Tao like gravity

A nice analogy is that Tao is like gravity in that you can see the effects but not the thing itself.

The problem with the analogy is that Tao is not a thing that acts, it is all. One would need to redefine gravity away from the common model to draw a clearer comparison.

If you took gravity as, not a force that acted on objects, but instead as the natural way that objects were drawn to be near one another, then you draw closer. Still no good though.

We can't talk of Tao or draw analogies as it is beyond that. It must be remembered that analogies and descriptions are of Yin, Yang or Te, not Tao, which is beyond description.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Te

Te sounds pretty much like the little letter D so "d"

We can disagree on that and we can go on to disagree over what the little word means - Te is the virtue of the Tao. What does that mean? It means that we can't pronounce it or say what it means either. Brilliant.

The latter half of the Tao Te Ching is all about Te. Some say it was pinned on by the Confucians and is the order we should imagine from people who don't get Tao. Some say there were two great works, the Te Ching and the Tao Ching and they were joined together. Some say that 3 arms would be more useful than a second nose.

Te is actually most of what is said about Tao. Tao is of course by definition the unnameable, and Te is probably what we are referring to every time we speak of Tao. Te is like the action, the motion, the cause, the effect, we wrongly attribute to Tao.

So a statement like "The Tao redresses the balance" is truly about Te. Tao does nothing, as it's nature. Probably each time we speak of Tao we mean Te. So that is what Te is.

So what is Tao?

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao