With our minds open, Lao-tzu suggests that we can better understand the external world through self-reflection, and that the opposite is also true, that we can better understand ourselves by looking from an outside perspective. These are not paradoxes but sage advice.

The Tao is the Way to that which cannot be named nor grasped nor comprehended. What is the point? Why bother with something which we cannot ever hope to even speak about? What does something matter if it is, by definition, eternally unknown to us? It matters for the same reason a cliff matters to the blind man who is at risk of stepping off one.

Violence is more a part of our lives than most would like to admit. Though sometimes overt, mostly violent force hides behind politeness, ritual traditions, and institutions whose members wear various costumes to obscure the fact that they are no different from any other man; and therefore what they do is no more noble than if it were done by any other. In this way, violence becomes coercive force—ever-present yet unacknowledged, not that it needs to be known for it to bring tragedy forth.

The wise traveler is first and foremost a leader, an example, a pioneer and ideal. He teaches not through lectures nor dialectics, only by showing what we all ought to be. Thus can he teach anyone, even those who do not share his language or values. They can see for themselves his virtues and the fruits produced by those virtues. Likewise can the wise traveler learn from anyone or anything. As the ideal exemplar, he must be the ideal learner as well, open to the wisdom hidden in even the dullard’s or the madman’s ravings.

We cannot control the universe, only ourselves—and not even ourselves but for our determinations as to what is good and what is bad. We can affirm life as it is, or, because it will never conform to our wills, we can decide that it ought not to be in the first place. We can choose to dance with life, or we can scar it beyond recognition.

Humility washes away illusion from the mind, moderation prevents motivational energy from being smothered or drowned, and compassion allows one to prioritize living in accord with his instinctive nature rather than to cling egocentrically to life as he wishes it were.

If ever you feel cornered between a rock and a hard place, stuck in a situation in which you can find no escape save for choosing that which you view as the least of all evils, then I implore you to do as Lao-tzu does here: enter into an inner dialogue with your potential self. I mean this literally. Just as one might, at his wits end, kneel at the edge of his bed and pray for answers, so should you turn your questions inward. Ask, without reservation and with a willingness to accept the answer no matter how terrible it may sound to you—and then wait. You’ll find that the wisdom to see through even the most dire of straights hides within you, that the key to unlock your latent potential for self-transformation is not found in externals but in your own instincts—in the hands of the ancient Child Archetype within. Thus the discourse between Lao-tzu and his own potential begins

Only someone such as this wise traveler can be simultaneously at peace and yet compassionate for others. His root to the earth is what allows for this. Others who are unrooted will become pulled in one direction or the other: they will become bitter and resentful for their self-sacrifice in pursuit of their compassion, or else they will become jaded and lose the capacity for compassion altogether. They do not possess a root by which to maintain their footing on their moral foundations, and so when life’s outcomes are aside from their desires and expectations, they will fall, unable to reconstitute their world-models.

The Child Archetype—that instinct toward growth, discovery, and development—asks us to define what it is that exists outside this necessary conceptual framework of opposition. It is the Tao source of life, the objective reality, Nature, the nominal, the transcendent universe; yet those answers only beg the question, “What do we even mean by those things?”

Chapter Twenty-Four describes the tragedy that Chapter Twenty-Three warns against: do not become like an overly-filled cup, too full of your preconceived notions to receive any wisdom that is not already your own. Indeed, such a path can lead only to disaster—and you’ll never see it coming, for you’ll have blinded yourself to everything you haven’t already seen.

I would never at any time describe Taoism as "clear" or "cut-and-dry," but Chapter Twenty-Three comes closer than any other so far at consolidating the Taoist principles in a single comprehensible poem. If you haven't checked out the Meditations: Tao Te Ching series thus far, this is a great chapter to start on.

More Taoist origins of the Zen Buddhist adage, "Empty your cup" in today's Meditations: Tao Te Ching Chapter Twenty-Two.

But what do abstractions matter? They aren’t really real.” If this is your position, only you can save yourself from the nihilistic abyss in which all human action and relation has been reduced to games of power.

More merging of Nietzsche and Lao-tzu today in Meditations: Tao Te Ching Chapter Twenty.

What does it mean to "be yourself?" Surely not to give in to every impulse and indulgence; but likewise it cannot be to yoke yourself for the sake of society (elsewise we make slaves of us all). What, then?

Taoism through the lens of some of Friedrich Nietzsche's earliest ideas. I'm not sure if I made the concepts clearer or more obscure.

“this is a warning”
—Tao Te Ching Chapter Seventeen

Separate the conscious mind from its unconscious impulses and—let them go. Observe your feelings and name the emotions. Give them form, understand them, and then make them irrelevant through self-acceptance. With practice, this tolerance can expand from yourself onto someone else, then to others in general, and then perhaps you can become able to bear listening to ideas and people whom previously you placed beneath contempt, as if you were so much better than them, as if you too are not an animal. And doing all this, your wisdom can expand beyond the borders of your current limitations. You can see your errors and the treasures hidden in plain sight. You can come closer to aligning yourself with an objective reality. You will touch upon something greater than yourself.

Peace of mind and excellence in action seem to be intrinsically tied to our biology (or out "nature" if you'll accept the term). While useful across time, consciousness is slow and often falsely presumptive. In the moment, our animal instincts are that which perform without distraction, doubt, or self-consciousness. Perhaps it is a mistake of modernity to look down on the perspectives of those who came before us.

Arrogance and obsession (both things I have been and am likely to be guilty of in the future) are destructive errors known by many names. Often, I call them "Presupposition of Correctness" and "Tunnel Vision" respectively, but whatever the name, both of them prevent us from paying attention to what actually happens or what other people actually say. Perhaps one means of absolving oneself from these vices is through acceptance of imperfection, of ignorance, that there is always something better in front of you if you were only willing to see it.