Laozi · 老子

The "Old Master" — half history, half legend: a keeper of the royal archives who, disgusted with the world, rode a water-buffalo west toward the pass, and there the gatekeeper begged him to leave something behind. What he wrote in five thousand characters is the Daodejing, and then he vanished. Whether one man or many, the book's voice is unmistakable: the strong yields, the empty is useful, the sage does nothing and nothing is left undone. Its first line is the deepest rhyme with the Tree's own beginning — the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao — the same reverence for a source beyond every name that the Kabbalah keeps around the four letters it will not pronounce.