Translation

Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know.
Subdue its sharpness, untie its tangles,
Soften its brightness, be the same as dust,
This is called profound sameness.

For this reason,
Unobtainable and intimate,
Unobtainable and distant
Unobtainable and favorable
Unobtainable and fearful
Unobtainable and noble
Unobtainable and humble
Unobtainable and noble
For this reason all under heaven value it.

know (realize) ? no (not) speech (word; say; talk), speech (word; say; talk) ?no (not) know (realize).

defeat (frustrate; subdue; lower) his (its; their; they; that) sharp (keenr; fighting spirit), separate (divide; untie; understand) his (its; their; they; that) confused (tangled; disorderly).

gentle (kind; harmonious; peace> and) his (its; their; they; that) light (ray; brightness… naked; alone), same (similar; together) his (its; their; they; that) dust (dirt; this world).

<grm>is <formal> this; that) say (call; name; meaning; sense) black (dark; profound) same (similar; together).

reason (cause; on purpose; hence)

no (not) can get <conj.>(and / but not) parent (close; intimate; oneself).

no (not) can get<conj.>(and / but not) thin (sparse; scattered).

no (not) can get<conj.>(and / but not) sharp (favorable; advantage).

no (not) can get<conj.>(and / but not) evil (harm; calamity; impair; kill).

no (not) can get<conj.>(and / but not) expensive (precious; noble).

no (not) can get<conj.>(and / but not) inexpensive (cheap; lowly; humble).

reason (cause; on purpose; hence) do (act; act as; serve as; be; mean) land under heaven expensive (precious; noble).

Original

知者不言。
言者不知。
挫其锐，
解其纷，
和其光，
同其尘，
是谓玄同。
故
不可得而亲。
不可得而疏。
不可得而利。
不可得而害。
不可得而贵。
不可得而贱。
故为天下贵。

Commentary, October 2010

I was long perplexed by the idea that ‘one who speaks does not know‘. That seemed to negate any opinion, observation or thought that I had. Now I finally get it, I think. At least it doesn’t perplex me anymore. As I see it, there are two sides to this.

One side is about truth. From a mysterious sameness point of view, thinking and speaking can never reach the depth of all-inclusive knowing. In order to discern or say anything, I must harden, not soften its⁽¹⁾ brightness. Instead of seeing profound sameness, I need to discern concrete difference. Language requires this sharpness, even for the most mundane statements of ‘fact’. This results in a symbolic abstraction of experience, not extemporaneous knowing. Thinking and speaking are after-the-fact reporting of past experience—in a word, gossip. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with that, which bring me to the other side of this issue.

Gossip is a natural glue that connects social animal. Non-thinking social animals, like doges, use scent as ‘gossip’ commonly. Although bees use dance of sorts. And then elephants, whales and other big brained social animals use sounds, as rudimentary forms of speech. Speaking for us is like chirping for crickets, or tweeting for birds. It connects individuals of a social species to the group. Language connect us to our fellow humans. Knowing is not the purpose, which brings me back to the point of this chapter.

This chapter’s ‘One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know‘ highlights the view that our species has gone a bit overboard, relying to heavily on thinking and speech to know reality. Too much of a ‘good’ thing results in imbalance. In out case, heavy reliance on word and names (language) has weakened our ability to experience nature with sufficient impartiality. Our mind chatter enables us to haul around our dead and gone past, and an imagined yet unlikely future.

Nevertheless, we’re stuck with thinking and speaking. The more we believe what we think, the more we keep chasing our tail in circular rationalizations to prove the ‘reality’ of our symbolic mental world. I find it is possible to avoid some of this futile run-around by merely acknowledging that, ‘knower not speak; speaker not know’, (and by the same token, ‘knower not think, thinker not know’.

Spiritual ideas (all the way from God down to the stuff I write) reflect an irresistible and ironic attempt to speak to that which is beyond thought. I regard it all as just beating-around-the-bush. I can never put my finger on that which images the forefather of God (which makes it all the more intriguing, eh). From a symptoms point of view, I see this quest as simply the hunter- gatherer drive prodding me to keep looking for the ultimate tasty morsel of truth that can be spoken of. Everything is so much simpler than it appears in thought. That is why, to know yet to think that one does not know is best.

⁽¹⁾ You may wonder what the ‘its’ refers to in soften its⁽¹⁾ brightness. I think of ‘it‘ as a broad description of anything and everything that diverges in name as it issues forth. The actual word is qi (其) which translates as: his, her, its, their, he, she, it, they, that, such.