The way and its name

Beginningless says: “The Way cannot be spoken; once spoken, it is no longer it.” Again: “The Way should not be named.” What can be spoken and named resembles affairs and things or the four seasons: responding when appropriate, alternately declining and flourishing, it is not true constancy. The constant Way and constant name are their own root and source. Before Heaven and Earth existed, they had firmly abided since antiquity. Fuxi obtained this and entered the Mother of energy; the Queen Mother of the West obtained it and sat upon Shaoguang. No one knows its beginning or end.

The Way is constantly nameless. Heaven and Earth await it before being born: this is what Zhuangzi means by generating Heaven and Earth. Before they existed, who could name it? Hence the nameless is their beginning. Only after Heaven and Earth exist are the myriad things born; hence the named is their Mother.

Zhuangzi says: “Establish it in constant nonbeing and being.” Not setting up a single thing is called constant nonbeing; not abandoning a single thing is called constant being. Constant nonbeing lies in principle: above, it is not glaringly bright, being the world's utmost refinement, so observe its subtlety. Constant being lies in affairs: below, it is not obscure, being the world's utmost transformation, so observe its boundaries. Within the two realms of being and nonbeing dwell boundaries and subtlety. Great wisdom observes both together, finding nothing inadmissible. Within indistinctness are images and things.

Small wisdom is partial to itself, obscured by one corner. Abandoning being and clinging to emptiness, following branches and forgetting the root, it causes the arts of the Way to fragment throughout the world.

The Way originally has no fixed appearance. What then separately constitutes boundary and subtlety? [The supplied word before “subtlety” is uncertain.] Things and self share one root; right and wrong are one energy. Thus both are called mysterious. The world's deluded people abandon falsity to seek truth, yet move farther from truth, failing to understand that being and nonbeing differ only in name.

The Basic Questions says: “The mysterious generates spirit.” The Changes says: “Spirit expresses what makes the myriad things subtle.” Subtle and minute is called mysterious; the mysterious is Heaven's color. What is colored becomes manifest, but what gives color to colors never itself appears. “Mystery upon mystery” is precisely what colors colors.

All things possess the principle of mysterious subtlety. Heaven's movement, Earth's abiding, humanity's spiritual responsiveness, and the flourishing of the hundred things are all subtle. All emerge from the primal source; hence “the gate of all subtleties.” In composing the Changes, Confucius speaks of subtlety only upon reaching the Discussion of the Trigrams, while Laozi places it in the opening chapter. The sages' words thus form beginnings and endings for one another.