The Way is like an empty vessel That yet may be drawn from Without ever needing to be filled. It is bottomless；the very progenitor of all things in the world. In it all sharpness is blunted，All tangles untied，All glare tempered，All dust smoothed. It is like a deep pool that never dries. Was it too the child of something else？We cannot tell. But as a substanceless image it existed before the Ancestor.
Dust is the Taoist symbol for the noise and fuss of everyday life. A hsiang，an image such as the mental images that float before us when we think. The Ancestor in question is almost certainly the Yellow Ancestor who separated Earth from Heaven and so destroyed the Primal Unity，for which he is frequently censured is Chuang Tzu.
