On your Way
Properties of Tao
number four
- The Road is an empty vessel;
- Yet when you use it, you never need to fill it again.
- Deep and still, it seems to be
- the source of the ten thousand things!
- It blunts the sharpness, it unties the knot,
- Soften the glare, and settles the dust.
- Submerged, it seems perhaps to exist.
- We do not know whose child it is.
Nature
Number five
- Heaven and Earth are impartial;
- They regard the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
- The wise are impartial;
- He regards the common people as straw dogs.
- The space between heaven and Earth -
- Is it not like a bellows?.
- It is empty but not depleted;
- Much learning means frequent exhausting.
- That is not so good as holding on to the mean.
Self
number six [seven]
- The reason why Heaven endures
- And Earth last a long time,
- Is that they do not live for themselves,
- Therefore they can long endure.
- Therefore the sage puts himself in the background,
- Yet finds himself in the foreground.
- Puts selfconcern out of [his mind],
- Yet finds that his selfconcern is preserved.
- It is not that he has no self-interest,
- That he is therefore able to attain fulfillment.
The Heart
number seven [six]
- The valley spirit never dies;
- We call it female, the primal mother.
- The gate of the mysterious female
- It is like a everlasting veil, barely seen.
- In being used ; it is not exhausted.
