A student asked a Zen master, “How long will it take me to become enlightened?”

“Seven years,” the master answered.

“That’s too long,” the student replied. “How about if I try hard and put forth great effort?”

“Fourteen years,” the master said.

The point: We can act spontaneously and effectively in the world — without internal struggle or excessive effort.

***

On the spiritual path, we are meant to walk with ease and joy.

Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Even when working long days, Gandhi said he was always on vacation.

In the midst of activity, we can be at rest.

This is one of the core messages in the Tao te Ching — often described as the most translated spiritual text in the world after the Bible. And it is one of many insights that make this book a manual for living serenely in the midst of chaos.

About the Tao te Ching

Both the date of composition and the name of the author of this text are matters of speculation.

Legend holds that Lao-tzu — a contemporary of Confucious — wrote it in the fifth century BCE. The occasion was his retirement from the position of archive keeper in one of China’s many kingdoms.

When Lao-tzu tried to leave the country, the gate keeper demanded that he first reveal the essence of what he’d learned.

In response, Lao-tzu sat down and composed 81 verses of poetry on the spot. Afterward, he mounted his horse, rode away, and disappeared forever. What he left behind was the seed of the Tao te Ching.

Actually, this book may have many authors. It has passed through editors and translators for over two thousand years.

All we have, really, is the text itself. I agree with Stephen Mitchell, who created a superb translation of the Tao te Ching:

Like an Iroquois woodsman, he [Lao-tzu] left no traces. All he left us is his book: the classic manual on the art of living, written in a style of gemlike lucidity, radiant with humor and grace and largeheartedness and deep wisdom: one of the wonders of the world.

Where to start

If you decide to read the Tao te Ching, your first challenge is to choose a translation.

Oy! There are so many of them. And, they are so different.

Philosopher Jacob Needleman jokes that “the word Tao, and even the whole of the Tao Te Ching, is not readily translatable into any language, including Chinese!”

May I make a suggestion?

Start with Stephen Mitchell’s translation. 

Then go deeper with Jonathan Star’s Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition. There you will find extensive commentary and word-by-word translations of the original Chinese characters.

Once you discover the riches of this ancient text, you may want to read it many times.

This is a text to study for a lifetime and live by every day.

Two aspects of Tao

The Tao te Ching is rife with paradoxes that are stated and then transcended.

Verse 1 — widely regarded as the essence of the text — is a case in point.

Start with the term Tao itself. Tao is the unity beneath all differences. It’s the enduring reality from which all seemingly separate things emerge. It’s what we see when we release the artificial distinctions imposed by language. 

Possible synonyms for Tao include:

• Absolute Reality
• Supreme Reality
• Self
• God
• Brahman

In this the Tao te Ching itself, Tao is also called:

• Non-being
• Origin
• Nameless

Keeping these synonyms in mind allows the Tao te Ching to slowly reveal itself to you.

Tao becomes te

Tao is impersonal. When it manifests in the form of a human being, however, it becomes personal. It becomes te — a singular expression, form, or aspect of the underlying unity.

In many translations of the Tao te Ching, te is also called virtue. This refers not to morality but the power of the Tao to move — to find its perfect expression in all the separate persons and things in the world.

For the same reason, te is also called Being and the Mother of all things. The One — Tao — gives birth to the many.

What makes this expression so perfect is that Tao remains essentially unchanged — even as it manifests as countless changing objects.

As fire, Tao is hot. As water, Tao is cool. As a human being, Tao emerges at birth, grows older, and dies. 

But Tao itself never changes, ages, or disappears. It has no beginning and no end.

In his introduction to another fine translation of the Tao te Ching, Jacob Needleman sums up verse 1 beautifully:

The metaphysical doctrine now stands before us in outline: an unformed, ungraspable, pure conscious principle lies at the heart and origin of all things; it is referred to as the Tao. This principle moves, expands, descends into form, creating the hierarchically, organically ordered cascade of worlds and phenomena called “the ten thousand things,” or simply the great universe — and this movement, especially as it can move through humanity, is called Te, Virtue.

Seeing the world before words

The Tao te Ching reveals that separations and dualities exist only when we use language to name things and make distinctions. This is the difference between the named and the Nameless.

To see this and feel it at a gut level is enlightenment, which I describe as the world before words. This means perceiving the world without symbols, including language and images.

Does all this seem too abstract? Then discover the Tao for yourself. Meditate or do any spiritual practice that stills the mind and stops the constant chatter inside your skull.

Words carve up reality into the “ten thousand things.” When we let them go, what we glimpse is the underlying unity — Tao.

Spiritual practices offer direct paths to the Nameless hidden behind the named. Through such practices, as Eckhart Tolle says, you discover that “God is as real as your hands and feet.”

The end of suffering

Why would we care about discovering the Tao? 

Because it can relieve us of the fear of death and other kinds of suffering. 

It is nirvana, the “peace that passeth all understanding.”

This is what’s described in verse 13 of the Tao te Ching (Jonathan Star’s translation):

When a person does not identify himself with the body
tell me, what troubles could touch him?

Just remember that anything you can name is te, not Tao. The Nameless cannot be contained in any word.

“Just as you cannot fit the ocean into a cup” Star writes, “you cannot fit the limitless universe into your mind.”

Living in harmony with Tao

Many verses in the Tao te Ching point to the virtue of living in harmony with Tao.

Our job is not to conquer nature or have “dominion” over it as described in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. We don’t find our place in the world by trying to conquer it. Instead, our practice is to live in harmony with the cosmos, the greater whole.

A key term here is wu wei — “non-doing.” This kind of behavior is spontaneous, effortless, and selfless. In his translation, Stephen Mitchell describes wu wei as trusting “your natural responses” and allowing everything to “fall into place.”

Wu wei happens when we allow feelings to rise and pass without attachment or aversion. Resisting unpleasant feelings and grasping at pleasant feelings takes a lot of energy. When we let go of that constant struggle, we gain emotional balance. And as we release negative emotions, we can act with natural compassion.

In Buddhism Plain and Simple, Steve Hagen gives an example related to Buddha’s teaching about “right speech”: Before you speak, notice your emotional state. If you’re feeling angry in the moment, then refrain from speaking:

If you would awaken, the point is not so much to be concerned with the actual words you speak, or even the tone. Instead, be concerned with observing your own heart and mind. Then speak out of your awareness of what you observe — in your heart, mind, and situation. The words you select, and their tone, will follow appropriately. And you will be speaking and listening out of wisdom and compassion.

One misconception about wu wei is that it leads to laziness and passivity. Actually, people who cultivate this virtue can get a lot done. They can even disappear into flow states — also called “being in the zone.”

As Stephen Mitchell notes:

A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can’t tell the dancer from the dance.

When we live according to wu wei, we can relax into action.

We can also free ourselves from trying to remember many of the techniques, strategies, and “life hacks” presented in self-help books.

Instead of mechanically imitating someone else’s past behavior, we can simply act with clear attention to the current situation.

This is living with ease, taking the Tao te Ching as our guide and fellow traveler.