The Capacities
Read the full text in our reader
載營魄抱一，能無離？專氣致柔，能嬰兒？滌除玄覽，能無疵愛民治國，能無知？天門開闔，能無雌？明白四達，能無知？生之，畜之。生而不有，為而不恃，長而不宰，是謂玄德。
Carrying your souls and embracing the One, can you keep it from leaving? Focusing your breath and making it soft, can you be like a newborn child? Washing clean your inner vision, can you leave it without a flaw? Loving the people and governing the state, can you do it without cleverness? As the Gate of Heaven opens and closes, can you be without the hen? Bright and clear, reaching everywhere, can you be without cleverness? It gives life to them and rears them. It gives life but does not possess, acts but does not rely on it, raises but does not rule: this is called the mysterious power.
Heshang Gong titles it 能為 “The Capacities”.
These are questions for anyone who would be a sage, and Heshang Gong reads the whole chapter as body practice. 營魄 are the hun and po souls. 天門, Heaven’s Gate, is the nostrils, and its opening and closing is breathing. His text reads 無雌 where Wang Bi has 為雌, “be the hen”, yet his note still asks you to be like the hen: calm, soft and yielding.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Tao Te Ching 10 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Tao Te Ching — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Tao Te Ching 10 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/tao/10/