David’s Substack

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The First line of the Tao Te Ching: The Ultimate Teaching

It's about sensing the unknowable.

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David Gerken
Jul 11, 2024
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photo of a body of water and sunrise
Photo by Nick Scheerbart on Unsplash

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I believe the Tao Te Ching is the wisest book ever written. This is the first line:

“The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”

That one sentence carries a gold mine worth of spiritual wisdom. How? I’ll get there quickly (I promise).

First, some context. The Tao is though…

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