Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world. Absence of hurry also involves a certain lack of interference with the n

everything in the universe is integral and symbiotic in nature, and that everything functions harmoniously according to the rhythm of the universe. So, he asks, why would humanity be the exception? The Way of the Tao and our experience of it comes from allowing all aspects of the universe to happen as they will without conscious interference.

Tao is a way of life, not a god or religion. It literally means “Way,” or path—a trail on the journey through life that conforms to nature’s own topography and timetables. Any path but Tao is, by definition, artifice. Western ways, which attempt to conquer rather than commune with the forces of nature, lead inevitably to a schizophrenic split betwe