Laozi
天下有始，以為天下母。 既得其母，以知其子，既知其子，復守其母，沒身不殆。 塞其兌，閉其門，終身不勤。 開其兌，濟其事，終身不救。 見小曰明，守柔曰強。 用其光，復歸其明，無遺身殃；是為習常。
James Legge
(The Tao) which originated all under the sky is to be considered as the mother of them all.
When the mother is found, we know what her children should be. When one knows that he is his mother’s child, and proceeds to guard (the qualities of) the mother that belong to him, to the end of his life he will be free from all peril.
Let him keep his mouth closed, and shut up the portals (of his nostrils), and all his life he will be exempt from laborious exertion. Let him keep his mouth open, and (spend his breath) in the promotion of his affairs, and all his life there will be no safety for him.
The perception of what is small is (the secret of clear- sightedness; the guarding of what is soft and tender is (the secret of) strength.
Who uses well his light, Reverting to its (source so) bright, Will from his body ward all blight, And hides the unchanging from men’s sight.
Victor H. Mair
Everything under heaven has a beginning which may be thought of as the mother of all under heaven. Having realized the mother, you thereby know her children. Knowing her children, go back to abide with the mother. To the end of your life, you will not be imperiled. Stopple the orifices of your heart, Close your doors; your whole life you will not suffer. Open the gate of your heart, Meddle with affairs; your whole life you will be beyond salvation. Seeing what is small is called insight, Abiding in softness is called strength. Use your light to return to insight, Be not an inheritor of personal calamity. This is called “following the constant.”
C. Spurgeon Medhurst
Everything has its origin in the mother of all under heaven. [^1]
To know the mother the child must be perceived; the child being born the qualities of the mother must be maintained, to the end of life there will be then no peril. [^2]
Close the doors of the senses, and the whole of life will be without care; open them, attend to the affairs of life and to the end deliverance will be impossible. [^3]
Perceive the germ,—that is enlightenment. [^4]
Maintain weakness,—that is stability. Employ the light; revert to this enlightenment; no calamity will then be bequeathed to the body. [^5]
This is indeed to practice the unalterable. [^6]
Those who live the life of the body die, but for those who live the life of soul
”There is no death! The stars go down To rise upon some other shore, And bright in heaven’s jeweled crown They shine for evermore.”
[^1] In all mythologies the male stands for the Unmanifest, the female for the Manifested—the womb which gave birth to creation. See Isis, and the goddess Moot, the Mother, of Egypt, The Sephira of the Kabalists; Aditi of the Hindoos; Sophia of the Gnostics; Wisdom in the Proverbs of Solomon. In all theogonies we find the symbol of the egg, the ovum of the mystic mother. In Christendom it survives in the “Easter Egg.”
[^2] Separation is necessary for growth, but safety lies in the preservation of the consciousness of non-separateness.
[^3] The text may be illustrated by a parable from Chuang-tzu—“There was once a man who was afraid of his own shadow, and had a strong dislike to his oven footprints. So he tried to escape from both; but the quicker he ran the more footprints he made, and fast as he went his shadow kept up with him. He thought he was going too slowly, so he ran faster and faster without stopping, until his strength gave out and be fell dead. He did not know that if he stayed in a shady place his shadow would have disappeared, and that if he had only remained quiet and motionless he would not have made any footprints. Stupid fellow that he was.”—Chuang-tzu by Balfour.
[^4] “Injuries spring from desires, though small in the beginning they swell to great dimensions. Now to know that the small will become great, and to exclude it, that may be said to be enlightenment.’—Su-cheh.
[^5] Bodily vigor, like mental purity, depends on what the mind relates itself to.
[^6] Compare chaps. 16 and 55.
Ursula K. Le Guin
The beginning of everything is the mother of everything. Truly to know the mother is to know her children, and truly to know the children is to turn back to the mother. The body comes to its ending but there is nothing to fear.
Close the openings, shut the doors, and to the end of life nothing will trouble you. Open the openings, be busy with business, and to the end of life nothing can help you.
Insight sees the insignificant. Strength knows how to yield. Use the way’s light, return to its insight, and so keep from going too far. That’s how to practice what’s forever.
Note UKLG: This chapter on the themes of return and centering makes circles within itself and throughout the book returning to phrases from other poems, turning them round the center. A center which is everywhere, a circle whose circumference is infinite…