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Each week we address one chapter of the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching can be obscure, especially if you think you're supposed to understand what it's saying! We find it easier and more instructive to simply contemplate how the chapter resonates with your personal experience. Becoming more aware at this fundamental level simplifies life. This approach conforms to the view that true knowing lies within ourselves. Thus, when a passage in the scripture resonates, you've found your inner truth. The same applies for when it evokes a question; questions are the grist for self realization.
Chapter 4
The way is empty, yet use will not drain it.
Deep, it is like the ancestor of the myriad creatures.Blunt the sharpness;
Untangle the knots;
Soften the glare;
Let your wheels move only along old ruts.Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there.
I know not whose son it is.
It images the forefather of God.Read commentary previously posted for this chapter.
Read notes on translations -
[Note: I italicize phrases I borrow from the chapter, and link to phrases I borrow from other chapters to help tie chapters together. While making it more tedious to read,
the Tao Te Ching is best pondered in the context of the whole.]I feel the flow of the moment as it empties into the next moment... moment... to... moment. The moment fills yet is never full; it flushes into the next moment. This feeling, deep and profound, only surfaces in my awareness when I'm still – when I hold firmly to stillness. Here, the sharp glare of differences empty into feelings of mysterious sameness.
Sharpness divides me from the ancestor of all this and leaves me terribly alone. The knots and the glare of difference blind my mind of this. Thus, my motto: simplify, consolidate, slow down, be still, return. This is easy as long as I remember that it is time to stop now! Ah, there's the catch. Yet, the wearier I become, the easier weakness becomes my relief, allowing me to fall apart like thawing ice and take the lower position. Oh, how egalitarianly simple and straightforward!
Of course, when I'm busy,... busy,... busy(1), this is difficult. Busy is too vigorous, too bright. Living busy is one of the unintended consequences of civilization. Viscerally knowing that helps slow me down some. I notice Nature; Nature is not busy. Nature follows the way and the way only.
In the original literal Chinese (below), there is no 'let your wheels move only along old ruts', but I love the sentiment anyway. Perhaps the idea is that by letting wheels move only along old ruts one did not kick up a lot of dust. Same its dust reminds me of 'dust to dust, ashes to ashes' – 'all is vanity', as the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament put it so well.
way flushes yet use of perhaps not full.
deep! like 10,000 things of ancestor.
lower (subdue) its sharp (keen, vigour), gentle its brightness (naked, alone),
same (together) its dust,
profound (deep; crystal clear) like perhaps exist.
I (we) no know who of son (seed, egg),
image (shape, resembles) emperor (Supreme Being) of earlier (before; first; ancestor)The way flows through, yet never fills.
Deep, it is like the beginning of all things that exist.
Relax the focus, merge the differences, as though they are dust.
Profoundly deep and clear as though it exists.
We know not what caused it,
It resembles a supreme before being.(1) The Chinese word for busy is mang. That character is composed of two sub-characters, heart-mind and to perish. The combined meaning for me is: busy equate to the perishing of the heart-mind. What is stress, but simply being busy to the max, filling it to the brim.
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