Love is everywhere, except in the words of Laozi and Zhuangzi.
No hearts. No roses.
No sappy poems.
No grand declarations of eternal devotion.
The Taoists looked at love, shrugged, and moved on.
Why? Maybe they knew something we don’t. Maybe they saw love for what it really is—just another trick of the ego, another grasping hand reaching for something it can never truly hold.
Maybe, just maybe, they thought love was too big, too fluid, too damn ungraspable to be put into words…
1. The Tao Has No Favorites
The Tao, as Laozi describes it, is impartial. It flows like water, nourishing all things without clinging to any of them.
It doesn’t pick favorites. It doesn’t pine for lost loves or write bad poetry at 2 AM. It gives without needing to receive.
For Laozi, love—as most people understand it—is attachment.
And attachment is just another weight that keeps you from moving with the Tao.
A man in love is a man distracted. And a distracted man is as useful as a boat with a hole in it.
So instead Laozi tells you to be like water. Flow. Nourish. Don’t cling.
2. Zhuangzi: Love Is Just Another Cage
If Laozi sidesteps love, Zhuangzi dances around it while laughing.
He sees human relationships—romantic or otherwise—as just another set of rules, another way we trap ourselves.
You say you love someone? What does that even mean? Are you sure you’re not just caught in a web of desires, expectations, and delusions?
Zhuangzi tells the story of a wife mourning her husband. At first, she cries. But then, as time passes, she stops.
She realizes that life and death, gain and loss—it’s all the same flow.
Love dies, like everything else.
Why fight it?
For Zhuangzi, love is like trying to hold water in your hands. You can try, but eventually, it slips through your fingers.
3. The Taoists vs. The Mohists: The War on Universal Love
If Taoists were love skeptics, the Mohists were love fanatics.
Mozi, their leader, pushed jian ai—universal love. Love everyone equally. No special treatment for family or friends. Just pure, undiluted, love-for-all.
The Taoists took one look at this and laughed.
Universal love sounded great until you realized it needed strict moral codes, rigid structures, and a whole lot of control to enforce it.
To the Taoists, trying to force love on people was like trying to make a river flow in a straight line—it’s unnatural and doomed to fail.
Love, if it exists at all, should be effortless.
No rules, no commandments, no guilt. Just a natural, spontaneous part of existence.
4. Love Without Saying Love: The Hidden Affection in Taoism
Okay, so they didn’t talk about love much. But does that mean it wasn’t there?
Some scholars argue that Taoism is filled with love—just not the kind we’re used to.
Instead of romantic passion, it speaks of a deep, natural affection for the world. A mother’s love. A river’s love. The love of the sun as it warms the earth.
Laozi does mention cí (慈), a kind of benevolent, selfless love, as one of his “Three Treasures.”
But he doesn’t dwell on it. He just tosses it out there and moves on.
No grand sermons. No love letters. Just another piece of the Tao.
5. The Problem With Love: Attachment, Desire, and Madness
The Taoists saw love the way a Zen monk sees a mosquito—an annoyance that won’t stop buzzing in your ear.
Love makes people obsessive. It fills their heads with desires, expectations, heartbreak. It makes them jealous. Possessive. Crazy.
And worst of all? It makes them forget the one thing that really matters—flowing with the Dao.
6. So, Did the Taoists Love at All?
Of course. But they didn’t talk about it. They just lived it.
To a Taoist, real love isn’t in words. It’s in how you move through the world.
It’s in letting things be. It’s in laughing when things go wrong and smiling when they go right.
It’s in accepting the people you care about without trying to own them.
Laozi and Zhuangzi may not have written love poems, but their entire philosophy was an act of love—for life, for freedom, for the way things are.
Summary Table
| Point | Taoist View on Love |
|---|---|
| Love as Attachment | Love ties people down and distracts them from the Dao. |
| Impartiality of the Tao | The Tao treats all things equally—no special love for anyone. |
| Zhuangzi on Relationships | Love is just another illusion, another way people trap themselves. |
| Taoists vs. Mohists | Mohists pushed for universal love; Taoists saw it as forced and unnatural. |
| Love Without Words | True love is spontaneous, unspoken, and effortless. |
| Love’s Biggest Problem | It fuels attachment, desire, and suffering. |
| Did the Taoists Love? | Yes, but they didn’t waste time talking about it. |
Conclusion
We’ve spent all this time wondering why Laozi and Zhuangzi didn’t talk about love.
But maybe the real question is—why do we care so much?
Maybe we’re the ones obsessed with love.
Maybe we’re the ones who need constant reminders that love is real, that it matters, that it’s something special.
Maybe that’s why we write books, songs, and movies about it.
But the Taoists?
They didn’t need any of that. They just lived. They walked through the world, smiled at the sun, let the rivers run their course, and didn’t ask why.
And that, my friend, is the greatest love story never told.
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