Tao Te Ching XI

Thirty spokes share one hub.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand and you will have the use of the cart.

Knead clay in order to make a vessel.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand and you will have the use of the vessel.

Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand and you will have the use of the room.

Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can be put to use.

Scholars, firefighters, the wise, astrologists, businesspeople and priests, prostitutes, bathroom repair technicians, and judges all share one assumption:  that something will lead to something; that a specific act, idea, or attitude—or some conglomeration of acts, ideas, or attitudes—will, more likely than not, lead to another specific act, idea, or attitude.  The Tao does not deny etiology but places empty spaces as the cause of function and movement.  Whether these be the empty spaces of the physical world or the empty spaces of the mind and soul.

The sage is the sage because for her causes transform from solids to liquids to gases … and dissipate.  Uncertainty, agnosticism, doubt are her playthings.  Morality is the weapon of those afraid of the gaseous dissipative world--the world that has shadowy guidelines but no rules, that sees justice, truth, and love as moments rather than monuments.  (But if fear leads to morality, does not this show the sage to be a hypocrite, as even she believes in causation?)

There are empty spaces, there are the ways we respond to them, and there is the stab of emotion between.

The sage does not stay in nothing, but migrates easily to something.  But all do this.  The sage is the sage because she is disinclined to attribute solid names in the ancestries of all specific things.