The following is essentially the introduction to the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (circa 6 BC)
The "Tao" is too great to be described by the name "Tao".If it could be named so simply, it would not be the eternal Tao.
Heaven and Earth began from the nameless (Tao),but the multitudes of things around us were created by names.
We desire to understand the world by giving names to the things we see,but these things are only the effects of something subtle.
When we see beyond the desire to use names,we can sense the nameless cause of these effects.
The cause and the effects are aspects of the same, one thing.They are both mysterious and profound.At their most mysterious and profound point lies the "Gate of the Great Truth".
So here we have the idea of the great unknown, the undefinable "Tao" within all things exist. And those things can be reasoned and rationalised about since we can name them. But it also gives the warning that we shouldnt get too distracted by the names and look for a deeper nature of everythings connection with the greater flow of the nameless. While there is no specific god in Taoism, the Tao has interesting god like qualities in that everything comes from something and that everything in its nature is fundamentally linked to what it comes from. The danger we as humans suffer is wishing to name and rationalise the things around us while missing the underlying nature of everything. If we can Deconstruct (I'll waffle about this another time) our current expereiences then perhaps we can see the "Gate of Great Truth". Sadly, despite the tittle of my blog, there isnt a formula for this. But you must engage the Tao in all things to exist in harmony with it. The principle being in all this is that we need to dig, analyse, and explore that which it exists, challenge it, see if it has a deeper nature. If we can learn and harmonise with the deeper nature of things I think possibly life shows its true nature. Though I think there are many paths you can walk on for this journey, and most mainstream paths have some well beaten tracks that try to lead people to find the "meaning of life". Its the wisdom in these different approaches to "life" that Im keen to extract and incorporate into a possibly more secular life.
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Rather than an "unknown" you could say "undefineable". And god is pretty undefineable. In Taoist type terms you could say christianity is all about living in harmony with the "undefineable / god". There are some interesting parallels. I would kind of see it as common wisdom about life.
and yeah, it is important to try and strip things back to the pure fundamentals and then build back up from there. One of the things that I find difficult with christianity / the church is that it built up around the catholic church who I think embelished christianity as needed. But even looking at Christ in his own time period you can see there are many cultural influences coming through. So yeah, I think its very important to try and distill the real message from all the noise of culture / church / politics / philosophy / etc
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