Tao Te Ching 14 - You can't know the Tao but you can Be it

title: Tao Te Ching 14 - You can’t know the Tao but you can Be it — Book - Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

Stephen Mitchell Translation

Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable¹, it returns to the realm of nothing². Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom.

1: Truth is never expressed in words 2: Emptiness

Related poems:

• Tao Te Ching 1 - The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
• Tao Te Ching 4 - The Tao is hidden but always present
• Tao Te Ching 6 - empty yet inexhaustible
• Tao Te Ching 11 - Empitness and Non-Being

  Other translations I like

  Looking and not seeing it, we call it invisible; listening and not hearing it, we call it inaudible; reaching and not touching it, we call it ethereal.

These three aspects of it cannot be grasped, but contribute to the one.

Its rising brings no dawn, its setting no darkness; it goes on and on, unnameable, returning into nothingness.

Its form is formless. Its image is invisible. Meeting it, you cannot see its face. Following it, you cannot see its back. Hold to the ancient Tao to grasp the here-and-now⁴.

Discovering how things have always been brings one into harmony with the Way. [[ Sam Hamill ]]