In reading it, we simply see our own mind’s intuitive edge. Thus, the Tao Te Ching does not teach us anything. The truth we seek only blossoms through personal experience - not through analytical and intellectual nit picking. As Chuang Tzu said in his story, Duke and the Wheelwright, “But these ancients, and what it was not possible for them to convey, are dead and gone: so then what you, my Ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments!”. It will also help to realize that the Tao Te Ching isn’t about conveying truth per se. The ‘ possible to think’ characteristic of belief itself forms the foundation of every ‘ism’. The first line of the Tao Te Ching exemplifies this: The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way. You could say that Taoist thought is too subtle, even inexplicable, to be pinned down in an ‘ism’. It may help to consider Taoism and the Tao Te Ching as similar in name only.
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