I find it incomprehensible that people try to achieve balance in their lives by sitting on the floor and meditating for hours. I find it equally incomprehensible when someone tries to present poverty as balanced, ignorance as profound, or insouciance as insightful.

Blindness, physical or spiritual, is not a popular prescription for happiness; thus, why should anyone decide to invalidate his own senses and pretend that his feelings reflect the truth? What is the point of seeking spiritual balance by employing methods that cut off our connections to reality?

Taoism, as enunciated in the Tao Te Ching, does nothing of the sort. It doesn’t command anyone to devote endless hours to mediation, soul searching, and quasi-religious rituals. Nor does it require Taoists to memorize moral commandments or repeat mantras.

Lao-Tzu would have been puzzled by the esoteric practices followed by today’s gurus to seek spiritual balance. He would have steered away from them, I believe, without saying a word or making a gesture.

Indeed, Lao-Tzu, Yang-Tzu and Chang-Tzu would have not adopted impractical habits. For them, meditation takes place in an automatic manner when we adopt a thoughtful lifestyle. It’s not an extra chore that we need to do.

Chuang-Tzu and balance with nature

Taoists regard balance as the automatic outcome of aligning our actions with the Tao, that is, with natural law. If our ethical choices are correct, our lifestyle will be automatically balanced without having to obsess about every little detail.

Chuang-Tzu employed the metaphor of the crooked tree to describe correct ethical choices. He pointed out that a crooked, misshaped, twisted tree can achieve enormous longevity, while a tall, straight, beautiful tree will soon be felled by woodcutters and used to make furniture or build houses.

Did Chuang-Tzu mean that the crooked tree was leading a balanced life and that the tall tree deserved to perish? How can we reconcile Chuang-Tzu’s logic with the Taoist goal to attain a balanced life, especially balanced with nature?

I find this aspect one of the most difficult to understand for people schooled in the logic of Aristotle (384-322 BC). In the Tao Te Ching, balance does not mean symmetry, proportion or justice. Nor does it require extra work from Taoist practitioners or students.

Chuang-Tzu’s twisted tree had attained perfect balance with nature because it had followed the Tao. It had adapted its shape to its environment little by little, without making special efforts or incurring extra costs. It had organically grown as it should, without worrying about its small size or irregular branches.

What does the tall, straight tree symbolize in Chuang-Tzu’s story? It stands for blind conformity to external demands. The tall tree had pushed itself to achieve a straight, perfectly round shape. The straight shape had rendered it very attractive, but at the same time, very vulnerable.

Woodcutters had been attracted by the tree’s large, perfectly regular shape, and had put an end to its existence. The desire to blindly conform to external demands had pushed the tree in the wrong direction. Instead of prolonging its life, it had shortened it considerably.

Lao Tzu: balance versus orderliness

Chapter 33 of the Tao Te Ching praises individuals who are wise enough to know when enough is enough. Lao-Tzu views them as truly rich, spiritually and materially. Those are the sort of people who will not worry, in the tree’s metaphor, whether they are not growing fast enough, or if they are misshaped, that is, not perfectly round.

The Taoist concept of balance entails the acceptance of vast differences in personal taste, motivation, performance, wealth, looks, or any other individual trait. Taoists view differences as healthy and natural, that is, as balanced.

Differences spring directly from the Tao and render our life more colourful and interesting. Lao-Tzu called for gentleness, courtesy and benevolence in handling those differences.

For Taoists, there is no particular symmetry, orderliness and proportion to be achieved in life. Nature doesn’t produce those on its own, and it would be foolish to impose on ourselves the impossible task of producing them for everybody all the time.

How can we attain balance with nature if we stop pursuing symmetry, proportionality and orderliness? Chapter 33 of the Tao Te Ching provides the answer. Balance with nature is to be achieved by “knowing ourselves” and “mastering ourselves.”

The Tao Te Ching and Socrates

I must underline that Lao-Tzu’s exhortation does not match the meaning of Socrates (470-399 BC). The Tao Te Ching uses the words “knowing ourselves” to encourage us to align all our ideas and actions with the Tao, that is, with natural law. We are encouraged to pursue objective truth, not subjective feelings.

In contrast, Socrates advised us to “know yourself” chiefly to help us discard prejudice, rigidity and bias. If we follow the advice of Socrates, we might arrive at the objective truth, but it will take longer. His approach is internal, psychological, while ancient Taoists focused on the external, objective Tao.

Socrates’ approach requires steady effort. We should assess our ideas and discard those tainted by prejudice. We should not make decisions before questioning our motivation. Is it driven by blind conformity and thoughtless routine? Or have we made the correct choice after weighing off the alternatives?

Taoists have no patience for the Socratic method because it revolves around subjectivity. For Lao-Tzu, balance with nature should be achieved quickly and automatically by aligning our actions with the Tao, usually by doing less (Wu Wei).

Wu Wei, the non-action principle, is the Taoist short-cut for achieving balance with nature. Instead of engaging in Socratic debates, we should just quit doing what does not work. Instead of going around in circles trying to “know ourselves,” we need to ask ourselves if we are operating according to natural law.

Chapter 48 of the Tao Te Ching explains that balance with nature is often attained “by doing nothing.” This means that we do not need to devote hours to meditation, rituals and mantras. All Taoists need to do is to live according to the Tao and trust that problems will be solved as nature takes its course.

If you are interested in applying effective ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book titled “Undisrupted: How highly effective people deal with disruptions.”