Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.

 The flow of nature is melodic: both inevitable and spontaneous.

(Wu Wei Ching-Kuo Hsiang)

The Tao Te Ching-Lao Tzu:

Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.

(James Legge translation)

1  

The tao that can be told  

is not the eternal Tao  

The name that can be named  

is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.  

Naming is the origin  

of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.  

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations  

arise from the same source.  

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.  

The gateway to all understanding.

(Stephen Mitchell translation)

8 

If there were a god, 

he'd be like water 

that brings life to things 

without trying. 

Water seeks the lowest place 

and cleanses what it touches. 

It is as satisfied with the humble 

as with the exalted. 

Still, deep, clear, 

true, kind, useful, 

generous, prompt. 

This is also the true man, 

liquid, and at ease.

(Crispin Sartwell translation)

34  

The great Tao flows everywhere.  

All things are born from it,  

yet it doesn't create them.  

It pours itself into its work,  

yet it makes no claim.  

It nourishes infinite worlds,  

yet it doesn't hold on to them.  

Since it is merged with all things  

and hidden in their hearts,  

it can be called humble.  

Since all things vanish into it  

and it alone endures,  

it can be called great.  

It isn't aware of its greatness;  

thus it is truly great.

(Stephen Mitchell translation)

34  

The Way is a river  

flowing and overflowing everywhere.  

Completely reliable, it receives every thing.  

Whatever it does, it does without effort,  

and when the job is finished it lets go.  

It touches everything and controls nothing.  

That is why whatever it touches is eternal.

51  

Tao is the origin of life.  

Your life is that life.  

Merely by breathing, by being,  

you know and honor the source  

and its expression and manifestation.  

Each of us is a place of culmination.  

Each of us is nurtured by the source  

and is what nurtures us.  

Create and let go of what you create.  

Give and expect nothing.  

Work hard and do not claim ownership.

(Crispin Sartwell translation)

The Tao does nothing, and yet nothing is left undone.

38  

The Master doesn't try to be powerful;  

thus he is truly powerful.  

The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;  

thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,  

yet he leaves nothing undone.  

The ordinary man is always doing things,  

yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,  

yet something remains undone.  

The just man does something,  

and leaves many things to be done.  

The moral man does something,  

and when no one responds  

he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.  

When goodness is lost, there is morality.  

When morality is lost, there is ritual.  

Ritual is the husk of true faith,  

the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself  

with the depths and not the surface,  

with the fruit and not the flower.  

He has no will of his own.  

He dwells in reality,  

and lets all illusions go.

44  

Fame or integrity: which is more important?  

Money or happiness: which is more valuable?  

Success or failure: which is more destructive?

If you look to others for fulfillment,  

you will never truly be fulfilled.  

If your happiness depends on money,  

you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;  

rejoice in the way things are.  

When you realize there is nothing lacking,  

the whole world belongs to you.

(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

“But if, as is the case, the Tao is simply inconceivable, what is the use of having the word and of saying anything at all about it? Simply because we know intuitively that there is a dimension of ourselves and of nature which eludes us because it is too close, too general, and too all-embracing to be singled out as a particular object."  

Alan Watts

“The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar. ‘In ritual’, say the Analects, ‘it is harmony with Nature that is prized.’...”  

C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us…

Thomas Merton

We also have another name, one which we do not know. You remember the passage in the Book of Revelation which says that in the Kingdom each will receive a white stone with a name written on it, a name which is known only to God and to him who receives it?

This is no nickname, no family name, no Christian name. It is a name, a word, that is exactly identical with us, which coincides with us, which is us. We may almost say it is a word which God pronounced when he willed us into existence and which is us, as we are it.

This name defines our absolute and unrepeatable uniqueness as far as God is concerned. No one can know the name, as no one can, in the last analysis, know anyone as God knows him; and yet it is out of this name that everything else comes that can be known about us.’’ (Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray, 1970)

“...he can be well loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you must step above it stoutly but deftly, with a devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce that darkness above you; and beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and do not give up, whatever happens.”

The Cloud of Unknowing (anonymous, late 1300’s)

(Job 9:11)  

Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not;  

he moves on, but I do not perceive him.

Canst thou by searching find out God?  

Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?  

It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?  

Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?  

The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.  

(Job 11:7-9)

 “There were solitudes beyond where none shall follow. There were secrets in the inmost and invisible part of that drama that have no symbol in speech; or in any severance of a man from men. Nor is it easy for any words less stark and single-minded than those of the naked narrative even to hint at the horror of exaltation that lifted itself above the hill. Endless expositions have not come to the end of it, or even to the beginning. And if there be any sound that can produce a silence, we may surely be silent about the end and the extremity; when a cry was driven out of that darkness in words dreadfully distinct and dreadfully unintelligible, which man shall never understand in all the eternity they have purchased for him; and for one annihilating instant an abyss that is not for our thoughts had opened even in the unity of the absolute; and God had been forsaken of God." 

G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

"THE PRESENT IMPORTANCE of the Book of Job cannot be expressed adequately even by saying that it is the most interesting of ancient books. We may almost say of the Book of Job that it is the most interesting of modern books. In truth, of course, neither of the two phrases covers the matter, because fundamental human religion and fundamental human irreligion are both at once old and new; philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. The modern habit of saying, "This is my opinion, but I may be wrong," is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and its suits me"; the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. The first of the intellectual beauties of the Book of Job is that it is all concerned with this desire to know the actuality; the desire to know what is, and not merely what seems."

~G.K. Chesterton: Introduction to 'The Book of Job'