Taoism

Taoism, that down-to-earth Eastern philosophy, frayed at the cuffs but impossibly comfortable, and far too clever to care what you think of it.

It’s not a religion, at least not in the tedious, sermon-delivered Western sense. No deities, no commandments, no guilt. No architectural erections to the sky. Just a sort of philosophical shrug delivered with the elegance of a crane taking off from a still pond.

At its heart, Taoism is about not trying. Not in the slacker, adolescent way, but in the muscular, invisible way that rivers don’t try to reach the sea; they just do.

The Tao, the Way, is that which cannot be named. You don’t follow the Tao, you relax into it, like a drunk into a beanbag.

The benefits? Well, it doesn’t promise you heaven or hell, which already makes it less threatening than most belief systems. It won’t scold you for eating bacon or missing your grandmother’s funeral to go kite-surfing.

What it does offer is the possibility of not being such a catastrophically clenched human being. It suggests, ever so gently, that life might go better if you stopped flailing.

There’s health, too. Taoist medicine, with its herbs and qi and acupuncture needles, all more effective than a bottle of Boots paracetamol and the sort of doctor who wears his stethoscope like a decorative noose.

And Taoist breathing! You haven’t breathed properly until you’ve done it like a Taoist: long, slow, and with the sort of measured deliberation usually reserved for sipping very good Armagnac.

And then there’s wu wei, the art of actionless action. Which sounds like the sort of thing beloved by management consultants and teenage boys, but is actually about mastering the sublime ballet of knowing when to shut up, sit still, and let the world uncoil around you like a cat stretching in a shaft of sunlight.

Taoism doesn’t want you to be better. It wants you to be less awful at being what you already are. And that, if you’ve ever looked in the mirror of your own thoughts, is a profound and revolutionary kindness.

Graeme Dinnen

ResourcesForLife.net