32 - SACRED POWER

The way goes on forever nameless.

Uncut wood, nothing important,

yet nobody under heaven

dare try to carve it.

If rulers and leaders could use it,

the ten thousand things

would gather in homage,

heaven and earth would drop sweet dew,

and people, without being ordered,

would be fair to one another.

To order, to govern,

is to begin naming;

when names proliferate

it’s time to stop.

If you know when to stop

you’re in no danger.

The Way in the world

is as a stream to a valley,

a river to the sea.

UKLG: The second verse connects to the uncut, the uncarved, the unusable, to the idea of the unnamed presented in the first chapter: “name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.” You have to make order, you have to make distinctions, but you also have to know when to stop before you’ve lost the whole in the multiplicity of parts. The simplicity or singleness of the Way is that of water, which always rejoins itself.