Tuesdays with Tao: Four - Limitless Tao

:: Every Tuesday, I've been publishing one more chapter of my personal re-interpretation of Lao-tzu's awesomely inspiring and quietly wise Tao Te Ching. Despite being written down some 25 centuries ago, it is a marvel of contemporary insight. The opening chapter, The Essence of Tao, is here.

This week, the limitless nature of Tao is invoked, as it will be a number of times in coming chapters. Consisting of everything, and beyond everything, it's a concept we can't quite grasp because for us as humans, we define something partly by what it is not. Tao is something like snow in a snowstorm on a moonless night; hard to see because there nothing other than snow to look at. ;-)

Four - Limitless Tao

A yawning limitless abyss, Tao is never filled yet never drained -- so deep! So stratospheric!

A container for everything in the vast, expanding world, it will never reach the brim.

Embracing, taming all, with an ever-quenching, inexhaustible abundance, it:

  Softens sharp edges;

  Resolves all confusions;

  Tempers glare into gentleness;

  And unites the loose with the whole.

Whence comes Tao? Before infinity itself began!

Comments welcome!