It is often said that the world’s great religions should be studied, analysed, discussed, practiced and embodied.

Well, these great religions certainly know something. They have stood the test of time and continue to spread knowledge, ethics and ideas across the world.

And yet this is exactly the limitation of such ‘ways’.

The Tao (being more of a ‘non-religion’) instead invites you to throw all your books away. Read them once, enjoy them, then forget they ever existed.

Tao is as much a conversation with your bus driver as reading a famous, ancient scripture.

Tao is forgetting oneself as well as finding it.

Tao enjoys an empty, curious mind more than one full of even the best ideas around.

Tao treats the sun and rain just the same.

When one seeks the Tao it cannot be found. Without looking it appears; and once found it disappears again.

Other religions are more like giant stones, getting thrown into a lake; creating noticeably beautiful ripples and waves to be studied and enjoyed.

But how tiring it is to keep on throwing stones…

Plus, eventually (inevitably!) they’ll run out; and what then?

The water is still and yet it’s moving.

Only then might you notice the infinity of the lake, and the impossibility of truly knowing it.

And so Taoists don’t seek and destroy, but rather observe and play, getting lost and finding themselves again, knowing it’ll all be destroyed one day anyway.

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