14/10/2025
Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu’s enigmatic masterpiece, written over 2000 years ago, offers a profound entry into Taoist philosophy.
Rather than a doctrine, Taoism presents a worldview rooted in the Tao, the unnameable source of existence (God, if you like), and "Wu Wei", the principle of effortless action.
In a world driven by striving and control, Lao Tzu’s text urges a return to simplicity, balance, and an intuitive harmony with life’s natural flow.
On it's first page it reads:
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
This might seem absurd at first glance, but think of it like this:
Trying to grasp or conceptualize the nature of the universe with our limited ways of describing/communicating will simply not do.
The nature of existence, or the universe (again, God, if you like) is not something that can be described by words.
Hence "the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao".
If I explain it to you, and you think you understand, then that's simply not it.
It is bigger, goes further, and deeper than what we would be able to communicate and grasp.
God, Tao, Brahman or whatever you wish to call it, is something that should be felt and experienced, rather than grasped.
"The name that can be named, is not the eternal name".
Get it?
Trick question🧙🏼♂️
This is a short, but heavy book.
One that requires some computing power.
But the juice is definitely worth the squeeze.
