Tao Te Ching XV

Of old she who was well versed in the way

was minutely subtle, mysteriously comprehending, and too profound to be known.

It is because she could not be known that she can only be given a makeshift description:

tentative, as if fording a river in winter;

hesitant, as if in fear of her neighbors;

formal, like a guest;

falling apart, like thawing ice;

thick, like the uncarved block;

vacant, like a valley;

murky, like muddy water.

Who can be muddy and yet, settling, slowly become limpid?

Who can be at rest and yet, stirring, slowly come to life?

She who holds fast to this way desires not to be full.

It is because she is not full that she can be worn and yet newly made.

The sage is tentative, for human society is a thin layer of ice, under which there is the bottomless maw of the human soul.  The sage knows the soul and does not fear it … but why fall into it unless necessary?

The sage is hesitant, for her neighbors are like herself:  shifting, odd, unknown.  But they do not know that they are shifting, odd, unknown, instead thinking they are constant, normal, known; this lack of knowledge is why she approaches them uncertainly.

The sage is formal, for she is always visiting and no particular thing can claim pre-eminent intimacy.  She arrives and dines and laughs, but she is never known.  Even her informality is a mask covering an ancient formality.

The sage is falling apart, for her boundaries, foundations, and identities are always shifting.  Dissolution, re-formation:  these are her friends.  For those who are not sages, such friends cause them to break down; but as the sage’s security is insecurity, her foundation bottomlessness, her identity a slight smile, a vague recognition … she is constantly falling apart yet is never broken.

The sage is thick, for like the way she walks, she cannot be sliced into names; she cannot be identified with whatever might surround her; no particular thought or skill breaks away from the great conglomerate of thoughts and skills and says, “I am supreme.”

The sage is vacant, for otherwise how could she be open to the world?

The sage is murky, for the debris of infinite possibility floats in her.  She is like an infinitely diverse and wondrous wardrobe of masks and fashions.  You enter, try things on, discard them, moving endlessly, never reaching any walls.  Then you realize—I am here in the dim light of the wardrobe; I have become nothing other than this donning, discarding, and moving.  This “nothing other” is why the sage is murky.

She lies calmly or savagely wars, depending on whatever is required, though she knows that few things are required and war rarely is.  Though some manners of the soul are rarely used, all are present and ripe—ready to be put to use.

The sage desires what exists.  What exists is whatever aspect of the soul is manifesting itself at the present.  To be full would be for all the soul’s aspects to be fully manifesting themselves at once and always.  Yet this fullness is restricted to the world in its entirety—and not even then perhaps—never to an aspect of the world.  Why then would the sage desire what will never be? 

Are we not all tentative, hesitant, formal, falling apart, thick, vacant, and murky?  The sage desires what she is and by doing so grows old like everyone but, like the Tao, is always a baby.