The Tao is the principle behind everything, and words cannot capture it
One Chinese character, meaning road or path, came to name the source of the entire universe. The Tao is described as formless, eternal and everywhere, yet any attempt to define it supposedly misses it. Its favourite image is water: soft and yielding, quietly generous, and capable of wearing down anything.
In ordinary Chinese the character 道 can mean a road, a channel, a method or a doctrine. Philosophy stretched it much further. In East Asian thought the Tao is the ultimate reality behind all phenomena and the natural order of the cosmos. The Tao Te Ching, its founding text, portrays it as self-existent and changeless while everything arising from it shifts constantly. That book falls into two parts: chapters 1 to 37 form the Tao Ching and chapters 38 to 81 the Te Ching.
Early writings separate the named Tao, meaning our ideas about it, from the unnamed Tao, which language cannot reach. The concept began as something to practise rather than to theorise. It can be experienced, and its principles, visible in nature, can be followed. People often describe it as the flow of the universe, a non-dual whole from which individual things emerge, tied closely to qi, the energy of action and existence. Taoist philosophy contrasts nature's endless cycles with humanity's straight-line, goal-driven striving.
The Tao Te Ching frequently casts the Tao as feminine, a Mother who births and nourishes all beings; following it is called keeping to the Mother. Some ancient classics go further and personify it as a supreme goddess, Holy Mother the Original Lord, said to have taught the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu. Taoist scriptures also treat the Ultra Supreme Elder Lord as an embodiment of the Tao, with the historical Lao Tzu as his incarnation.
Scholars disagree on whether the ethical Tao of Confucianism and religious Taoism differs from the metaphysical Tao of philosophical Taoism and much Mahayana Buddhism, or whether these are simply compatible angles on one idea. Artists joined in too: the Song dynasty painter Chen Rong popularised the water analogy with his work Nine Dragons.
Source: Tao
