Student Questions: Reading About The Tao

Here is today's student conversation about learning Tao  

I did take out a copy of the Tao Te Ching from the library and I've been reading through it slowly. Actually, a question just came to me... I don't feel that reading and thinking about the Tao is really getting me any closer to where I want to be. I feel like I'm just adding more thoughts and words and labels when I should really be freeing myself from them.

Firstly: The Tao Te Ching is poetry. Not to be read as a book. But glanced at when whim strikes you.

If you would burn a holy book in front of most people of most religions: they would fight you .. to save the word...

If you would burn the Tao Te Ching in front of a senior Practitioner of Taoism they would just turn around and leave you to your actions... In fact they might at the right times help burn the book. Since life is werd... not the word being werd. But when you say word right, and you hear it and live it.. then you can capture werd.

That's Tao...

When the cultural revolution happened in China in the 1960's... and the red guard came to the Taoist monks demanding their "holy books" to get burned. The Taoists just gave the books and shrugged... since the lessons were not in the books, but in the heart.

It's how you live life that defines Tao, not all will make sense at once, nor will it all be seemingly relevant, but books such as the Tao Te Ching are there to help open up new angles to look at life. But they cannot truly define you and if you define yourself to the book, you then limit yourself..

We change, our life shifts and meaning traces with our life... The point being.. when you read something, trying to get at an absolute truth, to define something absolutely... well you end up trapping oneself in those walls of definition...

People get trapped in definitions, words, labels which is perfect since that is what you now ask about...Taoism is about the freedom to live as your heart beats...

Secondly and more importantly to this question.

We live in cycles

• At times we need to intake like a breath: ideas and concepts...
  
  These are the times you read such books like the Tao Te Ching

• At times we exhale, to live and act...
  
  These are the times to jump and live fully. To define the world not to definition but to your actions, trial and error, play and testing what the world is from your own hearts perspective

Your question tells me that you are currently exhaling into your life: so put the book down, jump into a smile and play.

Look at your life and look to see if you are inhaling of your nature or exhaling out your being...

Then dance accordingly.

Intaking and Releasing into one's life.

This is the Tide of the Tao

Namaste