Tao Te Ching Chapter 45-3 Full = Empty

Today's Tao

Big's fullness seems empty. (Ch.45)


Even an "empty" space is filled with Tao.

Watch out!

This word "empty" is not the emptiness that suggests Tao.

The world is full of colours, right?

Those colours are holograms, which are manifestations of Tao the emptiness.

Let's review the cycle.


emptiness (Tao) → full of colours (hologram) → emptiness (Tao)

Therefore, emptiness = emptiness


full of colours (hologram) → emptiness (Tao) → full of colours (hologram)

Therefore, colours = colours


To explain this cycle, Master Dogen says:

"色即是空。空即是色。色是色なり。空即空なり。

[shiki soku ze ku. ku soku ze shiki. shiki ze shiki nari. ku soku ku nari.]"

Colours are justly emptiness. Emptiness is justly colours. Colours are colours. Emptiness justly emptiness.

(Makahannyaharamitsu 摩訶般若波羅蜜, «Shobogenzo»)


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-Tao by Matsumoto / Tao Te Ching / Chapter 45
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Tao answers your question!



☞I am happy to introduce two great Japanese men. Each of them lived in two different contexts in two different periods of time. Kukai 空海 is the founder of Japanese Shingon 真言 Buddhism and the monastery in Mt Koya 高野山 in the ninth century. Ryotaro Shiba 司馬遼太郎 was a successful commercial novelist and thinker of a profound understanding about the history of Japan. The modern writer described Kukai's monastery as an "exceptionally different city state". Visit it if you have a chance. You can spend a night there and enjoy authentic Shojin 精進 dishes for Buddhist monks.