Taotally
Original composition date lost - pre 2008 | journal
The Tao can't be taught, but it can be learned.
Western philosophies spend a lot of time discussing language, particularly its inexactitude, its inability to properly express certain concepts, and its tendency to be misinterpreted - thus leading a person astray from the point being striven for.
My whole take on that particular point, and something that's central to Taoism, is to stop trying to explain things. No amount of words can adequately or accurately describe something. Ever. Even if you managed to describe every detail of a thing, there is still something missing. We could call it essence - some Taoists might call it beingness, some emptiness. Someone could tell you all about me, every last detail to the subatomic, leaving nothing out, but they still would not have described me. There's a certain aspect of me-ness that can't be put to words, and which must be experienced. The essence.
Descriptions are limitations and traps. They often keep you further from the truth than they bring you closer to it - because you mind sets in a certain pattern of thinking that it often fails to break itself out of, thus missing other points that could bring a person closer to understanding.
Thus: The Way that can be spoken, is not the true Way.