Daoism

What road is this? It’s Dao, or Tao. Dao means road in Chinese. It’s a philosophy as well as one of the three most important religions of China. Dao is a mixture of philosophy and believing in spirits - shamanism.

Daoists also believe in using life force - qi - a kind of spiritual energy, in healing one’s own body or someone else’s. Using for instance qigong. To say exactly - define - what Dao is, is not possible. That would not be Dao according to the Daoists. Dao varies from person to person.

It’s sort of every person’s own personal way of being and living in their truth. And not only that, every person also has their own truth. If one tries to live in what someone else believes to be the correct way, or wish for the same things others wish for, just because you’re supposed to do this, well then you aren’t living according to your own truth. Then you aren’t living according to Dao. But can there really be several different truths?

Yes, depending on who you are, you interpret the surrounding world differently, and different things become important to different people. To understand Dao is to understand and accept yourself. Live your life to discover who you really are. According to Daoism this is most easily accomplished by not trying to do something planned - to act - but just go along with whatever is happening and do what feels right in each moment - be spontaneous. This principle of non-action and spontaneity is called Wu wei.

This is Laozi, or Lao Tsu, who is said to have founded Daoism, but no one actually knows if he really existed. Laozi is said to have lived in the 6th century BCE and to have written the most important book in Daoism: Daodejing or Tao Te Ching. This is a book full of rather hard-to-grasp poems about what Dao is. One of the things that Daodejing covers is that opposites can’t exist without each other. Without the one the other can’t exist.

There is a balance. And if that balance is disturbed, the world will shift to restore it. The opposites are called yin and yang. Examples of opposites are feminine-masculine, dark-light and moon-sun. To live according to Dao is to keep the balance within.

This is accomplished by non-action - wu wei - but also by meditating and doing what Daoists call: “think without words”. Because Dao is not only living one’s own life as truly as possible, it is also a power that has always existed. This power is simply impossible to describe, and is only comprehensible beyond words. Dao is the power that one originates from before birth, and the power one returns to after death. In Daoism there is no personal god - even though there are lesser divinities and spirits.

This power is instead something that always existed and that we all are part of. This is Laozi’s student Zhuangzi who is said to have lived in the 4th century BCE. He wrote a book that was also called Zhuangzi which consists of humorous stories. Zhuangzi supposedly said: “Once I dreamt I was a butterfly. Then I woke up, myself again.

Now I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or I am a butterfly dreaming I am a man.” Daoism wasn’t the only philosophy in those days in China. There were other Chinese philosophers who spoke instead about ethics, and how one was supposed to lead a righteous life by fulfilling many duties. But Zhuangzi, he described how to lead a spontaneous life, and to become one with the road by following one’s nature.