Hidden, vacuous,—all day long he looked but could not see it, listened but could not hear it, grasped at but could not seize it.
See The Remains of Lao Tzŭ, p. 31.
"Bravo!" cried Light. "Who can equal this? I can get to be nothing,
Darkness.
but I cannot get as far as the absence of nothing. Assuming that Nothing has an objective existence, how can it reach this next stage?"
The man who forged swords for the Minister of War was eighty years of age. Yet he never made the slightest slip in his work.
The Minister of War said to him, "Is it your skill, Sir, or have you any method?"
Any Tao?—in its earlier sense of way of doing things.