ChineseStudy

25. The Great Four

Contents

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English translation

There is something formed as an undivided whole, born before heaven and earth.

“Something” is a provisional name for a fundamental reality that resists definition. It is not an ordinary thing within the world, but what precedes the world’s arising.

Silent and vast, it stands alone without changing, moves through all things without exhaustion, and may be regarded as the mother of the world.

The passage describes the Way through silence, independence, constancy, and unending movement: unseen in itself, it continually supports the arising and course of all things.

I do not know its true name. I call it the Way, and, for lack of a better name, I call it great.

The Way cannot be confined by a name. “The Way” and “great” are practical terms, with “great” pointing to something without ordinary bounds.

To be great is to move on; moving on leads far away; reaching far away leads back.

Greatness is presented as a movement of expansion and return. The Way does not simply disappear into the distance; its course circles back.

Therefore the Way is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and the ruler too is great.

All four shape the order of the world on a broad scale. Calling the ruler great emphasizes the reach and responsibility of rule, not superiority over the Way.

Within the realm there are four great powers, and the ruler is one of them.

Human government belongs within a larger order alongside the Way, heaven, and earth. Its place is important, but it is also limited by that wider setting.

People follow the earth; earth follows heaven; heaven follows the Way; the Way follows what is so of itself.

To “follow” is to take a pattern from something. Here “what is so of itself” means an unforced way of being, so the sequence ends in responsiveness to how things inherently unfold.

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