Tao Te Ching, Verse 11, Part I

“The empty hub at center
Allows a wheel to roll
The vacancy within defines
The function of a bowl

The openness within a house
Provides location to reside
The open space that is my heart
Is where ten thousand things abide”
(Tao Te Ching, Verse 11, Jim Clatfelter Translation)

I’ve been trying to think of a way to discuss this that would make sense and finally it occurred to me that it’s all about nouns – in English I we discuss the difference between concrete nouns and abstract nouns (remember a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea) – concrete nouns are the people, places, and things (if you had a bucket big enough to hold the universe, concrete nouns are the stuff you could put in the bucket); abstract nouns are the ideas (you can’t put ideas in a bucket) – last month I wrote, “our spirits chafe under the burden of the consumerism of our materialistic culture – it rarely gives us what we want and never gives us what we need – what we need, what we’ve always needed is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – everything else is just a distraction” – I think that the idea of this verse is that “things” are not the “THING” – the nouns of real importance are the abstract nouns – even people are not important unless we include the abstract nouns of love, relationship, kindness, nurture, etc. . . to them – I think our culture teaches us to focus on the stuff and ignore the abstract nouns that really matter.

I’ll leave you, as always, with Siji Tzu’s commentary:
“Wei is what we do. Wu-wei is how we live. We put a roof over our heads to protect us from the elements. But it is the space inside where our family grows. I have a wooden vessel to carry water from my well to my house. But it is the inside that contains the elixir. It is what we don't see that makes us full.”