Consider a cup. What makes it functional? A cup serves its purpose only because of the emptiness within it. Now think about a window; it operates solely because of the opening created in the wall. Join us as we delve into this captivating chapter about emptiness and its significance in utility.
To truly gain from something that is crafted or built, we must reflect on the reasons behind its creation. Often, we discover that it is the emptiness or the core of the object from which we derive the most value. Thus, we start to understand how our existence within a form becomes meaningful due to the formlessness that resides within it.
This chapter emphasizes that while value stems from what is present, utility arises from what is absent, and it strongly advocates to consider the latter. The worth of what is visible and tangible holds no purpose without the absence that complements it. In essence, what is deemed useless carries no true value.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.
We work with being, but non-being is what we use.
— Tao Te Ching, translation by Stephen Mitchell
The Space Within
This passage reveals a profound truth: the usefulness of things does not come from what is there, but from what isn’t.
When we build something, a wheel, a cup, a home, we focus on the material form, yet it is the empty space that gives it purpose. A cup works because it is empty; a solid block shaped like a cup would be useless. This chapter invites a shift in perception, to recognize that what we often take for granted, the unseen and the formless, is what allows life to function and flow.
Being and Non-Being
Non-being can be difficult to understand. It doesn’t mean “not existing,” but rather existing without form. It is the realm of potential, the field of probability, the unseen space from which all things emerge. Ideas, energy, and creativity live there, real yet unmanifested.
Non-being is not nothing. It is no-thing.
Life-force energy, faith, and intention all exist in this same way, formless but powerful. When we insist on seeing before believing, we confine the infinite field of potential into something limited. The Tao reminds us to trust the invisible, to rest in the unmanifest, and to allow possibility to unfold naturally.
The Field of Infinite Potential
In many ways, this mirrors what modern physics calls zero-point energy, a state where nothing exists, yet everything exists. It is the womb of infinite creation.
When we can sit in that place of stillness and openness, we connect with limitless potential. But when we fixate on specific outcomes, we collapse that vast field into a narrow form. The Tao teaches that there is immense strength in remaining open to what could be, instead of forcing what must be.
Seeing the Bigger Picture
It’s easy to get caught up in details, to focus so intensely on one point that we miss the larger truth. Whether in problem-solving, healing, or daily life, we often zero in on what seems to be the issue, when the real cause, or the real wisdom, lies beyond our focus.
Modern thought tends to compress and compartmentalize, zooming in so closely that the wider view disappears. The ancient wisdom of the Tao invites expansion. It encourages us to see life not through a microscope, but through a lens wide enough to perceive the hidden relationships that make all things whole.
The Usefulness of Emptiness
We don’t value the cup for its clay but for its space. The usefulness lies not in the material, but in the emptiness that allows it to serve.
Benefit and usefulness are not the same. The benefit is what we receive; the usefulness is the capacity to receive. The emptiness, the openness within and around all things, is what gives life its potential, creativity, and flow.
Reflection
This chapter is a meditation on the unseen. It reminds us that silence shapes sound, that space allows form, and that emptiness gives meaning to existence.
True usefulness arises not from what we can grasp, but from what we can allow.
The Tao whispers: embrace the space within. It is where creation begins.