Sourceless
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道沖而用之，或不盈，淵乎似萬物之宗；挫其銳，解其紛，和其光，同其塵，湛兮似若存。吾不知誰之子，象帝之先。
The Way is hollow, and we use it; it is not ever full. How deep it is! It seems to be the ancestor of the ten thousand things. It blunts its sharp edges, unties its tangles, softens its light, and is one with the dust. Deep and still, it seems as if it lives on. I do not know whose child it is; it seems to come before the Lord of Heaven.
Heshang Gong titles it 無源 “Sourceless”.
The Way is an empty vessel that never needs filling: the more it is used, the more it holds. The Lord of Heaven it seems to come before is the High Lord of the old religion.
The word 沖 is a hollow, and Heshang Gong reads it as the empty middle. The four short lines about blunting and untangling are advice for a person as much as a picture of the Way, and they come back word for word in chapter 56.
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