I got a dog.

Does the Tao Te Ching have any insight on how to raise a rambunctious husky-mix puppy? No. None whatsoever. It is utterly useless in that field.

And the dog, a 20 pound little girl named Pepper, also gives not one thought to the Tao Te Ching. The two brain cells bumping around in her skull are busy thinking about food, or chasing squirrels, or deciding which sock to steal and chew on.

She is an infuriating display of living in the moment, and completely filled with joy. She happily bounds through the snow, attacks sticks with gusto, and shows her love by chewing on our hands. Nothing is safe from her boundless curiosity.

Her coat is black and white, a furry little Yin-Yang symbol bent on chewing through the house. She is, in short, a Taoist saint.

There has always been a conflict between the practice of Taoism as a communal and ritualistic path, mostly found in the rural communities of medieval China, and the solitary practices of Taoist monks.

A deep dive into the Self, through meditation, energy work, and Taoist philosophy is meant to shatter the illusions of permanence, and make the self one with the Tao. The end result is an individual separated from the social norms, uninterested in material gain, and generally a source of joyful chaos.

Most Taoists though, find the Tao through the gentler and slower path of communal practice and rituals. We do not have to worship the same gods (they too are impermanent anyway) or chant the same prayers. We can find in our daily lives moments of private rituals and personal prayers.

The question becomes: what grounds you, what calms you, what makes you thankful. Collect those actions and make them conscious. Make them a ritual. Schedule your day so that you can perform these rituals.

But most importantly make sure that some of these rituals involve others. It can be as simple as a hug you give your loved one when returning from work, just imbue that hug with intent and meaning.

The goal is not to achieve the ego-shattering of the monk, but the deep sense of connection of the farmer. The field you are working is the field of being, and, like a farmer, you are dependent on the living soil of existence.