Tao Te Ching, Verse 4, Part I

“Tao is empty (like a bowl).
It may be used but its capacity is never exhausted
It is bottomless, perhaps the ancestor of all things.
It blunts its sharpness.
It unties its tangles.
It softens its light.
It becomes one with the dusty world.
Deep and still, it appears to exist forever.
I do not know whose son it is. It seems to have existed before the Lord.”
(Tao Te Ching, Verse 4, Chan Translation)

I have a close friend that is in the midst of a very difficult time in his life. The life he’d been building for himself has fallen apart. I went through a similar time in the early ‘90s. When it happened to me, my life fell apart because it wasn’t based on anything. I had no foundational beliefs on which to base my behavior or opinions, so that when trouble came (and it always comes), my poorly constructed house of cards toppled. Foundation is everything. Jesus tell us as much in Matthew 7:24-27

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

What Lao Tzu is doing in these early chapters is building a foundation for teaching. What I want to do over the next couple of days is to review the first three chapters to see what that foundation consists of.