Tao Te Ching XIV

What cannot be seen is called evanescent.

What cannot be heard is called rarefied.

What cannot be touched is called minute.

These three cannot be fathomed

and so they are confused and looked upon as one.

Its upper part is not dazzling,

its lower part is not obscure.

Dimly visible, it cannot be named

and returns to that which is without substance.

This is called the shape that has no shape,

the image that is without substance.

This is called indistinct and shadowy.

Go up to it and you will not see its head,

follow behind it and you will not see its rear.

Hold fast to the way of antiquity

in order to keep in control the realm of today.

The ability to know the beginning of antiquity

is called the thread running through the way.

The one we call confident has names and knowledge; he walks through forms that can be mapped and photographed.  He knows the seven habits, productivity’s formulae, the lineaments of career.  He clearly discerns left from right, progress from regress, solution from problem, balance from upset, truth from falsity, fact from fiction, day from night, dream from reality, fame from anonymity.  He says that is a camel, here is a lion, there a child.  I direct and they obey and everything grows and the projections are fulfilled.

The sage does not do this.  She too looks at the world and sees lions and children.  She sees habits and camels.  Growth is not a word absent from her lips.  She reads the history books.  But as she looks, the lion’s shape does not stay a lion’s shape.  It morphs.  It fades and warps, receding into the scarves of time.

The sage is insecure.  No firm foundation exists for her to stand on.  Maybe she stands on water; maybe she rides on air and sleeps on fire.  Maybe even she is an expert on elephants and can describe their livers, mating calls, and diets in a thousand ways.  But in every shape there are a thousand shapes and none and sunset’s cold farewell.  In every word there is every other word and none and shadow.  Ideas are bubbles, virtue is mysterious.

Unlike the one we call confident, the one whose security rests on security, whose knowledge rests on knowledge, names on names, the sage’s security rests on her insecurity, her knowledge on not-knowing, names on no-names.

Time is not a history book nor even history, but a thread.  A thread changes shape.  It breaks, is tied together, used for many effects, collapses then is drawn taut.  It can form any number or letter, it can ask any question.  It can be a line or a circle.  In an instant, it can disappear.

The sage is about returning to the murky ether that began the world.  For her, this is not a return to some other time but a return to the world that is always in a state of beginning.