Tao Te Ching Chapter 52: Returning to the Source

The world had a beginning — the mother of all things — and the chapter builds its practice on the family tie: having found the mother, one knows the children; knowing the children, return to the mother — and to the end of life there is no danger. Know particulars through their source, and keep returning from the particulars to the source. The alternation is the whole method: out to the world's children, home to their mother.

The middle gives the discipline in body terms: block the openings, close the gates — rein in the senses' constant outflow — and to the end of life there is no exhaustion; open the openings, busy yourself with affairs, and there is no rescue. Attention spent everywhere is a treasury emptied. Then the chapter's compact definitions, among the book's finest: to perceive the small is called clarity; to hold to softness is called strength. Use the light, but return to that clarity, and bring no calamity on yourself — this, it ends, is practicing the constant.