The great De reveals its face
Only when you follow Dao.
What is Dao?
Only elusiveness.
Only indistinction. 5
So indistinct!
So elusive!
Yet it contains form.
So elusive!
So indistinct! 10
Yet it contains substance.
So profound!
So mysterious!
Yet it contains Jing.
And its Jing is the real thing. 15
From ancient days until now
We have named its presence Dao.
It shows how anything began.
How do I know how anything began?
By this. 20
***
NOTES
lines 14 and 15, Jing: Vitality. See Introduction section IV.2. Poem 55 also references Jing.
lines 19 and 20: A variation of these lines also ends poem 54.
COMMENTARY
With the opening lines of poem 21, Laozi states plainly that De is a power of Dao. As for what Dao is, this poem shares in the paradox of poem 1: the void essence and the material manifestation, arising together. I quote and discuss this poem in section II of the Introduction; here I’d like to point out that it is his awareness of the Yin-Yang balance (see Introduction section IV.1), which inclines Laozi to paradox and leads him to recognize that, just as something can be useless and unproductive, nothing can be useful and generative. Having discussed Dao throughout the poem, he ends by inviting you to check it out for yourself, with a closing Q&A where the answer is an open-ended this – the same this embraced at the end of poems 12, 38, and 72, the this of your blank page, the this of following Dao.
Links To:
The Classic of Dao and De by Laozi: Contents
For more on Daoism, see:
Film Dreams: Frank Capra
Music: KALW Radio Show #3, Ancient China in 20th-Century Music
Music: SFCR Radio Show #8, Daoism in Western Music, part 1
Music: SFCR Radio Show #9, Daoism in Western Music, part 2
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 