The ‘Dao’ (or ‘Tao’) is the core of the Dao De Jing (or Tao Te Ching). The entire text, composed of roughly five thousand Chinese characters, is dedicated to explaining this ‘Dao.’ Yet, Laozi laments from the very beginning that the ‘Dao’ cannot be clearly defined. It is akin to truth or reality—no definitive conclusion can ever be drawn about them. No matter how earnestly we strive, we only approach them incrementally, never fully grasping eternal truth or reality. Thus, Laozi chose to speak of the Dao by describing what it is not.
The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.Nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
named is the mother of all things.Thus, by constantly being without desire, one observes its subtlety;
by constantly having desire, one observes its manifestations.These two arise from the same source but differ in name;
both are called Mystery (profound) —
profound and again profound,
the gateway to all subtleties.
Note
The name ‘Dao’ is merely a form or symbol of the Dao; it is not the Dao itself. Names are tools to help us describe and understand the Dao. The same applies to all other labels. We should not cling to names and titles.
Being and non-being are two gateways to the Dao. Through them, we come to understand the Dao. The universe emerges from non-being and takes shape through being. Being and non-being are fundamentally the same; they differ only in appearance. For instance, if you cannot perceive something, you assume it does not exist, and vice versa. Being and non-being generate each other and cannot exist independently. Being alone is meaningless, but when it transforms into non-being, its effect is realized. Traditional Chinese arts, such as classical music, painting, and calligraphy, embody this idea of expressing being through non-being, emphasizing the latter.
Within the constant interplay of being and non-being lies the gateway to all wonder.
Further Reading
Chapter Two proposes that “Being and non-being generate each other, the difficult and the easy complement each other,” directly echoing the dialectical relationship between “Being” and “Non-being” as presented above, where “Non-being is the beginning of heaven and earth, and Being is the mother of all things.”
By employing contrasting concepts such as beauty and ugliness, good and not good, Chapter Two further elucidates the transcendent nature of the Tao introduced in Chapter One, emphasizing that contradictory aspects are interdependent and together constitute the essence of the world.
Chapter Forty, which states, “All things under heaven are born of Being, and Being is born of Non-being,” directly follows the cosmogony outlined above: “Non-being is the beginning of heaven and earth, and Being is the mother of all things.”
Chapter Forty clarifies that “Non-being” is the root of all things, while “Being” serves as an intermediate link, forming a complete logical chain of “Non-being > Being > all things,” which aligns closely with the ideas presented in Chapter One above.
道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。無名天地之始；有名萬物之母。故常無欲，以觀其妙；常有欲，以觀其徼。此兩者，同出而異名，同謂之玄。玄之又玄，衆妙之門。
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