Taoism: The Philosophy of the Way

The tao that can be told
Is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
Is not the eternal Name.
Tao te Ching: 1;1

These words resonated within me the moment I read them. To me, they revealed something profound: that the deepest truths cannot be captured in words or names. Unlike other spiritual traditions that give the divine many names, Taoism suggests the ultimate reality is beyond naming altogether.

Many of us, journeying through our 60s and beyond, have accumulated a lifetime of knowledge and certainties. Taoism offers something refreshingly different: an invitation to embrace mystery and find wisdom in what we don’t know.

The Unnamed Path

Taoism, also spelled Daoism, is a philosophy from ancient China based on the Tao (the Way). What makes it unique is its insistence that the Tao cannot be defined or grasped intellectually. I find this liberating. After decades of trying to figure everything out, here I found a philosophy that celebrates the unknowable.

The tradition tells us that the Tao Te Ching was written by Lao-tzu, the “Old Master,” as he was leaving court life behind. The work’s 81 short chapters read like poetry, full of paradoxes and contradictions that somehow point to deeper truths.

The Power of Yielding

I would say that the most distinctive Taoist wisdom is Wu Wei. Often misunderstood as passive “going with the flow,” in truth Wu Wei is about strategic yielding and knowing when not to act. To put it in the kind of poetic terms that give Eastern philosophy such a beautiful understatement, it’s the wisdom of water wearing away stone, of soft overcoming hard.

I think of this whenever I see someone struggle with something like a jar lid or ketchup bottle. The harder the person tries, the more stuck it becomes. But when they relax and apply gentle, steady force, the jar opens easily, or the ketchup flows. This is Wu Wei: achieving more by forcing less.

If you’ve spent much of your lifetime pushing hard to achieve, Wu Wei offers a revolutionary approach. It’s not about giving up but discovering that gentleness can be more powerful than force.

Nature as Teacher

Another thing I love about Taoism is that unlike philosophies that look to abstract principles, Taoism finds wisdom in observing nature directly. Water especially embodies Taoist principles, because it yields to any container yet can carve through rock. It always seeks the lowest place, yet nothing is more essential to life.

The Useful Emptiness

One of the concepts of Taoism I find most intriguing is the value of emptiness. Lao-tzu points out that a bowl is useful because of its hollow space, a room because of its emptiness. Or, to give you my favourite metaphor of this kind, the space between the spokes makes the wheel.

In my view, this speaks powerfully to our life stage. We often fear the “empty nest,” the spaces left by retirement or loss. But Taoism suggests these empty spaces are where possibility lives. Without emptiness, there’s no room for anything new to enter.

Living the Paradox

As you’ll learn if you study Taoism, it delights in paradox: “The wise are not learned; the learned are not wise”; “When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly.” These paradoxes aren’t just clever wordplay, though. They point to a way of embracing life’s contradictions.

And embracing those contradictions, I believe, is particularly relevant as we age. We can be strong and vulnerable, wise and uncertain, grieving and grateful, all at once. Instead of choosing sides, Taoism invites us to hold opposites together. I for one have been grateful to accept the invitation!

The Uncarved Block

Taoists speak of “Pu”: the uncarved block, representing our original nature before society shaped us. That original nature is something we must discover and embrace, though the idea isn’t to allow yourself to lapse into childishness. Rather, in what I think makes for a subtle but profound distinction, it is to rediscover childlike wonder. After decades of being carved into roles – professional, parent, caregiver – we can return to our essential self.

Soft Overcoming Hard

“Nothing in the world is softer than water, yet nothing is better at attacking the hard and strong.” This Taoist principle transforms how we might approach challenges. Instead of meeting force with force, we can be like water: persistent, patient, finding the cracks.

What has helped me to appreciate the value of this principle is spending time with friends and loved ones who have faced serious illness. In my experience, the ones who fight hard often exhaust themselves, but the ones who are like water – flowing around obstacles, adapting, persisting gently – often fare better.

Action Through Non-Action

Wu Wei’s deepest teaching, in my humble opinion, is that we can accomplish more by doing less, so long, crucially, as when we do act, we do so at exactly the right moment. Like a skilled sailor who uses wind and current rather than fighting them, we learn to work with circumstances rather than against them.

What might this mean in practice? The examples I would give are waiting for the right moment to have a difficult conversation or recognizing when a problem will resolve itself without our interference.

The Mystery Remains

“Those who know don’t talk; those who talk don’t know.” In a world where millions of words of, to be quite frank, questionable worth are disgorged into the public domain every day by artificial intelligence and social media, Taoism values the wisdom of not-knowing. What we have here isn’t ignorance. No, it’s recognizing that life’s deepest truths can’t be captured in words or concepts.

For those of us who’ve spent decades accumulating knowledge, this is both challenging and freeing. This is because we can finally admit we don’t have all the answers – and that’s perfectly fine. The mystery remains, and that’s where the magic lives.

Taoism, then, offers something precious in our age of information overload: permission to trust the wordless wisdom we’ve developed over a lifetime. Like water that finds its way without maps or instructions, we too can navigate by feel, by intuition, by the unnamed knowing that comes with experience.

Questions for You:

Have you discovered the power of yielding rather than forcing? What has nature taught you about resilience? How do you make space for mystery and not-knowing in your life?