Chapter 1 · The Nameless Origin

Tao Te Ching (Legge, 1891) · chapter title added by Learn the Dao

The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. (Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things. Always without desire we must be found, If its deep mystery we would sound; But if desire always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see. Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.

Signal and Noise

Dao De Kooi — an original rendering by David Kooi

The Dao you can explain isn't the Dao. The name you can pin on it isn't the name. (Yes, including this one. First line of the book, and it's already warning you about the book.) I've started calling it the Unfolding - the great big way things were going to be anyway. It was running long before anyone named anything. Heaven and earth came out of it. Then we showed up, started naming... and the naming never stops, does it? So how do you look at a thing that isn't a thing? Drop the wanting - even for a second - and you catch the thing itself. The signal. Keep the wanting and you get whatever the wanting shows you - the stuff it throws off. The noise. Same source either way. Call it the mystery if you like. The mystery under the mystery - that's the door the rest of it comes through.

Learn the Dao is a quiet practice for learning the thing that can’t be known — committing the Tao Te Ching to memory, one line at a time.

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The Tao that can be trodden is — missed not the enduring and unchanging Tao

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