing. Just to be clear, I’m letting you know that I’ll be sticking with the old-fashioned versions. Maybe I’m weird or unwilling to accept change, but I just think the old way looks prettier, for some reason. Maybe it's because I don't like the letter D or the letter Z, and those both seem to be a bit overused in the "newer" Chinese style. I don't know. Let's just accept my quirkiness and move on, okay?)

So, if we ignore the issue of who came up with the idea of Taoism, we’re still left with one big question: What exactly is the Tao?

In all the research I’ve done so far, that seems to be a question that even the most renowned Taoist scholars can’t seem to answer with even a hint of clarity.

The word Tao means “path” or “way,” but it’s used to describe the overall natural order of things, the way the universe works.

The Chinese symbol for the word Tao is an image of a person running along a path. As author Deng Ming-Dao explains in Everyday Tao, “It represents the organic movement of the cosmos as a great, balanced, and dynamic body in motion, just as it represents the path each of us follows through life. Sometimes intellectual definitions of Tao can be challenging. Returning to the image of Tao centers our contemplations.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see anything but slashes and squiggles when I look at the symbol for Tao (see the picture below, which at least one book tells me is Tao; for all I know, it could say something vulgar, so if it does, I apologize for being an ignorant American). Of course, I don’t have a whole lot of artistic vision, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Maybe you’ll see something more than I do in the image.

Anyway, even with help from religious writers like Deng Ming-Dao and Huston Smith, I don’t feel like I’m getting much of an answer to our question.

No matter what I read, I still don’t really understand what the Tao is. And as you may have noticed, I don’t like vagueness or a lack of precision—not in life and especially not in religion. If people can’t even tell me what the hell their main spiritual belief is, how am I supposed to decide if it’s worth following?

Yup. This is going to be a challenge. I'm starting to be very glad that February is a short month.