← Chapter 15 Chapter 17 →

Chapter 16

Whoever realizes extreme emptiness
Finds what exists unmoved and calm (beyond the changeable and the particular)
In the flux of countless beings
He sees them emerging [passing into the formal state] and proliferating
And like everything, they return to the root.
To return to the root means the state of repose
From such repose, a new destiny appears
This is the immutable law (of transformation)
Knowledge of the immutable law brings vision to clarity
Non-knowledge of the immutable law leads to blind and detrimental acting
Knowledge of the immutable law leads to detached impartiality
To be detached means to be superior
To be superior means to be regal
To be regal means to be like Heaven
To be like Heaven means to be similar to the Principle
To the eternal and identical
And he will forever be beyond harm.

Commentary

The chapter often goes under the title kuei ken = “return to the root”. The two ways of which we spoke in the Introduction are briefly sketched out. On one side, the eternal law of the flux of transformations, of the “entry” and “exit” of beings, happens through what in the commentaries the image of being exhaled (exiting, being born, in the sign of yang) and inhaled (return, die, in the sign of yin) is also used, or that of the forward and backwards motion of a weaver’s loom (Lieh Tze). On the other side, the contemplation of this law, contemplation that begins detachment, and the perception of the immobile substrate of the transformation, that leads back “to the root”, makes the Real Man similar to Heaven and puts him outside of danger (only in the exoteric interpretation, from dangers and risks inherent in this unique way — esoterically: immunity in respect to that which may initiate the crises tied to the ontological changes of state).

It is good to emphasize that Taoism knows this double possibility, that therefore its horizon is not at all exhausted — as more than one commentary has held — in the eternal monotonous sequence of events of appearance and disappearance, of exiting and returning of beings, with a consequent fatalist indifference as the norm of wisdom. Lieh Tze (I,9) calls this “lower knowledge”. The higher knowledge concerns instead the knowledge of the Principle and reintegration into the root (indicated by Lieh Tze, IV, 2, in these terms: first of all deep union of the body and spirit, then integration of such unity in the forces of the world, brought from “non-being”, that is from transcendence. For whoever succeeds in that, says Lieh Tze (VI, 2), the existence in the current of forms appears like a long sleep, and death as the great reawakening from a dream (Chuang Tze, II, 8 and VI, 8: “You and I who are speaking in this moment, are like two unawakened dreamers.

Chuang Tze himself (XIX, 3, 2) says that those who, having the body and the spirit intact and united to nature, “having absorbed all its powers”, “has reached the starting point of the transformations and continues there”, to the self-production of the dissolution of the form “is capable of transmigrating”. He is not dissolved but, “quintessentially becomes the cooperator of Heaven”.

Chinese text and literal translation

Chapter 16 (第十六章)