Where can you get help in understanding the Tao Te Ching?

Answer 1

I remember asking the same question once.

I read the part that said, "The value of a wheel lies in its empty innermost." This did not make any sense to me. So I asked an older and much more learned friend what it meant.

He asked me why I would focus on that line, and I told him it was because I did not understand it.

He asked if I understood the rest, and I told him I thought it was pretty obvious.

He told me that if I was lucky, I would be able to understand the Tao Te Ching in time, perhaps twenty years if I studied hard. I hated that answer. But I also started studying.

About twenty years later, I came to a realization. The reason the Tao Te Ching seemed so obvious to me when I was young was that it was obvious - I had understood it already. Having been told that I didn't understand, I had set about looking for some deep inner meaning that simply was not there. It had taken twenty years to get over this. I also concluded that my older friend was much less learned than I had thought.

There is nothing hidden in the Tao Te Ching. It says exactly what it means. It does not try to be clever. It is as simple as a smooth, uncarved block of wood.

The word "Tao" might throw you. But Lao Tzu says it is just a name he gives to something that really has no name. So it had as little meaning to the average Chinese of his time as it has to the average American today. (By the way, the Greek word "logos," which is translated into "Word" in English versions of The Bible, is translated into "Tao" in Chinese.)

So maybe, you need only to know that you understand already.

If you want to study it, that is okay. Just read the words and let them have whatever meaning they have. If they take a new meaning next time you read them, that is okay, too.

If that answer is not satisfactory, then I suspect you feel a need to try hard to get results. I would recommend that you use the I Ching as an oracle and see how it works. Use it daily. Examine the answers, and when the things you ask about become clear in your life, go back to the answers and see how they apply.

There is a two-fold goal in this. First, it teaches the concept if Yin and Yang, and how they follow cycles in development. Second, if you learn it really well, you discover that a true answer depends on reality, and if you understand reality, then you have no need of oracles.

I hope that helps. I can tell you that other people will have other answers. And their answers might be right.