Pu · 樸 · the uncarved block

The door's namesake: pu, a block of wood before the carver touches it — raw, whole, nameless, full of every possibility precisely because it has been made into nothing in particular. It is Laozi's image for the Tao and for the sage: return to simplicity, become the uncarved block, and the ten thousand tools will not have cut you into one use. The Kabbalah knows the state before the cutting too — the undifferentiated light before tzimtzum, the withdrawal that first made room for a world, leaving only the reshimu, a trace. But here the traditions face opposite directions: the Taoist's whole aim is to stay uncarved; the Kabbalist's is to carve well — to draw the Tree, name the sefirot, and shape the raw light into a vessel that can hold it.