Chapter 4
The Tao is like an empty container:
it can never be emptied and can never be filled.
Infinitely deep, it is the source of all things.
It dulls the sharp, unties the knotted,
shades the lighted, and unites all of creation with dust.
it can never be emptied and can never be filled.
Infinitely deep, it is the source of all things.
It dulls the sharp, unties the knotted,
shades the lighted, and unites all of creation with dust.
It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than the concept of God.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than the concept of God.
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I think about a paper that can be black or white. A
blank white paper suggests to me a background for an infinite amount of
information; or a totality that includes the infinite amount of information. In
other words, “nothingness” comprises infinite possibilities. As we start to
fill in the white paper by writing the objective descriptions of our events, the
blank paper converges onto becoming black because the finite space of the paper
cannot hold every piece of information. When the white paper does become
virtually black and eventually becomes black as an infinite amount of
information fills the paper, one particular piece of information will be unrecognizable
from a different piece of information on the same paper sheet. The finally
blackened paper is in a sense no different from the previous white paper
because it does not comprise discernible information. When the nothingness
starts to allow some meaningful information bits, it was already on its course
to becoming nothingness again tinted with a different color. Is it possible
that this may be the way that nothingness begets being and being, in the end,
ends in nothingness? Did I not say in one of the above chapters that a child
that is reborn after a dragon’s fight in Nietzsche’s literature is a different
child than before? Things may return to nothingness when beings are coming to
an end after the prior “nothingness,” but the new “nothingness” would be a
little different from the former. Is it possible for physicists to assume that
this is how the universe proceeds?
Or think about sex drives. Once our sexual desire is
satisfied, from time to time we feel a bad aftertaste. However, our sex drive is
never fully satiable, and even when we feel that our lust was fully satisfied,
we know that it will soon return after some time. Sex drive can never be fully
satisfied. This is the way of the tao.
As the Korean proverb goes, it is like pouring water into
a jar having a hole somewhere near its base.
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