Yoga and Tao: Very Similar, Very Different

 

The aims of both Yogic and Taoist ethics are alike, if not the same. Would differs greatly is what one would go about doing to attain these aims. They both embrace physical, mental, and spiritual harmony to assist one with becoming one with the “divine” but in practice Taoism and Yoga are very different.

 Yoga follows a strict set of rules and progressive steps one needs to follow. Once you have mastered a step you are to turn and reject it; for one cannot come to know Samadhi by clinging to ideals that bind us to the finite. This process of conditioning one’s body and mind to learn, embrace, and reject is at its core the methodology of Yoga.

Taoism on the other hand has no methodology. Although like Yoga it recognizes all things are one and one is made of all things. “What is reduced, must first be made expanded, what is to be weakened, must first be made strong. (Tao Te Ching p. 140) One does not realize this by practicing any rules or mores. A follower comes to know the Tao itself because the Tao just is. The Tao is the river that flows from no mouth and empties into no ocean, it simply exists. It is the “unmoved mover” as St. Thomas Aquinas would put it. It is not a divine it does not punish or reward. We come the understand the Tao through wu wei , the creative letting go. We understand through inaction, if the Tao was a pool of water we cannot see our reflection if we have made waves in the water only when the water is still, simply let the water be to see the true self.

Yoga and Taoism both aim to have their followers discover the true self, and both believe that what is natural needs to return to the world, but where one practices beliefs and conditioning, the other practices silence.