The Uncarved Block
A muddy glass of water, shaken, stays muddy for as long as you shake it.
Put it down on the table, and wait.
You don't clear the water. It clears.
道常無為而無不為。
dào cháng wú wéi ér wú bù wéi.
The Way is constantly not-doing, and nothing is left undone.
侯王若能守之，
hóu wáng ruò néng shǒu zhī,
If lords and kings could keep to it,
萬物將自化。
wàn wù jiāng zì huà.
the ten thousand things would change by themselves.
化而欲作，
huà ér yù zuò,
If, as they change, desire stirs,
吾將鎮之以無名之樸。
wú jiāng zhèn zhī yǐ wú míng zhī pǔ.
I would still it with the nameless uncarved block.
無名之樸，夫亦將無欲。
wú míng zhī pǔ, fū yì jiāng wú yù.
The nameless uncarved block: with it, there will be no desire.
不欲以靜，
bù yù yǐ jìng,
Not desiring, and so still,
天下將自定。
tiānxià jiāng zì dìng.
all under heaven would settle by itself.
The words
raw wood; the uncarved block; plain, simple
The tree sign (木) tells you it is wood: a log as it comes from the forest, before anyone has cut it into a bowl, a chair, a spoon. The uncarved block is one of the book's great images. It is not yet anything in particular, and so it could still become anything. The book keeps coming back to it, as a picture of how we were before we were shaped, and how we might be again.
to change by itself, to transform of its own accord
自 "self", which you met in 自然, so of itself, in chapter 25. 化 is change, the slow kind: a caterpillar into a butterfly, a child into an adult. Nobody makes it happen. It happens.
to press down, to steady, to hold in place
A 鎮紙 (zhèn zhǐ) is a paperweight: the smooth stone a calligrapher lays on the paper so it doesn't lift and curl. Desire, when it stirs, is like paper in a breeze. The uncarved block is the quiet weight that keeps it flat.
This is the last chapter of the book's first part, the part on the Way. In the old silk copies from Mawangdui the two parts are in the opposite order, so there the book ends here.1
Sitting with it
The chapter opens by saying again what you read in chapter 48: not-doing, and nothing left undone. But now it says this is what the Way itself is like, constantly. The Way doesn't push the rivers to the sea or the leaves off the trees in autumn. And all of it gets done.
Then it speaks to the people in charge. If those who rule could keep to this, everything would change by itself. Not because no one cares, but because change is already happening, all the time, and most of what we add only gets in the way.
You can feel this in small ways. The friend who is grieving doesn't need you to fix it. They need you to sit with them, and the grief changes by itself, slowly. The quarrel left alone overnight is often smaller in the morning.
But the chapter is honest. As things change, desire stirs. We want more, want faster, want it our way. What then?
Laozi's answer is not to fight the desire, or to shame it. It is to set something heavy and simple on it: the nameless uncarved block. Return to the plainest thing. The wood before it was carved. The self before it was shaped by wanting this and fearing that. Simple food, plain words, the breath going in and out.
And then, without effort, the desire settles. Not desiring, and so still. And when you are still, the chapter says, the whole world around you settles too. Like the glass of muddy water, put down on the table.
A practice
The next time you notice a strong wanting (to check your phone, to buy something, to say the sharp thing), don't fight it.
Instead, put your attention on something plain and heavy: your feet on the floor, the weight of your hands in your lap. Stay there for three slow breaths.
Then see whether the wanting is still the same size.
To carry
無名之樸
wú míng zhī pǔ
The nameless uncarved block.
Sources
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Robert G. Henricks, Lao-tzu: Te-Tao Ching, a new translation based on the recently discovered Ma-wang-tui texts (Ballantine, 1989). Both silk copies put the part on virtue (德, chapters 38-81) before the part on the Way (道, chapters 1-37), which is why Henricks calls the book Te-Tao Ching. ↩