Verse 14 from "Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tzu

14

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.


Source of the text - Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, with Foreward and Notes, by Stephen Mitchell.  New York: Harper Perennial, 1988, p. 14.

TJB: Dualistic undefinable ‘it.’ Be it poem or not, these wisdom-verses built of opposed pairs permit higher truth but not knowledge thereof.