Chapter 4 · The Fountainless Vessel

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

The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of all things! We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao is, as if it would ever so continue! I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before God.

A Tool That Never Runs Out

Dao De Kooi — an original rendering by David Kooi

The Dao is empty the way a good tool is empty - you use it and it never runs out. Bottomless. Like it's the source everything came from. It takes the edge off the sharp, untangles the knots, softens the glare, settles with the dust. So faint you'd swear it's barely there. I don't know whose child it is. It seems older than any god people came up with later.

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 is (like) the — missed emptiness of a vessel

The dotted words are the ones you missed.

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