Meeting Travelers Along the Way

In following one of the referring urls to TRT, I found a Taoist blog that is new to me: The Path of Water (it's been added to the Taoist links on the right-side column). This represents one of the great joys for me of blogging -- Discovering fellow Taoists and having the opportunity to gain insights from them. As there are no definitive creeds nor dogma attached to Taoism, one of the best methods I've found for deepening my own understanding of Tao is to read the explanations of others on their own paths.

In a post in November on "Homosexuality", the author had this to say about the Tao Te Ching:

The first is that the Tao Te Ching is not a religious text in the same way as the Bible or Qur'an. It does not claim to be the "word of God" or some kind of infallible reference, but rather is the observations of either one or a group of people depending on what you believe. I like to think of it as a travel book, where the writer says "I did this to get where I wanted to go", and you can take from it what is useful to get you to the same destination, but it is not something to be blindly followed. If other texts pass any comment I don't know, but it would only be an opinion not a law. At the end of the day you are your own guide to the Tao.

What a splendid description!