Chapter 1 · The Nameless Origin

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

Learn the Dao: a quiet practice for learning the thing that can’t be known.

The chapter’s first line

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

Free. No account needed to start.

This chapter in plain modern English — David Kooi’s rendering ↓

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.

Learn this chapter by heart, one line at a time.

Read a chapter. Recite the next line from memory. The app shows you, gently, what you missed — then has each line ready again around when it would start to slip.

Your recall of a later line — for example

Together we call them — missed the Mystery

The dotted words are the ones you missed.

Try this chapter’s first line ↑

Free. No account needed to start.

Chapter 1, in a second rendering

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.

Next · Chapter 2All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful…Read chapter 2 →

Read the whole chapter end to end →How the practice works →