The Empty Boat:

Who can free himself of achievement and fame,
Then descend and be lost
Amidst the masses of men?
He will flow like Tao, unseen…
He will go about like life itself.
With no name and no home
Simple is he, without.
To all appearances he is a fool.
His steps leave no trace.
He has no power.
He achieves nothing.
He has no reputation.
Since he judges no one,
No one judges him.
Such is the perfect man.
His boat is empty.

— Chung Tzu

Or:

Hesitant, like crossing a wintry river
Cautious, like fearing four neighbors
Solemn, like a guest
Loose, like ice about to melt
Genuine, like plain wood
Open, like a valley
Opaque, like muddy water

— Lao Tzu

For a Taoist, Tao is everywhere. It is seen in all things, but it is beyond their visible form. When we look at a house, we see the walls and the architecture, but what makes the house are not the walls but the emptiness they contain. We cannot live in the walls; we occupy the internal space that they define. Similarly, to see reality is to see beyond appearances, which are like the walls of the house that contain the internal space of our pure subjectivity.

A man of Tao lives in a state of intimacy with the silence of being. He is not a recluse; he lives among others while concealing his illumination. He has mastered the art of blending in with other humans while experiencing his life from the depth of the natural state of oneness with the whole of existence. He knows that his inner truth cannot be shared with humanity because no one will understand him, and there is a sense of loneliness in this understanding, for after all, he is still human.

So desolate! How limitless it is!
The people are excited,
As if enjoying a great feast,
As if climbing up to the terrace in spring.
I alone am quiet and uninvolved,
Like an infant not yet smiling,
So weary, like having no place to return.
The people all have surplus,
While I alone seem lacking.
I have the heart of a fool indeed – so ignorant!
Ordinary people are bright.
I alone am muddled.
Ordinary people are scrutinizing.
I alone am obtuse.
Such tranquility, like the ocean
Such high wind, as if without limits.

The people all have goals,
And I alone am stubborn and lowly.
I alone am different from them
And value the nourishing mother.

— Lao Tzu
Dark Illumination

Taoism is a path of being, but does it also include the awakening of consciousness? There is no clear indication that it does; although in the later Taoist texts, there are various pointers to the work with awareness. However, it is certainly not a path which can lead us toward the embodiment of universal consciousness. Therefore, it does not seek to integrate the energy of clarity and luminosity with the energy of being. In fact, it seems as if the man of Tao resisted becoming overly conscious in order to disappear even more into the womb of the unmanifested. So when we look at the depictions of Lao Tzu sitting in samadhi, we can deduce that he was probably sitting in a form of trance similar to, for instance, Ramakrishna. However, the experiences of these two sages were also very different. Ramakrishna was not in the absolute state; his being was quite weak, and he was experiencing samadhi only on the level of consciousness. Lao Tzu, on the other hand, was completely rooted in the absolute, like a mountain that cannot be shaken by the winds of the world. *

So we have called the Taoist enlightenment a ‘dark illumination’ because its essence is to reach the absolute but without infusing into it the luminosity of consciousness. Taoists themselves used the word ‘dark’ to express their unique experience of reality, and also words such as ‘lowest’, ‘feminine’, ‘soft’, and ‘yielding’:

Qi Gong