daodejing 81

Truthful words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not truthful.

Good words are not persuasive, persuasive words are not good.

He who knows has no wide learning, he who has wide learning does not know.

The sage does not hoard.

Having bestowed all he has on others, he has yet more.

Having given all he has to others, he is richer still.

The way of heaven benefits and does not harm.

The way of the sage is bountiful and does not contend.

Dao quietly overturns what might be described as the West’s mantra— 

Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

It overturns the mantra millennia before the above lines were written and about the same time the roots of this mantra were being developed.  It overturns by recognizing the polymorphousness of language, its undependability as a ground, long before Wittgenstein.  It overturns by saying that the whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful yet this is only the ugly; it overturns by returning to the gate where names diverge.

In returning, harm is deconstructed, contention dissolved through a withdrawal from clinging to anything that can be named.  The empty way, which use doesn’t drain, the beginning, the mother of the world, is the watery way we walk.