Tao Te Ching chapters 10 to 18: original text, transliteration, translation and line by line commentary

The image of the newborn child returns again and again in the book, in chapters 20, 28, 49 and 55. The newborn is taken as the model not for its innocence but for three very concrete traits: its bones are soft and its sinews weak, yet its grip is firm. It does not yet know how to make distinctions, so it does not contend. And its breath has not yet been worn down, so it can cry all day without going hoarse. This is the state of breath full and body supple, exactly what the practitioner wants to return to.

This chapter later became the foundation of the entire tradition of inner alchemy. Alchemists read the six opening questions as six stages of practice, and the phrase bao yi, embracing the One, became a technical term of cultivation in its own right.

These three clauses repeat chapter 2 almost word for word, now with a third clause added, let them grow without ruling over them. This is where the Tao Te Ching describes the relation between the Tao and the ten thousand things, and it is also the standard it sets for those above toward those below, and for parents toward children. Give birth, nourish, then let go so that each grows according to its own nature. The final phrase, xuan de, the mysterious Te, is the name given to that way of behaving.

This is one of the few chapters of the Tao Te Ching that argues through three very concrete physical examples anyone can check: a wheel, a pot, a house.

Thirty spokes was the real number on a Zhou dynasty chariot wheel, matching the thirty days of a month. The spokes are the part the craftsman carves, the part that is seen, the part that costs labor. But what makes the cart run is the empty hole in the middle of the hub into which the axle fits. The same with a clay pot: the clay is what the potter shapes, but the place that holds water is the hollow. The same with a house: the walls are what is built, but the place one lives in is the empty space.

The conclusion in the last two lines is tight and sharp: what is there brings the benefit, what is not there makes the use. The two do not oppose each other, they need each other. Without rim and spokes, that empty space would never become a wheel.

The clause about the house deserves a longer pause from anyone who practices feng shui. It says that the value of a house lies in the empty space it encloses, not in the mass of material that builds it. That is exactly what feng shui is concerned with: not how thick or thin the walls are, but how qi moves within that empty space, and where the door is placed so that the space can be used.

To be clear: the Tao Te Ching here is not discussing feng shui. It is discussing the relation between what is and what is not. But the view that empty space is the part that truly does the work is indeed the intellectual ground on which the later art of dwelling placement stands.

The five colors here are not any five colors but the five primary colors of the ancient system: blue-green, red, yellow, white and black, matching Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. The five tones are gong, shang, jue, zhi and yu. The five flavors are sour, bitter, sweet, pungent and salty. Those three sets of five made up the whole ancient classification of sensation.

The line does not say do not look, do not listen. It speaks of the numbness that comes from excess: eyes stuffed with color lose the ability to see what is subtle, and a tongue used to strong flavors can no longer taste the true flavor of rice and water. The character shuang 爽 in the line on the five flavors originally means spoiled, gone wrong, not the pleasant refreshment the word suggests in modern Vietnamese.

These four characters are an entire philosophy of living, and they connect directly to chapter 3 before them: empty their hearts, fill their bellies.

The belly is real need, and it has a bottom: once full, it stops. The eye is desire driven by what is seen, and it has no bottom: seeing something beautiful, it wants something more beautiful still. The sage chooses the part with a bottom and lets go of the part without one. In an age when everything is laid out to be looked at, this chapter reads sharper now than when it was written.

These three characters are the sharpest point of the chapter and also the one most often skimmed past. Ordinary people take favor as honor and disgrace as shame, two opposites. The Tao Te Ching says the two are of the same rank, because both place a person in a position where someone else decides their fate. To receive a favor is already to have accepted the lower place. So gaining it should be alarming too, not only losing it.

This line is often misread as advice to despise the body, or even to abandon it. The two closing lines of the chapter reject that reading outright.

Having no body here means not making the body the center of every calculation, not destroying the body. The proof follows immediately: the person worthy of being entrusted with the world is precisely the one who knows how to value and love their own body. The full argument runs like this: whoever takes care of their own body in the right measure will take care of the world in the same way. Whoever is ready to burn their own body for fame and gain will burn the world for fame and gain as well.

These three characters name the three ways in which the Tao lies beyond the three senses: what the eye cannot see is yi, what the ear cannot hear is xi, what the hand cannot grasp is wei. And as soon as the names are given, the next line says that these three cannot be examined to the bottom and so blend into one. In other words, the three names just given are only a device, not three separate things.

This is exactly the manner of writing that chapter 1 announced: each time the book is forced to give a name, it immediately takes that name apart again.

The two closing lines bring the chapter from metaphysics back to practice, and they deserve thought from anyone who works with the ancient arts. Hold to the Tao of old to govern what exists today, not to indulge in nostalgia. The old has value because it still serves the work of today, not because it is old.

The phrase dao ji 道紀, the thread of the Tao, is the term later commentators used for the continuous strand that ties the ancient to the present.

The seven similes in a row are the most beautiful passage in these nine chapters, and each simile describes one side of the person who follows the Tao.

The first describes caution: the ancients wading a river in winter, the ice not yet certain to hold, every step to be tested. That is not timidity but the awareness of walking on uncertain ground, exactly the attitude of someone who knows that their own understanding has limits.

The last three similes speak of substance: the uncarved block of wood is the character pu 樸, something not yet cut into a tool and therefore still holding all its possibilities. The mountain valley is the character gu 谷 already met in chapter 6, empty and therefore able to contain. Muddy water means not appearing clearer than the world, being willing to mix with what is murky, the same idea as softening the light and joining the dust in chapter 4.

These two questions are the most compact practice the whole book offers, and anyone can verify it with a bowl of muddy water: do not stir it and it clears by itself. Try to clear it quickly by stirring and decanting and it only gets muddier.

The second question supplies the other half, which readers usually forget: stay still forever and you die, so one must also know how to stir gradually so that life returns. The two lines come as a pair, following the rule for reading this book: in motion, know when to stop. In stillness, know when to begin.

The whole Taoist tradition of cultivation took these six characters as its watchword. Emptiness means clearing the heart of prejudice and scheming. Stillness means keeping it calm, and the character du 篤 means thick and enduring, not calm for a moment and then no more.

What deserves notice is that the purpose of keeping still is not to rest but to see clearly where the ten thousand things return. While the heart is still agitated, one sees only what is rising up. Only once the heart is quiet can one see the rhythm of the return.

This chapter sets out a law that the whole later system of East Asian divinatory arts came to rest on: everything has a rhythm of going out and coming back. A tree puts out shoots and then drops its leaves back to the root, day brightens and then darkens, qi waxes and then wanes.

The character chang 常 here is the very character in the opening line of chapter 1, fei chang dao. It means what does not change, the law. Knowing the constant is called clarity, while not knowing it and acting recklessly brings misfortune. That is the most compact statement in the book about the consequences of going against the rhythm of heaven and earth, and it is also the closest point between the Tao Te Ching and the spirit of choosing the right time in the divinatory arts: not superstition about days and hours, but not acting recklessly before one knows the rhythm.

Four ranks of ruler are set out from highest to lowest, and that order turns the ordinary way of judging on its head.

The highest is not the ruler whom the people love and praise, but the one whom the people merely know to exist, whose intervention they do not feel. The ruler the people praise ranks only second, because to earn praise one must do something that draws attention, and drawing attention already means disturbing the people. Third is to be feared, fourth is to be despised.

The closing line of the chapter states plainly the effect of the highest rank: the work gets done and the people all think it happened naturally, of itself, and no one thinks it was thanks to anyone. That is the most concrete definition of wu wei in governing a state.

A short line with great weight. It places the responsibility on the ruler, not on the people: the people do not distrust because they are bad, but because the ruler is not yet trustworthy enough. The same idea is repeated word for word in chapter 23.

These four lines are often read as an attack on the Confucians, since benevolence and righteousness, filial piety and parental kindness and loyal ministers are all central Confucian values. That reading is not entirely wrong, but it misses the layer of reasoning underneath.

What the book says is not that benevolence and righteousness are bad, but that the appearance of a virtue is always a sign that its foundation has already broken. If every household lived in harmony, no one would need to be held up as a model of filial piety, because filial piety would be an everyday matter, not worth pointing out. Only when fathers and sons, elder and younger brothers are at odds does the filial child stand out as an example. When the state is at peace there are no famous loyal ministers, because only in disorder can the loyal be told from the traitorous.

So this chapter does not say to do away with benevolence and righteousness. It says do not take the presence of benevolence and righteousness as proof that society is doing well, because usually the reverse is true. This is the argument of chapters 2 and 3 restated once more at the level of ethics: as soon as a standard has to be raised up, its opposite already exists.

The term zhi hui here is not wisdom in the good sense the words carry today, but cleverness and cunning, the kind used to devise schemes and stratagems. Where there is scheming there is disguise, and the more tricks, the more deceit. That reading matches chapter 3 before it, where the text speaks of keeping the cunning from daring to act.

One textual detail worth recording: the Guodian bamboo slips write this line differently, and some scholars read it as zhi bian chu, you da wei, that is, when eloquence in argument emerges, great deceit appears. The meaning is close, but the emphasis falls on speech rather than on scheming.