<p>How can a calling exist without a caller? This question challenges the viability of the concept in secular education, where the notion of a divine source has been largely abandoned. This paper examines David Hansen’s influential attempt to ground the call to teach in tradition. I argue that Hansen’s tradition-based account tends to displace the caller, reducing calling to a unilateral projection of the agent and confining it to established social practices. To address the dilemma of a secular calling, this paper proposes an alternative theoretical framework drawn from the Daoist text <i>Zhuangzi</i>. Through an analysis of the master butcher Cook Ding, I explicate the concept of the self-forgetting experience and the non-objectifying knowing it represents. Drawing on Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance, I contend that this immersive, non-objectifying mode of knowing allows the thing to speak with its own voice, thereby functioning as a secular caller. In contrast to Hansen’s emphasis on historical precedents, this Daoist reconstruction posits that calling emerges immanently from the direct, resonant communion between the self and the thing. The paper concludes by discussing the educational implications of this view, arguing that the self-forgetting experience challenges the primacy of reflective experience in education and that cultivating children’s capacity for self-forgetting is a vital educational goal that prepares them to receive a calling.</p>