Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub;
It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.
We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.
We make doors and windows for a room;
But it is these empty spaces that make the room livable.
Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
It is the intangible that makes it useful.
No doubt the hub is the useful part of the cart wheel, but why are we being told this?
Sometimes in life, an absence of something can be as useful as something materially real. The classic example is music: we imagine that sound is the important thing in a song, but were it not for the silences in between notes, there would be just an uninterrupted din. For sound to have any impact then we must always make sure that we use it sparingly, and allow the absence of sound its own place alongside.
The same moral holds for an astonishing variety of situations in life. We habitually seek out pleasure, and yet deep down we know that pleasure loses its appeal the moment we try to fill very moment of our lives with it. Imagine if every day was Christmas Day? What a drag that would be! Yet who of us are as appreciative of those grey January days in the aftermath as we are for the big day itself. A festival can only be festival if we have at least one mundane day to accompany it. How silly we are not to celebrate the boring day equally.
Or take money. How many of us habitually remember that money requires poverty in order for it to work? Money is not something with intrinsic value to life, like a loaf of bread. Our wealth depends entirely on another person’s lack of it. Why then do we revere the wealthy and not the poor man: who is surely the tycoon’s most indispensable business partner?
This verse contains some pretty arresting advice for our everyday life. Doubtless the person who really does enjoy the Tuesday in mid January as if it were Christmas is a wise and enviable soul, but is this the whole story? As usual, there is a deeper spiritual meaning behind this verse.
When we have learnt to see that all phenomena are impossibly quick and transient flashes of existence – whereby thoughts or perceptions are one and the same – we start to wonder who or what is aware of this display. That entity seems to transcend anything that can possibly BE, and is the one thing that remains void, unseen.
Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
It is the intangible that makes it useful.
So here we have the true significance of the emptiness of the hub, the bowl, the bedroom. Thoughts and perceptions are all ‘things’ – events in awareness – but the really useful thing to discover is the emptiness that lies behind all these. When we have discovered this backdrop we have the whole experience of life. It’s like the silences that start to punctuate the uninterrupted din of sound: before long beautiful music will emerge. This emptiness is therefore what our sage of the Tao Te Ching would dearly love us all to discover. Finding it is the purpose of this text, and of all spiritual practice in general,
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