14

You can look, but it can’t be seen.

It is a worthy fucking adversary.

You can listen, but it can’t be heard.

It is a stonewalling little brat.

You can grasp, but it can’t be touched.

It floats away like a magic carpet.

There is no bottom, nor proper nomenclature,

All these ins and outs make it a very complicated case.

It is not dark, yet darkness warshes over,

It is not light, yet new shit comes to light:

It is fucking ingenious, yet cannot be understood correctly.

It draws lines in the sand, yet does not split hairs,

It throws out a ringer for a ringer, yet there is no handoff.

It has its story, you have yours, yet both are ludicrous.

Don’t live in the past,

Worry about what day it is,

Nor hope to make it to the finals.

In this way, the Dude abides,

As Dudeness has always abided.

Tao Te Ching: 14

You can look, but it cannot be seen.

You can listen, but it cannot be heard.

You can grasp, but it cannot be touched.

When something is incapable of being sensed or categorized or measured in this way,

It is because it is not a thing—

It is an undifferentiated field of potential.

It is neither light nor dark, high nor low, up nor down.

Rather, its process prefigures the very division of opposites,

And thus it is impossible to define.

It emerges only to vanish again and again.

We might consider it a formula for the unformed,

An illustration of the undefined,

An outline of ambiguity.

Don’t try to examine it directly,

You won’t make heads nor tails of it.

Rather, practice abiding the path of Tao in the here-and-now.

In doing this, you will share in its momentum,

An unimpeded unfolding

Which started back at the beginning of all things.