Chapter 10

When you hold your spiritual and bodily souls together in a single embrace, can you keep them from drifting apart? When you concentrate your breath and make it perfectly soft, can you become like a newborn child? When you clear away the deepest visions of your mind, can you make yourself flawless?

In loving the people and governing the state, can you act without deliberate action? When the gates of heaven open and close, can you take the role of the female? Though your understanding reaches everywhere, can you seem to know nothing?

The Tao gives birth to things and nurtures them; it produces them without claiming them; it accomplishes everything without taking credit; it guides them without controlling them. This is called the mysterious Virtue.