Chapter 4 · The Fountainless Vessel

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 is (like) the emptiness of a vessel;

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

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.

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I do not know whose — missed son it is

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Chapter 4, in a second rendering

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.

Next · Chapter 5Heaven and earth do not act from (the impulse of) any wish to be benevolent…Read chapter 5 →

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