Just Tao It Series Introduction, Part I
Author Disclaimer: If “It” Feels Vague, We’re On the Right Track
If you’re coming into the Tao Te Ching for the first time, there’s usually a moment—sometimes early, sometimes a few chapters in—where you realize you’re not going to get a clean definition of what this thing is.
That’s not the proverbial “bug” — it’s Lao Tzu’s design feature.
Aside from Chapter 1, which makes it clear right away that whatever we’re talking about doesn’t fit neatly into words, there are a handful of chapters that circle “It” from different angles. Not to define it, but to keep you from locking it down too quickly. The Tao seems far more interested in helping us recognize reality than in helping us describe it.
Chapter 25 is probably the most direct you’re going to get. It basically says, if you need a name, call it “It.” That’s not a philosophical statement so much as a practical one. It keeps you from getting stuck arguing over what to call something that isn’t going to cooperate anyway. It also places “It” before everything else—heaven, earth, us. Not as a hierarchy to worship, but as a reminder that whatever we think we’re doing, we didn’t start the system.
Then Chapter 40 undercuts any temptation to treat “It” like a fixed thing. Return is Its movement. Yielding is how It works. Whatever you think is solid is already on its way back. Whatever you think is gone is already reappearing. How often do we expect reality to stay still long enough for us to understand it?
Chapter 73 pushes that further. It’s not trying, yet things happen. It’s not speaking, yet things are answered. It doesn’t call anything in, yet things show up. If that feels inefficient or unrealistic, it probably just means we’re used to overworking everything. This chapter doesn’t ask you to stop acting. It just starts raising the question of how much of your action is actually necessary.
Chapter 34 makes it harder to turn “It” into something impressive. It’s everywhere, doing everything, and taking no credit. What changes when contribution no longer depends upon recognition? It flows, it gives, it supports, and it doesn’t need to be seen doing any of it. Most of what holds systems together looks a lot more like this than we’d prefer to admit.
By the time you get to Chapter 14, whatever idea you had of “It” being something you could pin down is pretty much gone. You can’t see it, hear it, or grab it. No clear beginning, no clear end. And still, it’s not absent. It’s just not cooperating with the way we usually try to understand things.
So the text shifts.
Instead of trying to describe “It” directly, it starts pointing through metaphor. Each image isn’t only a comparison. It’s a glimpse of a pattern reality returns to again and again, wearing a different shape each time.
Chapter 5 gives you the bellows—empty, but useful. Idle, but capable. The value isn’t in what’s there. It’s in the space that allows something to move.
Chapter 42 brings in yin and yang—not as categories to pick from, but as movements that arise together. Lift one too high, the other compensates. You don’t solve that. You learn to work with it.
Chapter 43 says the quiet part out loud: the soft overcomes the hard. The formless moves through form. Non-action acts. Which sounds poetic until you notice how often it’s actually true in systems that last.
Chapter 51 keeps pulling away from the idea that “It” is something you own or control. It gives, shapes, nurtures—and makes no claim in any of it. What changes when we stop needing credit for outcomes that were never entirely ours?
And then Chapter 4 drops one of the simplest images: a well that’s empty, yet never runs dry. Which is either frustrating or relieving, depending on how attached you are to the idea that everything valuable has to be full.
Chapter 78, water. It yields—and wears down what resists.
Chapter 32, rain. No command, no decree—yet it falls, gathers, becomes stream, river, sea. Not because someone planned it, but because conditions allow it.
Chapter 66, valleys. The low place that holds everything without trying to be above anything.
Chapter 64, small beginnings. What looks insignificant becomes what shapes everything.
Chapter 61, The mother. Nurturing without needing recognition.
Over and over, the same pattern shows up.
What looks weak isn’t weak.
What looks small isn’t small.
What doesn’t force tends to last.
These aren’t separate lessons. They’re the same pattern, worn into reality far more deeply than any of the words we use to point at it.
None of these chapters are trying to convince you.
They’re not asking for agreement.
They just get harder to ignore once you start seeing the pattern show up everywhere— in nature, in organizations, in relationships, in yourself.
At some point, the question does begin to change. We may start by asking, “What is It?” Before long that becomes, “Where am I out of sync with It?” Given enough time, another question begins accompanying us: What has life been trying to teach me all along?
That may be one of the subtle gifts of the Tao. It keeps us company as our questions mature, more often than it resolves them. The same passages return year after year, yet we rarely meet the same chapter twice because we ourselves continue changing. The words remain remarkably consistent. Our lives become the variable.
I hope you won’t read these eighty-one chapters looking for definitive interpretations. I certainly haven’t written them that way. They’re simply one person’s conversation with the Tao over nearly four decades—a conversation shaped by family, friendships, leadership, organizations, Polarity Thinking, coaching, joy, disappointment, wonder, and the ordinary experiences that have gradually taught me to pay closer attention. If these reflections make it a little easier for you to recognize something already unfolding within your own experience, then they’ve done all I could reasonably hope for.
Over time, I’ve come to trust that reality is more patient than I am. The Tao has rarely offered me certainty. It has repeatedly invited me into deeper relationship—with myself, with others, with the living systems around me, and with the enduring patterns at work beneath them all. That relationship continues shaping how I see, how I choose, and how I participate in the world.
If these pages become companions as you begin your own conversation with the Tao, then they will have fulfilled their purpose.
Series Introduction, Part I shares the personal story behind this forty-year journey. Chapter 1 introduces the first live application: Patterns AND Mystery. The two opening movement sets create the landscape in which the rest of the series unfolds.
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Go to Chapter 1 of Just Tao It
