Verse 34: No Deposit, No Return

Verse Thirty-Four
The great Tao flows everywhere.
All things are born from it,
yet it doesn't create them.
It pours itself into its work,
yet it makes no claim.
It nourishes infinite worlds,
yet it doesn't hold on to them.
Since it is merged with all things
and hidden in their hearts,
it can be called humble.
Since all things vanish into it
and it alone endures,
it can be called great.
It isn't aware of its greatness;
thus it is truly great.
~ Stephen Mitchell translation ~

While there are a huge amount of differences between Christianity and philosophical Taoism, I think this verse underscores one of the biggest ones. In the bible, we're told that God demands that there will be no other gods before him and, later, the only true way to God is through Jesus Christ.

Tao, on the other hand, doesn't give a flip what you think about it. It doesn't care one way or the other if you even acknowledge it. It doesn't demand reverence or worship. It doesn't communicate with people. And it doesn't dictate a particular path. Of course, one of the reasons that Tao does none of these things is that it is not really an IT -- Tao is in and of everything!

This points to another critical difference between Christianity (actually, each of the Abrahamic religions) and philosophical Taoism -- the former advises believers to forge a personal relationship with this being called God, while many Taoists consider such an attempt to be the epitome of human arrogance!

As Stephen Kaufman writes,

How is it possible even to attempt to conceive of understanding the unknowable? To do so would mean that total wisdom expressed itself in you and it would be unnecessary to live a life on earth.

I realize that many Christians would posit that it is possible to know their God because he wants himself to be known, but the Taoist response to that would be, "The Tao (God) that can be told is not the eternal Tao (God)."

I think that Kaufman makes an excellent point. The only way a person could understand God -- even to understand one-tenth of one percent -- would mean that such an individual would necessarily possess ALL the knowledge of every human throughout history times a factor of ten trillion. If an individual possessed this kind of wisdom, they wouldn't have need to exist on this plane in bodily form. This kind of vast knowledge would mean they weren't really human after all but simply a manifestation of that which they worship.

For me, to be human means having limited knowledge of the mysterious unknown. We can certainly catch glimpses of the process of oneness by watching the rhythms of the natural world around us, but often this only engenders more questions than definitive answers. I view our lives as being about seeking to knock down the artificially-erected walls of separation to come to the understanding that we are part of one fabric.

We are all part of Tao.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.