Embodying the Way
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道可道，非常道；名可名，非常名。無名，天地之始；有名，萬物之母。故常無欲，以觀其妙；常有欲，以觀其徼。此兩者，同出而異名；同謂之玄。玄之又玄，眾妙之門。
The Way that can be spoken is not the constant Way. The name that can be named is not the constant name. Without a name, it is the beginning of heaven and earth; with a name, it is the mother of the ten thousand things. So, ever without desire, you see its mystery; ever with desire, you see its destination. These two come out together but differ in name. Together we call them the dark mystery: dark upon dark, the gate of all wonders.
The opening of the book. Heshang Gong titles it 體道 “Embodying the Way”.
The book opens by saying what it cannot do. The trick is in the characters: 道 is “way” and also “to say”, so the first line folds speaking back onto the thing spoken of. English needs two words where Chinese used one.
The chapter refuses to rank the pairs that follow. They come out of one source, and the word for that source is 玄, a dark red-black like dyed silk. Readers have disagreed for two thousand years about where to break these lines, and each break gives a different book.
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