《道德經》中英文對照版(4)
第四章
道沖而用之,或不盈。
淵兮,似萬物之宗。(挫其銳,解其紛,和其光,同其塵。)湛兮,似或存。
吾不知誰之子,象帝之先。
Chapter4
The Way is like an empty vessel
That yet may be drawn from
Without ever needing to be filled.
It is bottomless; the very progenitor of all things in the world.
In it all sharpness is blunted,
All tangles untied,
All glare tempered,
All dust[1] smoothed.
It is like a deep pool that never dries.
Was it too the child of something else? We cannot tell.
But as a substanceless image[2] it existed before the Ancestor.[3]
[1]Dust is the Taoist symbol for the noise and fuss of everyday life.
[2]A hsiang, an image such as the mental images that float before us when we think.
[3]The Ancestor in question is almost certainly the Yellow Ancestor who separated Earth from Heaven and so destroyed the Primal Unity, for which he is frequently censured is Chuang Tzu.
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