Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 4 — The Unfathomable Source
Empty yet inexhaustible
The Tao as bottomless well — older than any image of God, ancestor of all things. Used yet never filled, dim yet ever-present.
Source context
- Theme
- inexhaustible emptiness of the Tao as source and ground of all things
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta — Brahman as nirgunaThe Upanishadic description of Brahman as attributeless ground (nirguna) from which all manifestation arises and into which it returns shows cross-tradition congruence with the Tao as inexhaustible void that pre-exists the ten-thousand things.
- Neoplatonism — the One beyond beingPlotinus's account of the One as prior to intellect and being, from which all hypostases emanate without diminishing it, offers structural cross-tradition congruence with Chapter 4's depiction of the Tao as self-emptying yet never depleted.
- Kabbalah — Ein SofThe Kabbalistic concept of Ein Sof as the infinite divine ground that is without limit or predicate before any emanation shows cross-tradition congruence with the Tao's characterisation here as prior to any ancestral or named origin.
Chapter 4
The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of all things!
We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao is, as if it would ever so continue!
I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before God.