There’s a story about a Taoist master named Zhuangzi that I find myself returning to. Zhuangzi lived in the 4th century BCE, during China’s Warring States period — an era of political chaos, social upheaval, and constant warfare. Most philosophers of that time were busy offering rulers advice on how to gain power, win battles, and build stronger states. Zhuangzi had different concerns.

In one famous anecdote, Zhuangzi is fishing when the king of Chu sends two officials to invite him to court to serve as a minister. Zhuangzi replies without looking up from his rod: “I hear that in Chu there is a sacred turtle that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it in a shrine, covered with silk, in a temple on sacred ground. Would that turtle rather be dead and honored, or alive and dragging its tail through the mud?” The officials say it would rather be alive and dragging its tail through the mud. Zhuangzi says: “Go home, then. I will drag my tail through the mud.”

This is Taoism in a nutshell: a deep suspicion of power, prestige, and the human tendency to force things to be other than what they are. The Tao (道, Dào), which literally means “the Way,” is the central concept of a philosophical tradition that offers an alternative to the Confucian emphasis on social order, moral discipline, and active engagement with the world. Where Confucianism says: cultivate yourself, serve society, improve the world. Taoism says: understand the nature of things, stop struggling against the current of reality, and find freedom in harmony with the way things actually are.