Day: May 19, 2023

Tao Te Ching – Verse 14

Look, and it can’t be seen.
Listen, and it can’t be heard.
Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

Above, it isn’t bright.
Below, it isn’t dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can’t know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

(translation by Stephen Mitchell, 1995)
-+-+-+-

Look at it, it cannot be seen
It is called colorless
Listen to it, it cannot be heard
It is called noiseless
Reach for it, it cannot be held
It is called formless
These three cannot be completely unraveled
So they are combined into one

Above it, not bright
Below it, not dark
Continuing endlessly, cannot be named
It returns back into nothingness
Thus it is called the form of the formless
The image of the imageless
This is called enigmatic
Confront it, its front cannot be seen
Follow it, its back cannot be seen

Wield the Tao of the ancients
To manage the existence of today
One can know the ancient beginning
It is called the Tao Axiom

(translation by Derek Lin, 2006)
-+-+-+-

Sight and blindness are indistinguishable.
Thunder and silence are one.
Touch and ether are the same.
There is always light and dark.
Shape is illusion; form is Formless.
The future is the past.
The Beginning is the present.
Nothingness is the Zero called changeless.

(translation by Jeremy M. Miller, 2013)
-+-+-+-

from I Ching Online