2025 Book Club: Tao Te Ching
Spirituality in an indifferent universe
Every mythology, every religion is true […] as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
I’ve had a tumultuous lifelong relationship with religion. I was raised Catholic, but in the words of John Mulaney, church was just some boring shit I did on Sundays. My parents are religious, but certainly less religious than their parents before them. As a result, our childhood was a slow dissolution of Catholic traditions.
A big part of our family’s—and certainly my own—disillusionment with the Catholic church were the 2002 sexual abuse investigations by the Boston Globe. I was six at the time and certainly didn’t understand it, but years later this (along with all the other scandals) would serve as my impetus for rejecting religion in all forms.
I became resentful not only towards the dogmatic morality and hypocrisy of Christianity1, but towards the religion-fueled violence taking place all over the world. I became resentful towards God, who if “he” existed, was evil. How could any God allow such horror to take place in his name? How could God allow his “servants” to abuse their power and influence? How could God allow corruption and greed to run rampant through his “ranks”?
What my resentment meant, in practice, was that I looked down on anyone who held any sort of religious belief. I thought they were just drinking the kool aid, too blinded by indoctrination to see the truth that what they believed was a human-constructed lie meant to oversimplify our complex existence.
Over the past several years I’ve begun to see that my belief was actually the oversimplification. I didn’t resent God, or even religion. What I resented were the people who exploited religion as a means of oppression, discrimination, xenophobia, and violence. What I resented were the systems of organized religion that preach unity and forgiveness, but speak the language of ego and capital, and prey on fear, shame, and anxiety.
More than anything, I’ve come to realize that “God” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. God doesn’t have to mean a man in the sky who smites and punishes and knows your every sin.
God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea. But its reference is to something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought.
- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Can I really claim to be a lover of stories if I reject the most persistent and universal story of all humanity—the story of God?
Mythology and philosophy have been my gateway to a more holistic understanding of God. God doesn’t have to be singular, it doesn’t have to be outside of us, it doesn’t have to be moralized, and it definitely doesn’t have to be anthropomophized.
Belief, a very Christian concept, was holding me back from continuing with my idea to deep-read the Tao Te Ching (the idea that started this blog). I thought, “could what is happening on Earth really be unity and harmony in everything; and if it is, is that something I want to believe in?”
But even with this question I am moralizing and putting in a human context something that is indifferent and intangible: the universe.
Nietzsche says that life should be affirmed, warts and all. Amor fati, or love of one’s fate, is his answer to nihilism.2
But how we can venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgements!3
In the Tao Te Ching, the Tao (or the “way”) is a cosmological guiding force, “the unnamed … mystery of all mysteries!”4 and quantum physics supports the fact that there is something under our reality.5
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Tao Te Ching #2 (Gia-Fu Feng translation)
There are 81 verses in the Tao Te Ching, and I plan on giving each verse its own post (I may change my mind on this). I can’t promise an expert interpretation, nor even a fully realized understanding of the text. I am going to find it along the way.
If you’ve never read the Tao Te Ching, don’t worry. I will post the full verse along with relevant variants from other translations in each post. If you want to read along with your own copy, I will be reading the 2005 Ursula K. Le Guin translation. Alternatively, I read the Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation last year and highly recommend it. This website has several translations you can see at once, which I will be referencing a lot.
Wealth, status, pride,
are their own ruin.
To do good, work well, and lie low
is the way of the blessing.
Tao Te Ching #9 (Le Guin translation)
I will also be reading the Book of Chuang-Tsu (Zhuangzi), considered the second foundational text of Taoism, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe Of Heaven, which draws heavily on Taoist philosophy. Any other recommendations from literature or film to enrich my/our reading would be welcome.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey as we examine the Tao Te Ching together.
NEXT: Tao Te Ching #1: What is the Tao?
Modern interpretations of the Bible, I’ve come to learn, stray quite far from Jesus’s actual word. Besides, the Bible (IMO) should be taken as metaphor, which is not how most Christians interpret it today.
I actually disagree with a lot of amor fati, such as his affirmation of traditionally repressed desires (he names “lust for power, sensual pleasures, and selfishness” as “healthy and holy”). I see where he’s coming, repression of these desires isn’t the answer, but neither is blind adherence to them.
The Gay Science - Friedrich Nietzsche
looking forward to discussing zhuangzi as well, if it gets around to it. it’s arguably a more detailed and specific text despite its various metaphors.