Curse of the Tao Tie

What the ancient adepts set up as truths were mostly in the form of indirect allusions. For example, the terms water and fire, furnace and cauldron, girl and boy, dragon and tiger, yin and yang, and mysterious female – all are allusions to something else… What all those terms refer to is this one energy; the basis of the energy is this seed. When you recognise the seed, all the various explanations are dregs. Why consume the dregs? So writings are not the real explanations of the Way. When you personally realise the Way, you can dispense with all the writings.

– Ancestor Lü, in Vitality, Energy, Spirit 

by Thomas Cleary