Chapter 5

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.

Major paraphrasing alert, here. At least, the others that I'm using are similar to each other and different from Mitchell's. Here's Red Pine's version: "Heaven and Earth are heartless treating creatures like straw dogs; heartless is the sage treating people like straw dogs". Gibbs and Cleary both have "not humane" in place of "heartless," but according to Red Pine's commentary, the Chinese literally translates to "no heart". The meaning is about impartiality, as Mitchell's version indicates, but it loses the symbolism. Straw dogs were made for sacrificial ceremonies. The idea is that neither Heaven nor the sage favors Man above other creatures. This is in contrast to any sort of "special creation" or "in god's image" idea that we find in many western cultures.

The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the center.

For contrast, here is Tam Gibbs' version:

"The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows,
empty and yet inexhaustible;
Move it and even more comes out.
Too many words quickly exhaust;
It is not as good as holding to the centre."

I find it interesting that Mitchell avoids using "Heaven and Earth," and changes them to Tao in this chapter. In ancient Chinese cosmology, there were three levels: Heaven, Earth, and Man (Humans if you prefer). Standing between Heaven and Earth, Humans were sometimes seen as a sort of bridge between the two. The first stanza establishes that humans received no special treatment from Heaven or Earth. The second describes the power available from being in the space-between. I don't know what the original Chinese was, but I see a lot of wind symbolism here. The "bellows," for instance, as a means of putting air where it needed to be to stoke a flame. Moving air, aka wind, brings weather and other changes, and can seem as solid as a rock. 'Speaking' here is mentioned as a waste, perhaps of air or wind.

There's also some good taiji push-hands advice in here. Find the space-between. Remain empty, relaxed. Hold onto your opponent's center. Until you can actually feel for the center, all the words in the world won't help you.