Tao Te Ching - passage analysis, line-by-line

VI

The spirit of the valley never dies.            17
This is called the mysterious female.
The gateway of the mysterious female
Is called the root of heaven and earth.
Dimly visible, it seems as if it were there,
Yet use will never drain it.

(found on p.10 of our versions)

"The spirit of the valley never dies."
I interpret this line to mean that the "valley" is the portal between heaven and earth - the gateway, of sorts, to both all beginnings and ends. And it never dies because it doesn't exist in the sense that we thinking of it as existing, that is, with a definitive time line. It both is and isn't, it exists and it doesn't. It is the yin and the yang and it shall never "die" because it will never live in the same way a human is said to "live."


"This is called the mysterious female."
The two key words here are "mysterious" and "female," each of them having important meanings. Firstly, mysterious. It is" mysterious" because it is beyond human comprehension. It doesn't exist in this "middle kingdom," instead, it exists more of a in-between, a transport to the there and the not there. "Female" is important because it is the source of life and birth. Thus, by having a "mysterious female" we have this portal which gives us "birth" into our next stage, but we don't understand the process nor the portal itself.

"The gateway of the mysterious female
Is called the root of heaven and earth."
As I alluded to earlier, this is a gateway or portal of some kind, and it exists between heaven and earth. It is the called the "root" because of a few things. One, "root" has a distinct relationship to nature, which is very important in the Tao Te Ching because nature is the best manifestation of the Tao in this world. Also, root is the source of something, and thus this gateway being the source to both heaven and earth means that it is the method to which to can travel and experience both, achieving a little bit more comprehension in adherence to the way.

"Dimly visible, it seems as if it were there,
Yet use will never drain it."
This line was the most difficult for me to interpret. "Use will never drain it" refers to the fact that even though you may pass through this portal, you cannot ever deplete it, or stop it from doing its job. The use of the word "drain" also implies that it cannot be used up in any sense of the word. Literally, it cannot be diminished at all, because it cannot be taken from. It is "dimly visible" because it is hard for us to understand, impossible actually, the ways of the Tao. It is "visible" but not truly knowable, or clear, because we do not truly understand the Tao either. It only "seems" as if it were there, but we can never be sure because we can never really understand exactly what the Tao is or it;s purpose. It's beyond human comprehension.