Tao and Dao are the same word
Both spellings are in this grid because they are the same Chinese word written in two systems. TAO comes from an older way of spelling Chinese in English letters; DAO comes from pinyin, the system used in China today. Either way it means the Way, or the PATH — the natural order that runs through everything, which Taoists believe cannot be fully described in words.
The central text says exactly that in its first line: the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. That book, the Tao Te Ching, is only about 5,000 Chinese characters long, and it is one of the most translated books in the world. It is traditionally credited to LAOZI, a SAGE said to have lived in the sixth century BC, though historians are unsure whether he was one person or a name gathering the sayings of several.
Doing by not forcing
WUWEI is often translated as non-action, which makes it sound lazy. It is closer to effortless action: doing things in step with how they naturally go, rather than forcing them. The Tao Te Ching uses water as the example — the softest thing, which yields to everything and yet wears away stone. Taoism values SIMPLICITY, humility and living close to NATURE, and a ruler who governs lightly is praised over one who meddles.
ZHUANGZI, the second great Taoist writer, made the same points with stories and jokes. The most famous has him dreaming that he was a butterfly, fluttering happily, and waking unsure whether he was a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming of being a man.
The symbol contains its opposite
The YIN and YANG symbol shows two swirling halves, dark and light, fitting together into a circle. Each half holds a small dot of the other colour: nothing is entirely one thing, and each side contains the seed of its opposite. Yin is linked with the dark, the cool and the quiet; yang with the light, the warm and the active. Good HARMONY and health come from keeping them in BALANCE, and the same idea underpins traditional Chinese medicine and tai chi, whose slow movements are meant to keep ENERGY flowing.
The BAGUA is a ring of eight symbols made of broken and unbroken lines, used in divination and design. Four of them appear on the flag of South Korea, around a red and blue version of the yin and yang circle.
A religion as well as a philosophy
Taoism is not only a set of ideas. It is also an organised religion with a TEMPLE tradition, priests, monasteries, rituals and festivals, and a large pantheon of gods and IMMORTAL beings — people believed to have perfected themselves and lived for ever, some of them popular folk heroes. MEDITATION, breathing practices and the search for long life were central to it.
In China it has long been mixed with Buddhism and Confucian teaching, and many people draw on all three without seeing a contradiction. The Taoist VIRTUE, WISDOM and FLOW sit alongside Confucian duty to family and HEAVEN. Our Chinese mythology page covers the gods, and our confucianism page the teacher whose ideas grew up alongside this one.