Tao Te Ching XXI

In his every movement, a person of great virtue follows the way and the way only.

As a thing the way is shadowy, indistinct.

Indistinct and shadowy, yet within it is an image.

Shadowy and indistinct, yet within it is a substance.

Dim and dark, yet within it is an essence.

This essence is quite genuine and within it is something that can be tested.

From the present back to antiquity its name never deserted it.

It serves as a means for inspecting the parents of the multitude.

How do I know that the parents of the multitude are like that?

By means of this.

The Tao is nested into itself and all things, even as all things are nested into themselves and the Tao.  To be a thing is to not be shadowy, yet the Tao is a shadowy thing.  Though it is a shadowy thing, it hides within itself reflections, substances, and concentrations—each of these having at least a semblance of tangibility.  Yet within these reflections, substances, and concentrations, there is yet something else—something else unnamed—and this unnamed thing is somehow verifiable.  What sort of experiment might you construct to verify the presence of this thing within the image within the shadowy thing within the sage?  And how might one follow such a thing within a thing within a thing within a thing?  And how could one tell such was being incessantly followed?  And where in any text on psychology, healing, or religion might one find such an elusive definition of virtue?  Nowhere, for though words do not desert it, it eludes words; though the multitude ignores it, it inspects the multitude through its origins.

Imagine the council of original begetters, lined against the wall dressed in their most dubious selves.  Something not quite there pacing back and forth in front, its name tucked inside its pants, performing strange inspections.  Would you stand against that wall?  How do you know?

The Tao is nested through the liminality of itself in everything, of the twilight that infests all certainty and the doubt that thrives at noon.  The Tao does not live in the mirror; it is the mirror—its frame, casing, glass, source, void, and contents.  It is a method that precedes, infuses, and succeeds science ontologically and historically.

The Christian, the Jain and Hindu, the Moslem and Jew, the Buddhist, the Confucian and humanist … all must deviate from their ways, for their ways are ways and all walk but one way—the way of ways, the way of the body, life’s murky sensate path; the one who follows the Tao, though, follows the broadest possible way—without narrowness, without eradication, without rules, without scriptures, without priests or gods, without idols and ceremonies and structures, unreliant on the false gods of art and technology, unconcerned with money and reputation, giving time only a passing glance,   The way is not narrow but broad, for life is broad; most walk the narrow ways from fear and indolence, but the sage sees life and does not stray from its breadths, heights, or depths.  So she follows the virtue that is not named virtue and walks the way that is not named a way.

Not surprising, then, for such indistinction to avoid the clarity that grammarians demand with their crisp call for neon antecedents.  The Tao shrugs at such demands.  You ask, Like what? How?  It may respond, Like this.  By means of that.  If you follow the Tao, you know the that and this; you’ve seen and touched them, used them as tools and measures, been measured by them, followed them.  They are as genuine as pi and berries, as real as LSATs and wombats.