A SMALL GLOSSARY
Words worth returning to.
Fifteen central terms, with short English introductions and passages to read alongside them. No single translation holds every meaning.
Dao
The Way
The course of things and the source from which they arise. The opening chapter cautions that any name is already a limitation.
Read 6 chapters ↗De
Virtue / potency
The quality through which the Way becomes present in a life. “Virtue” here involves a way of being, beyond a list of moral rules.
Read 5 chapters ↗Wu wei
Action without forcing
Acting without imposing needless effort or interference. Its meaning comes into focus through the text’s descriptions of the sage and the ruler.
Read 6 chapters ↗Ziran
So of itself
What unfolds of itself. The familiar translation “nature” can obscure the phrase’s sense of spontaneity and being so on one’s own.
Read 5 chapters ↗Pu
The uncarved block
An image of simplicity before desires and distinctions multiply. The uncarved block asks what becomes possible when we stop adding.
Read 5 chapters ↗Shui
Water
Water benefits things, occupies the low places, and yields. It offers one of the book’s most concrete images of strength without contention.
Read 5 chapters ↗Wu
Absence / emptiness
The empty part of a vessel makes it useful. The text asks us to attend to what is absent as carefully as to what is present.
Read 4 chapters ↗Sheng ren
The sage
A recurring figure who teaches without display, acts without possessiveness, and makes room for other people.
Read 6 chapters ↗Fan
Return / reversal
Things return to their roots; movement changes direction. Returning is one of the text’s ways of describing how the Way works.
Read 4 chapters ↗Rou
Softness
The living are supple; the dead are rigid. Softness is explored as responsiveness and endurance, especially through the images of water and infancy.
Read 5 chapters ↗Jing
Stillness
Quiet attention allows the movement and return of things to become visible. Stillness appears in both self-cultivation and government.
Read 4 chapters ↗Yu
Desire
The book often questions the multiplying of wants. It links contentment with the ability to recognise when there is enough.
Read 5 chapters ↗Xia
The lower place
The sea receives the rivers because it lies below them. The lower position becomes an image of receptivity and leadership.
Read 4 chapters ↗Ci
Compassion
The first of the three treasures in chapter 67. Care for others stands alongside frugality and reluctance to put oneself first.
Read 2 chapters ↗Yi
The One
An image of unity and coherence. The chapters use it to explore the relation between multiplicity and a sustaining source.
Read 4 chapters ↗