Chapter 14

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Not as a separate entity, anyway...

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnameable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

It can't be conceived of, as it is beyond the realm of ideas. The first two lines sound like a specific dismissal that Tao is the earth itself. When the sun is up, the earth is bright above, and it's always dark if you dig deep into the earth. The realm of nothing is where all things have their beginning. A friend of mine calls nothing the "infinite potentiality." It's not an image itself, because it contains all images.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

The first two lines sound a lot like learning taiji. Parts of it seemed infinitely familiar to me, hence "no beginning." Other parts, I will continue to work on for my whole life, and perhaps beyond, hence "no end". Knowing the form in the mind is worthless unless the body also knows it; then you can become the form.

Chapter 13

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

Both hope and fear involve resistance, and it's difficult to have one without the other. If you hope for something, then you also fear that it won't happen. If you fear something, then you hope that particular something won't happen. Both require moving away from your center, leaving an empty space which then demands filling. Hope and fear, though, will only make it emptier.

What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
you position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

When I become dissatisfied in some fashion, a voice in my mind starts asking me, "What do you want?" It seemed for a long time that no matter what I answered, the voice would come back, sooner each time. Finally, I found the answer: nothing. An immediate sense of satisfaction came over me, and even when the voice tried to come back, the same answer satisfied it.

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

Getting too wrapped up in our 'cage of flesh and bones' can make us forget that there is a world "outside" ourselves. If we can find the "world outside" inside our own hearts, what can't we accomplish?