Or, you may not see me tomorrow.

The way is empty,
used, but not used up.
Deep, yes! ancestral
to the ten thousand things.

Blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
the way is the dust of the way.

Quiet,
yes, and likely to endure.
Whose child? born
before the gods. (trans. Le Guin)

I hesitate to post quotes from the Le Guin, even though I like it, because it’s very interpretive. I think she took the right approach, given that she is not an expert on the Chinese language but is instead a really excellent writer in English. But it bears mentioning.

Here, though, instead of trying to explain Le Guin just seems to exalt in the mystery. “Good luck untangling this one!”

The second stanza lists three simple things undergoing entropy, then suggests finding the Way in the detritus of this entropy. Other translations make a stronger suggestion that the way is performing these acts, and Feng-English instead transforms it to the imperative.

If entropy results in final destruction, then the destruction is of something named. A knife, a knot, a day of sun. The dust remains; the material was used, but not used up, and is now something less certain. The Way that encompasses this naming and un-naming is not seen. Quiet, it is persistent and inexorable. We must participate, though we cannot really choose how. Filling ourselves and emptying ourselves, we can see it and the Names of the things it touches.

Where does the Way come from? Not even Lao Tzu wants to go there.