Do you want to know where all the power lies for you right now? It’s nowhere. Do you want to know what the nature of that power is? It’s nothing. But before you jump to conclusions about the meaning of what I just said, read this passage from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell: “We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.”
This article appears in May 12-18, 2010.