I was reading a birthing book the other day with my wife, and it quoted this line from the Tao-Te Ching: 

In the pursuit of learning
one knows more every day.
In the pursuit of the Way
one does less every day.
Less and less until
one does nothing at all.
And when one does nothing
there is nothing
that’s left undone.

How beautiful.

For those who are unaware, the Tao-Te Ching is a classical Chinese text from the 6th Century from a sage called Lao Tzu. It’s kind of like what the Holy Bible is to the Christians, as the Tao-Te Ching is to the Taoists. I love the strange and counter-intuitive wisdom within its pages. Much of it is inspired by the fluidity and cyclical nature of Nature, which I’m drawn to immensely.

And the extract above is exactly all of the things I love about Taoist wisdom. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it, that learning should be about doing less, knowing less, until one does not know anything at all. In our modern, productivity-driven interpretations of learning, it’s all about accumulating more and more. In school, learning means memorising more facts, formulas and figures. After that, it’s about accumulating industry knowledge and experience. Workplace metrics dictate that we are directly incentivized at work for our experience and knowledge, isn’t it? 

But no, not the Taoist Way. Perhaps it’s similar to the Socratic paradox, where he famously declared “I know that I know nothing.” I like this definition of learning. Because in that way of learning, there’s also ethics of humility and insight into a proper perspective of one’s knowing against the entire universe of knowledge. Knowing more should make one realise just how little we know of ourselves and the world, and how small we really are, instead of inflating our ego and confidence.

Can you imagine living out this principle of “knowing nothing, doing nothing”? My interpretation isn’t one of passivity and victimhood, but where one acts when she’s required to act based on wisdom of the world and people, instead of out of ego and desire. It’s about holding and making no assumptions of people and events. It’s so simple yet so hard, that “doing nothing” could very well be how a normal, unenlightened person would view a sage. 

It’s about learning to unlearn. Everything.

How do we even start?!