lì, 利
Here’s Chapter 11, perhaps my favorite chapter, in its entirety:
Three [times]
ten
hem-width strips
share together
One
hub of a wheel—on a carriage used for harvesting;
equally—like the suburbs and field facing one another—
what it holds a basket of…
Nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being and
Flesh-and-blood, meat-holding Being:
a carriage
has this
doing truly useful work like a water bucket—by means of carrying-capacity.
Molding clay on a potter’s wheel,
clay that looks straight on—up and down,
this means…
efforting—like lifting up an elephant—
a set of valuable vessels with lots of capacity—worthy of a guard dog;
equally—like the suburbs and field facing one another—
what it holds a basket of…
Nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being and
Flesh-and-blood, meat-holding Being:
a set of valuable vessels with lots of capacity—worthy of a guard dog
has this
doing truly useful work like a water bucket—by means of carrying-capacity.
Chiseling—with that tool used to mark slaves and criminals—
the single-gate-doorway to a household,
a window—especially a boudoir window, that sliver of wood that’s half of a double-winged gateway and lets moonlight shine in on the family’s primordial father who’s like ten hung, round spindles,
this means…
efforting—like lifting up an elephant—
living space—where a wife comes to live;
equally—like the suburbs and field facing one another—
what it holds a basket of…
Nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being and
Flesh-and-blood, meat-holding Being:
living space—where a wife arrives to live—
has this
doing truly useful work like a water bucket—by means of carrying-capacity.
Anciently, for ten generations, this lightly hits and leaves this mark of reason…
Flesh-and-blood, meat-holding Being…
what it has,
this means,
efforting—like lifting up an elephant:
benefiting, like by reaping grain with a sharp-edged blade.
Nothing—no one dancing with long tails flowing from their wrists—nope never, no way, nowhere, nohow Not-Being…
what it has,
this means,
efforting—like lifting up an elephant:
doing truly useful work like a water bucket—by means of carrying-capacity
The first stanza sets the pattern for the whole poem:. Here’s a shorter version:
Thirty strips together share One hub, but just as equally they hold Not-Being and flesh-and-blood Being. This is a carriage’s ability to do truly useful work like a water bucket.
This chapter is often translated even more explicitly, as by Feng and English, to get the point across:
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub; it is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room; it is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there; usefulness from what is not there.
The Feng and English translation is beautiful and one of the first things that made me fall in love with this book. At the same time, of course, I miss the repetition of the words Not-Being and Being and the fact that here we are learning explicitly about these two characters that figure so prominently in the book from start to finish.
The last stanza exactly spells out those two characters’ relationship and roles. I often re-word it like this for myself:
Being‘s efforting provides benefits in the manner of a sharp knife reaping grain by cutting it.
Not-Being‘s efforting does truly useful work in the manner of a water bucket, via carrying capacity.
Nowhere is it so exactly clear that Not-Being is essential.
Nor is it ever so clear that we need both Being and Not-Being, as we can see by the metaphorical examples: It’s the space that makes a hub, a pot, or a house useable. But the space is only useable in that way because the material stuff was shaped to create this particularly shaped “negative space.”
A bucket is useful in a completely different way than a knife. Some might argue it’s used with more ease and less aggression—it’s the classic “female,” receptive kind of usefulness that’s described everywhere in the Dao in some many examples such as soil growing plants, a womb growing a baby, etc. But the bucket requires this exact metal or wood configuration in order to be useful. There simply is no useful work without the sharp knife of Being helping to form it.
~
We looked at the character for doing truly useful work like a water bucket here. Now let’s look at its complement: benefiting like reaping grain with a sharp knife: lì (利). The old Western Zhou script for this character shows grain on the left and a knife on the right:
This character appears five times in the first 37 chapters. Modern meanings are benefit; advantage; interest (in the financial sense); to benefit or be beneficial; to be favourable; successful; sharp; sharp-edged. Though some Dao translators translate this character as profiting, most translate it as work or workings; and in yet other lines these same people translate it as nourishes, gives life to, or is better for. Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Chapter 11’s final line is a typical one:
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
The first use of lì (利) was back in Chapter 8, where “someone” said that the highest, ruling level of traditional virtue is like water running down the middle of a river… it benefits The Ten Thousand Things. Now, here in Chapter 11, we see that while such benefiting is important, its highest use is in creating, supporting, or allowing the negative space that we really use.
This rather changes our opinion of that “highest, ruling level of traditional virtue.” It’s not the most useful thing even though it does have benefit. And it appears to be aligned with Being only, rather than both Being and Not-Being like the examples in this chapter.
~
Coming on the heels of Chapter 10 and the task our hero received there ( to integrate Not-Being and Being, perhaps via the De system of ethics), this chapter seems to give particular details of how that integration works. Perhaps it is instructions—or perhaps it’s a description of what our hero is now doing… of how the sage is succeeding at the task assigned in Chapter 10. I like to think so! Next time we will see more of how our hero’s accomplishing this goal and some of the temptations along the way that must be ignored.
The Dào of Lâozî 