Laozi
道可道， 非常道。 名可名， 非常名。 無名天 地之始； 有名萬 物之母。 故常無 欲，以觀 其妙；常 有欲，以 觀其徼。 此兩者， 同出而 異名，同 謂之玄。 玄之又 玄，衆妙 之門。
James Legge
The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.
Always without desire we must be found, If its deep mystery we would sound; But if desire always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.
Victor H. Mair
The ways that can be walked are not the eternal Way; The names that can be named are not the eternal name. The nameless is the origin of the myriad creatures; The named is the mother of the myriad creatures. Therefore, Always be without desire in order to observe its wondrous subtleties; Always have desire so that you may observe its manifestations. Both of these derive from the same source; They have different names but the same designation. Mystery of mysteries, The gate of all wonders!
C. Spurgeon Medhurst
The Tao which can be expressed is not the unchanging Tao [^1]; the name which can be named is not the unchanging name.
The nameless is the beginning of the Heaven Earth; [^2] the mother of all things [^3] is the nameable.
Thus, while the eternal not-being [^4] leads towards the fathomless, the eternal being conducts to the boundary. Although these two [^5] have been differently named they come from the same. [^6]
As the same they may be described as the abysmal. The abyss of the abysmal [^7] is the gate of all mystery.
That aspect of God which is hidden in eternity, without bounds, without limits, without beginning, must be distinguished from that side of God which is expressed in nature and in man. The one, apparently subjective, certainly unknowable; the other, a self-manifestation, or a going forth, the commencement of our knowledge, as of our being. “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” Whether “the only begotten Son” be identified with an historical person or not, the conception is necessary to any thought of God. Without a self-revelation, the Eternal Presence remains unknown. Hence the Indian has his avatars, the Christian his incarnation.
Lao Tzu is strictly logical when he ascribes the origin of all phenomena to the manifesting Deity, rather than to the Undifferentiated One, which being changeless could not create.
Says Herbert Spencer: “The antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended while consciousness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are united.” (Principles of Psychology, i., 272.)
[^1] Hsu-hui-hi sagely observes that as names always leave the essence unnamed it is certain that no name can express the TAO.
[^2] The noumenal or arupa world—the world of causes.
[^3] The phenomenal or rupa world—the world of effects.
[^4] Yet, as Hsu-hui-hi says, the very term “Not-Being” is misleading, for the Tao is absolutely inexpressible.
[^5] The Tao in its two-fold aspect.
[^6] i.e. “That which is above Being and Not-Being.”—Native Commentator.
[^7] Whence both Being and Not-Being emerge.
N. B. Seek not for a name for God; for you will not find any: For everything that is named is named by its letter so that the latter gives the name and the former gives ear. Who then is he who hath given God a name, “God” is not a “name,” but an “opinion about God.”—Sextus.
”There was when naught was; nay even that ‘naught’ was not aught of things that are For that ‘naught’ is not simply the so-called ineffable; it is beyond that, For that which is really ineffable is not named ineffable, but is superior to every name that is used.”—Basilides. (vid. “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten” by G. R. S. Mead, p. 256.)
Ursula K. Le Guin
The way you can go isn’t the real way. The name you can say isn’t the real name.
Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed: name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanted soul sees what’s hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin, but different in name, whose identity is mystery. Mystery of all mysteries! The door to the hidden.
Note UKLG: A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impossible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in Borges’s story: if you can see it rightly, it contains everything.