Lao Tzu: "The uses of not" (Book One, Chapter 11)

Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn't
is where it's useful.

Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot's not
is where it's useful.

Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn't,
there's room for you.

So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn't.



"The uses of not" (Book One, Chapter 11) by Lao Tzu, from Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, translated from the original Chinese by Ursula K. Le Guin (Shambhala Publications, 1998 edition). Visit this link for the Chinese and a wide variety of English translations.

Translator's note: "One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He's explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counter-intuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the universe. He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about pots." 

Art credit: "Empty vessel," photograph taken on July 24, 2011, in Hyderabad, Telengana, India, by swarat_ghosh.

 

Ursula Le Guin: "Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge"

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
walk mindfully, well-loved one,
walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

"Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge" by Ursula Le Guin, from Always Coming Home. © University of California Press, 1985.

Curator's note: In Le Guin's novel Kesh elders sing this song to initiates who have chosen to become the people's emissaries to "the outside world." 

Photography credit: "Close-up of Person's Palm," by Casarsa (originally black and white).