Taoism is one of the great religious and philosophical traditions of China, but it can be surprisingly difficult to explain because Taoism itself warns us against trying to fit reality too neatly into words. The opening line of its most famous text, the Tao Te Ching, essentially tells us that the Tao that can be completely expressed isn’t the eternal Tao. That presents an interesting problem when you’re trying to write an article explaining Taoism.

The name is also written Daoism, and Tao is correspondingly written Dao. The difference is primarily the result of two systems for writing Chinese words with the Roman alphabet. “Daoism” is generally preferred by contemporary scholars, but “Taoism” remains extremely common in English, so we’ll use the more familiar spelling here. Tao literally means something like “way” or “path,” but in Taoism it refers to something much larger: the underlying Way or order through which reality unfolds.

Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching

Taoism is traditionally associated with Lao Tzu, also written Laozi, whose name means something like “Old Master.” According to Chinese tradition, Lao Tzu lived around the sixth century BC and was an older contemporary of Confucius. One famous story says that Confucius met him and came away deeply impressed. Another says that Lao Tzu eventually became disgusted with society and rode west on an ox. At the frontier, a guard persuaded him to write down his wisdom before disappearing, and the result was the Tao Te Ching.

It’s a wonderful story. Whether it happened is another question.

Modern scholarship is much less certain that Lao Tzu was a single historical individual who wrote the Tao Te Ching. The text appears to have developed over time, with early versions circulating by the fourth century BC. Lao Tzu nevertheless became one of the defining figures of Taoist tradition, and in religious Taoism he eventually came to be revered as much more than an ancient philosopher. The Tao Te Ching itself is remarkably short—traditionally divided into eighty-one chapters—and yet it became one of the most influential books in Chinese history.

What Is the Tao?

This is where things get interesting. The Tao isn’t God in the Christian sense. It isn’t a personal Creator who decides to make the universe, speaks to humanity, gives commandments, judges sin, or enters into covenant with people. Taoist texts instead describe the Tao as the mysterious, ultimately indescribable source and Way of reality. It precedes the distinctions we ordinarily use to describe things and gives rise to what the Tao Te Ching calls the “ten thousand things”—an ancient Chinese expression meaning essentially everything that exists.

Trying to define the Tao too precisely therefore risks missing the point. We naturally want to ask, “Okay, but what exactly is it?” Taoism responds that our categories and names are themselves limited. We divide reality into this and that, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, useful and useless, while the Tao precedes those distinctions. Wisdom involves learning to live according to the Way rather than constantly attempting to force reality into the shape we think it ought to have.

That doesn’t mean Taoism teaches that nothing matters. It means that reality has an order that isn’t created by our preferences, and human beings create many of their problems by struggling against it.

Wu Wei: Doing Without Forcing

One of the most important Taoist concepts is wu wei, often translated as “non-action.” Unfortunately, that translation can make it sound as though the ideal Taoist spends his life sitting on the couch doing nothing. That’s not really the idea. Wu wei is closer to action without unnecessary forcing—acting naturally and appropriately rather than trying to control everything through sheer effort.

Think about water. Water is one of the Tao Te Ching’s favorite images because it is soft, yielding, and apparently weak. Yet it flows around obstacles, wears away stone, and eventually reaches places that rigid objects cannot. Water doesn’t stand in front of a mountain demanding that the mountain move. It finds another way.

That principle extends beyond personal tranquility. The Tao Te Ching applies it to leadership and government as well. The best ruler doesn’t constantly interfere, regulate, boast, and attempt to demonstrate his power. He governs so naturally and unobtrusively that things seem to happen almost by themselves. This placed early Taoist thought in considerable tension with approaches that emphasized deliberate social organization and prescribed standards of conduct.

Yin and Yang

The symbol most Westerners associate with Taoism is the familiar black-and-white yin-yang symbol. Yin and yang represent complementary aspects or forces within the natural world: dark and light, receptive and active, cool and warm, night and day. They aren’t simply symbols for evil and good. In fact, treating the black half as “evil” and the white half as “good” misses the idea almost completely.

Yin and yang depend upon one another and continually interact. Day becomes night, winter becomes spring, activity requires rest, and what appears weak in one circumstance may prove strong in another. The little circle of the opposite color inside each half of the familiar symbol reinforces the idea that these aren’t two completely isolated realities locked in combat.

Yin-yang thought developed broadly within Chinese culture and shouldn’t simply be equated with Taoism. Nevertheless, it became deeply connected with later Taoist understandings of the cosmos, particularly the idea that the Tao gives rise to an original unity from which yin and yang and ultimately the diversity of the world emerge.

Zhuangzi and the Butterfly

The other great early Taoist figure is Zhuangzi, who probably lived during the fourth century BC. The book bearing his name is quite different from the compact, mysterious sayings of the Tao Te Ching. The Zhuangzi contains stories, jokes, arguments, imaginary conversations, absurd situations, and characters who sometimes make Socrates look straightforward.

Its most famous story concerns Zhuangzi dreaming that he was a butterfly. In the dream he was simply a butterfly, happily flying around without knowing anything about Zhuangzi. Then he woke up and discovered that he was Zhuangzi again. This raised the wonderfully strange question: Was he Zhuangzi who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or was he now a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuangzi?

The point isn’t merely to make generations of philosophy students stare at the ceiling at two in the morning. Zhuangzi repeatedly challenges our confidence in the categories through which we interpret reality. Our judgments about success and failure, usefulness and uselessness, even life and death may look quite different from another perspective. His writings became enormously influential within later Taoism and also helped shape Chinese Buddhism, including the tradition that eventually developed into Chan Buddhism and, in Japan, Zen.

Philosophy or Religion?

Western books have often divided Taoism into “philosophical Taoism” and “religious Taoism.” That distinction can be useful for beginners, but it can also be misleading. The ancient Chinese traditions themselves didn’t always separate philosophy and religion in the way modern Westerners tend to do, and contemporary scholarship increasingly emphasizes how intertwined the different dimensions of Taoism have been.

Still, there is an obvious difference between reading the Tao Te Ching as a philosophical work and entering a Taoist temple. Religious Taoism developed organized communities, priests, rituals, scriptures, temples, deities, methods of meditation and spiritual cultivation, and elaborate understandings of the spiritual world. Lao Tzu himself came to occupy an exalted position in Taoist religion, while numerous gods and immortals became part of Taoist religious life.

This is one reason a Western reader who knows Taoism only through inspirational quotations from the Tao Te Ching may be surprised by an actual Taoist temple. The tradition isn’t simply a philosophy of relaxing and going with the flow. It has a religious history extending over many centuries and a vast body of practices and literature.

Immortality and the Search for Long Life

One fascinating feature of Taoist history is its interest in longevity and immortality. Some Taoists pursued physical immortality through disciplines involving diet, breathing exercises, meditation, sexual practices, medicine, and even alchemy. Chinese alchemists experimented with substances they believed might prolong life, although some of those experiments had the unfortunate effect of doing exactly the opposite.

Other Taoist traditions understood immortality more spiritually, emphasizing inner transformation rather than simply keeping the physical body alive forever. Practices sometimes called internal alchemy sought to cultivate and transform the energies associated with human life. Concepts such as qi—often translated as breath, vital energy, or vital force—became important within these systems. Religious Taoism developed sophisticated teachings involving essence, qi, and spirit as dimensions of both human beings and the cosmos.

Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism

Chinese religious life doesn’t always fit neatly into the boxes Westerners expect. A person might draw upon Confucian ethics, participate in Taoist religious practices, and observe Buddhist customs without feeling obligated to choose exactly one of them. Over centuries, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism interacted so extensively that they are sometimes described as China’s “Three Teachings.”

There were disagreements, of course. Early Taoist writings could be sharply critical of the Confucian emphasis on cultivated virtues, social roles, ritual, and deliberate moral education. Confucianism tends to ask how people can become properly formed participants in family and society, while Taoism frequently asks whether all our attempts to impose order have actually taken us farther away from the natural Way.

Buddhism entered China from India centuries later and encountered both traditions. It was transformed in the process, just as Chinese culture was transformed by Buddhism. The interaction between Buddhist and Taoist thought contributed particularly to the development of Chan Buddhism, which later became known in Japan as Zen.

Taoism and Christianity

Christians may find certain Taoist insights surprisingly thought-provoking. Taoism’s warnings about pride, endless striving, accumulation, self-importance, and the human desire to control everything can sound remarkably familiar. Christians also recognize that creation has an order we didn’t invent and that wisdom requires living according to reality rather than demanding that reality conform to us. There is even something refreshing about a tradition that reminds people that strength doesn’t always look strong and that relentless activity isn’t necessarily wisdom.

But the similarities shouldn’t obscure the fundamental differences. Christianity begins with a personal God who created the heavens and the earth and who can be known because He has revealed Himself. The Tao isn’t simply another Chinese name for the God of the Bible. Taoism’s ultimate Way isn’t the personal Father to whom Jesus prayed, nor does Taoism have anything corresponding to the biblical story of creation, fall, covenant, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and final judgment.

The contrast becomes especially clear when we ask what is wrong with humanity. Christianity ultimately identifies the human problem as sin and alienation from God. Taoist thought is much more likely to diagnose our problem as disharmony, artificiality, excessive desire, misguided distinctions, and our attempts to force life rather than live according to the Way. Consequently, the Christian answer centers on reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ, while Taoist paths emphasize harmony with the Tao, naturalness, self-cultivation, and freedom from the compulsive striving that distorts human life.

Learning from the Way

Taoism is easy to caricature. Reduce it to yin-yang symbols, martial arts movies, and advice about “going with the flow,” and we miss one of China’s most enduring intellectual and religious traditions. Treat every Taoist as though he spends his day contemplating the Tao Te Ching, and we miss the temples, rituals, priests, gods, spiritual practices, and popular traditions that developed over more than two thousand years.

For Christians, Taoism is particularly interesting because it asks questions that aren’t entirely foreign to us while answering them from a radically different starting point. What happens when we stop trying to control everything? Is weakness sometimes stronger than strength? How much of our anxiety comes from wanting the world to conform to our expectations? Those are worthwhile questions.

But Christianity ultimately points beyond an impersonal Way to a personal God. The Christian claim isn’t merely that there is a pattern to reality that we should discover and follow. It is that behind reality stands a Creator who has spoken, acted in history, and made Himself known. Understanding that distinction helps us appreciate Taoism without quietly turning Taoism into Christianity—or Christianity into Taoism.