Are the Grail and the TAO intimately related? This is for me is a very, very interesting question, one which I often ponder on. I've become pretty well convinced that they are in essence the same.
The path of the Grail is a process of gradual change...gradalis...meaning a path of gradual, step-by-step inner change or inner transformation towards a more worthy, ethical human being (Steiner in his book "Intuition as a Spiritual Path" would even call this "ethical individualism"). Is this Grail's meaning of change then similar or even like-in-essence with the Chinese meaning expressed in the "I Ching"... the"Book of Changes"? I think there are clear similarities.
The key representative of the Grail mystery was, according to Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific research in the Akasha, a very real historical person who lived in the 9th century A.D. This representative Parsifal was the reincarnated Mani. (Steiner reveals that much earlier Mani was the leading Initiate of the Sun Oracle on Atlantis). But in this new incarnation Parsifal (in the German...recall Wagner's opera?), Parzival (from the Persian) or Perceval (English) ...as a big step towards developing deep humility before fellow human beings, achieves during in the various stories and legends, the spiritual rank of the new Grail King. He moves along an arduous path towards the Holy Grail from naivety... through doubt... to grace or blessedness, full of compassion and understanding for fellow humanity.
According to Rene Querido's writings in his book entitled "The Mystery of the Holy Grail", 'Parzival means poor fool: one who lives in dullness within his physical surroundings, unrelated to super-sensible reality. Perceval [on the other hand also] means piercing the vale, and by extension refers to one who goes through the dark valley of death in search of the ultimate light." We may see that both of these descriptions can in fact illustrate two characteristics of the same enigmatic figure with whom we can also in fact, if we are indeed honest with ourselves, that for the most part we are all Parzivals at various times along our life journey (or journeys, if we hold reincarnation to be a fact of human destiny) ....whether we are conscious of this or not. We all start out pretty naive to the world (and in some ways many remain in that state)...we all have doubts about life (many about the questions the existence of God, of creation and individual freedom and love of equality and fraternity). And some achieve earlier on, but usually towards the end of life, the stage of grace or blessedness or goodness after a long life of learning through experience.
The Tao on the other hand is, as we often hear, called 'the Way". The Hong Kong born, now US resident Ph.D. professor and author Kwan-Yuk Claire Sit in her wonderful, fairly recent book (through http://www.steinerbooks.org/) entitled "Lao Tzu and Anthroposophy" puts it this way... "The word Tao [Dao in Chinese] can be used as either a verb or noun. As a verb, it means to guide or speak. As a noun, it stands for a road, a guide or method, or the eternal Way--something that seems to exist, and yet it is so difficult to grasp that Lao Tzu expounds on it with more than five thousand words."[!] Claire goes on to say in the next paragraph that..."Nam Huai-Jin (b.1918) explains that using the word Tao to mean "speak" is quite recent. He says that this usage was common during the Tung and Sung dynasties (618-1279), but not during Lao Tzu's time around the sixth to fourth centuries B.C.E." Perhaps this is a further evolving of the Tao towards something intimately closer what it means to be uniquely human and towards a time when not only "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was [a] God...but that the Word becomes manifest also within the human being? So is the Word and the Tao of the same essence? Another thought to ponder on and to take up later.
So we can see that the Grail and the Tao have so-to-speak one major common denominator in their meanings of ...a path...a road....to something more humanly worthy...with great virtue.
In fact, within the very title of the great work 'Tao Te Ching' written down by Lao Tzu in which he interprets in his words the wondrous wisdom from spoken traditions descending through millennia from Atlantis... the 'Te' means virtue. And "Ching" means teachings. Again we will dwell on this theme in a later post. (ed.)
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