What Is Tao?

Most of us live our lives as if we are separate from the world we inhabit, like a driver steering a car down a road. We believe we are the conscious entity behind our eyes, making decisions, exerting effort, and directing our bodies to achieve our goals. This deep-seated feeling of being a distinct 'I' inside a physical shell is the most fundamental assumption we have, the very bedrock of our experience. But what if this feeling is a sophisticated illusion? What if the sense of a separate self, the pilot in the machine, is a hallucination we've all agreed to share—a hallucination that is the very source of our chronic anxiety and the feeling of being at odds with the universe?

This is an ancient insight. The struggle is with the phantom ego that believes it's separate from the world. To try and 'get' the Tao is to reinforce the illusion of a 'getter' who lacks it. This is the central paradox that Alan Watts, a British philosopher and writer, spent his life exploring. After leaving his role as an Episcopal priest, Watts dedicated himself to interpreting Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. He saw that Western minds were exhausted from the relentless project of self-improvement and control. He wrote "What Is Tao?" as a series of signposts pointing toward a truth that can't be grasped, only realized—a truth that becomes obvious the moment we stop trying so desperately to find it.

Module 1: The Way You Cannot Name

We begin with the most fundamental and frustrating idea in Taoism. The Tao itself. The opening lines of the ancient text, the Tao Te Ching, state: "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." This is the starting point for a radical shift in perspective.

Watts explains that our minds are built on language and logic. We categorize, label, and define everything to understand it. But this process has a limit. The Tao is the underlying, natural process of the universe. It's the "what's behind everything," as one child in the book intuits. It’s the spontaneous way the seasons change, the way a river flows, the way your own heart beats without instruction. And here's the first key insight: You cannot capture ultimate reality with words or concepts.

Trying to define the Tao is like trying to grab a handful of water. The moment you clench your fist, it’s gone. You can't explain the taste of water to someone who has never had a drink. You just have to experience it. Watts argues that our obsession with nailing down a final definition for everything makes us miss the reality right in front of us. We become so focused on the label that we forget the thing itself. The Tao is the unnameable flow of existence.

This leads to a powerful realization. Our perception of the world is shaped entirely by our state of mind. The book presents a striking contrast. "Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations." So, what does this mean in practice? When your mind is calm and not grasping for a specific outcome, you can perceive the deeper, interconnected patterns of life. But when you are caught in a state of wanting—wanting a promotion, wanting a project to finish, wanting to be right—your perception narrows. You only see the surface-level details, the obstacles, and the immediate goals. A mind free from grasping perceives the underlying mystery of reality.

This is about recognizing how desire colors your vision. It’s the difference between listening to music and just waiting for your favorite part. When you're just waiting, you aren't truly hearing the song.

But it gets more interesting. Our very act of judgment creates the world we see. Watts highlights a passage from Lao-tzu: "When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly." The act of labeling creates a world of opposites. Before you called something "good," its opposite, "bad," didn't exist in your mind as a separate category. Long and short define each other. Difficult and easy support each other. They are two sides of the same coin, completely interdependent. Understanding this dissolves a huge amount of mental friction. Instead of fighting the "bad" parts of a situation, you can see them as an inseparable part of the whole.

Module 2: The Art of Not Forcing

So, if we can't define or grasp the Tao, how do we live in harmony with it? This brings us to the core practice of Taoism, a concept called wu wei.

Wu wei is often translated as "non-action," but this is misleading. Watts clarifies that a better translation is "not forcing." It is the art of effortless action, of moving with the grain of things rather than against it. Think of a skilled sailor. A novice sailor might try to fight the wind. A master adjusts the sails to use the wind’s power. The master arrives faster with far less effort. This is wu wei.

The first step to practicing this is to align your actions with the natural flow of events. A carpenter who splits wood along the grain uses minimal force. One who works against the grain exhausts themselves. In your professional life, this means finding the path of least resistance. It means paddling with the current. This might look like launching a feature when the market is ready for it, not when your internal deadline demands it. It means speaking up in a meeting when the moment is right, not just to fill the silence. It’s a subtle shift from battling reality to dancing with it.

This approach requires a deep trust in the natural process. Watts introduces a related concept, tzu-jan, which means "of itself so," or spontaneity. It refers to the way things happen on their own. Your body digests food, your hair grows, and the planets orbit the sun—all without your conscious control. The core Taoist wisdom is that this spontaneous, automatic process is fundamentally trustworthy. You must trust the spontaneous nature of reality.

This is a direct challenge to the modern impulse to micromanage everything. If you can't trust your own basic nature, Watts asks, how can you even trust your mistrust of it? The logic is circular. At some point, you have to rely on the "goings-on of your humanness." When you try too hard to "be creative" or "be spontaneous," you get in your own way. You end up thinking about being creative instead of just creating. This is the knot of self-consciousness. Wu wei is the art of untying that knot.

The result of this practice is a state Watts calls Te. It's often translated as "virtue," but a better sense is "skill at living." It’s the natural integrity and power that arises when you are in sync with the Tao. The book tells the story of a butcher who never had to sharpen his knife in twenty years. Why? Because he didn't hack at the bones. He skillfully let his blade fall into the spaces between them. He wasn't a "good" butcher in a moral sense. He was an effective one. His skill was a form of Te. True virtue is unselfconscious skill.

Watts describes three stages of a dancer. A child dances naturally, without self-consciousness. A student learning to dance becomes stiff and artificial, thinking about every step. But the master dancer rediscovers a "second nature." They integrate technique so deeply that they become spontaneous again, but at a higher level of skill. This is Te. It’s a cultivated, intelligent naturalness.