The following is from the draft of my upcoming book on using the Tao Te Ching as the basis of a journaling practice. The working title of this book is The Tao Te Ching Journal: A simple path to inner quiet.
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Under the Beautiful and Mysterious Words of the Tao Te Ching, What Is It Really All About?
The Tao is about harmony. Harmony with yourself, your inner world. Harmony with others. Harmony with the natural world. Harmony with that which is beautiful, which is peaceful. Harmony with the energy flows of the universe: yin and yang.
And it is about listening—learning to hear the quiet voice beneath the noise of daily life and the chattering surface mind. The ancient Taoists understood that wisdom does not shout. It waits. It speaks in stillness. A journal is one of the oldest and most natural ways to enter that stillness, to sit with the quiet voice and listen.
Emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth. So from the sage’s emptiness, stillness arises: From stillness, action.
- From Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu, 4th century BCE)
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To read the rest of the draft of the introduction, visit here.
I went from Journaling to writing out the chapters of the Tao Te Ching for fun. I definitely shouldn't let it go.🙏🩶☯️