Chapter 1
Original Text
The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao.
The name that can be named is not the constant name.
“The nameless” is the beginning of Heaven and Earth;
“The named” is the mother of the ten thousand beings.
Therefore: ever without desires, you can behold its subtlety;
ever with desires, you can behold its thresholds.
These two emerge together but bear different names;
together we call them “mysterious.”
Mysterious and ever more mysterious—
the gateway of all wonders.
Word Notes
- Dao: principle / Way.
- kě-dào (可道): can be put into words.
- cháng (常): constant, abiding.
- míng (名): designation, label.
- kě-míng (可名): can be designated.
- miào (妙): subtle, wondrous.
- jiào (徼): threshold / limen (a critical hinge point).
- xuán (玄): deep, unfathomable.
Chapter Explanation
Any Dao that can be expressed is not the abiding Dao;
any name that can be affixed is not the abiding Name.
“The nameless” is the source of Heaven-and-Earth;
“the named” is the mother from which beings proliferate.
Thus: in constant non-desire, one contemplates its subtlety;
in constant desire, one contemplates its thresholds.
“True emptiness” and “marvelous presence” both issue from the unsayable Dao, though differently named; both are called “mysterious,” and “mysterious upon mysterious”—the door of all wonders.
Discourse
This chapter declares Dao as the source of Heaven and Earth; De (Virtue) is Dao in motion. Laozi speaks from pre-phenomenal emptiness—unfathomable and ungraspable. If you cling to post-natal forms, you cannot glimpse even a scale or claw of that “dragon.” Yet this emptiness is supremely real: body and function, root and branch. Because there is an unsayable Dao, there come to be all sayable “ways”; because there is an unnameable Name, there come to be all names—hence Dao as beginning and mother. Humans receive Dao entire and should align with its naturalness: from emptiness, view the subtle; from presence, read the thresholds. Everything—states, persons, life and death—has “thresholds and subtleties”: hit the lock’s spring (threshold) and it opens (the subtle). Miss it, and you ruin the lock. In self-cultivation, ignorance of thresholds harms life; in governance, it brings disorder. The remedy for today’s wars and grasping after profit is the empty Dao and life-cherishing De. Empty out craving; practice Dao and De; turn back the current of killing so all nations may share peace.