All The "Way" Around

From time to time, I receive emails from individuals looking for a recommendation about a book on Taoism. While there are a myriad of stupendous books explicitly on this important topic, we each need to be aware that Taoist principles can often be found in books that don't identify themselves as Taoist all!

To offer an example, here's a quote from George Carlin's book, Last Words. In describing how he put together his later comedic monologues, he well exemplifies the concept of wu wei, going with the flow.

There was a familiarity to the feelings of anticipation. It was how I'd felt in the formative stages of Class Clown and Occupation: Foole. I knew -- just as I had then -- that this new material would flow easily and naturally. It had been stored up and was already halfway formed or ready to start forming. It had a life of its own. My process always works like that. I review a file and say, "There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I don't feel this bursting out of my chest yet." I look at another and get excited: "This shit's going to be GOOD! Can't wait till they hear THIS!"

But something else was happening that had never happened before. Previously my notes and ideas came together the way galaxies do: they just naturally clumped. They clumped simply because they were related -- an extended family of ideas around a general topic. Now they were parts that fit and functioned together, which I then formed into a whole...

You see, if our hearts and eyes are open, we can find the key concepts of philosophical Taoism in places that we would least expect. All it ever takes is to be open to the possibilities around us.