Looked for and Not Seen (Daodejing 14)
Annotated translation of ch. 14: the Way's three names for invisibility, the shapeless shape, and the chapter that named an immortal — plus the one line the book lets us use today.
Chinese text
视之不见，名曰夷；听之不闻，名曰希；搏之不得，名曰微。此三者不可致诘，故混而为一。其上不皦，其下不昧。绳绳兮不可名，复归于无物。是谓无状之状，无物之象，是谓惚恍。迎之不见其首，随之不见其后。执古之道，以御今之有。能知古始，是谓道纪。
Pinyin
Shì zhī bù jiàn, míng yuē yí; tīng zhī bù wén, míng yuē xī; bó zhī bù dé, míng yuē wēi. Cǐ sān zhě bù kě zhì jié, gù hùn ér wéi yī. Qí shàng bù jiǎo, qí xià bù mèi. Shéng shéng xī bù kě míng, fù guī yú wú wù. Shì wèi wú zhuàng zhī zhuàng, wú wù zhī xiàng, shì wèi hū huǎng. Yíng zhī bù jiàn qí shǒu, suí zhī bù jiàn qí hòu. Zhí gǔ zhī dào, yǐ yù jīn zhī yǒu. Néng zhī gǔ shǐ, shì wèi dào jì.
Literal rendering
Looked at and not seen — it is named yi; listened for and not heard — it is named xi; grasped at and not gotten — it is named wei. These three cannot be pressed further with questions, so they are merged into one. Above it is not bright, below it is not dark. Continuous, and cannot be named — returns again to no-thing. This is called the shape of the shapeless, the image of the thingless — this is called the dim-and-glimmering. Meeting it, you do not see its front; following it, you do not see its back. Hold the ancient way to steer today’s doings. To be able to know the ancient beginning — this is called the Way’s thread.
Term-by-term notes
- The three names. 夷 (yi), 希 (xi), 微 (wei) — the book’s coinages for the three ways of missing the Way: not seen, not heard, not grasped. Heshang Gong’s gloss is the standard unpacking: 无色曰夷，无声曰希，无形曰微 — “no color is yi; no sound is xi; no form is wei.” The site keeps the terms in pinyin because they are names, not descriptions — the chapter’s first act is an act of naming what cannot be named, which is the ch. 1 translation’s own opening problem (the nameable name is not the constant name).
- The chapter that named an immortal. The Chen Tuan page holds the fact: the Sleeping Immortal’s imperial honorific, Xiyi 希夷, is assembled from this chapter’s second and first names — 希 and 夷, “unheard and unseen.” A tenth-century emperor crowned an eleventh-century-adjacent hermit with the words for the Way’s invisibility, and the hermit accepted. The site cross-links the two pages as its one documented case of the Daodejing’s vocabulary becoming a living name.
- The shapeless shape. 无状之状，无物之象 — “the shape of the shapeless, the image of the thingless” — the book’s paradox-coinage, and 惚恍 (hūhuǎng, the dim-and-glimmering) is its mood-word. The ziran concept page and the da-kuai glossary hold the neighbors: where ch. 2’s great clod breathes and carries, ch. 14’s Way is that which cannot be met or followed — no front, no back. The two chapters are the book’s two hands: the process (clod, wind, hollows) and the non-object (shape of the shapeless).
- 绳绳兮不可名，复归于无物 — continuous, and returns to no-thing. The chapter’s center of gravity: the Way is not somewhere else; it is the continuous — and the continuous is what “no-thing” means here: not absence, but the refusal of thinghood (the same 复归 the ch. 16 translation uses for the return to the root). The site keeps this line against both creator-readings (no thing to find) and nihilism-readings (not nothing — the continuous).
- The one usable line. 执古之道，以御今之有 — “hold the ancient way to steer today’s doings.” The chapter’s last gesture is practical: the ungraspable is nevertheless held, and held for use — today’s affairs, steered by the beginning’s thread (道纪, the Way’s thread, its record, its continuity). The site’s reading-order tool is this line applied: you cannot grasp the Way, but you can hold the thread.
Where this passage sits
With ch. 1 (the naming problem) and ch. 25 (the great, the passing), ch. 14 completes the book’s doctrine of the non-object — and is the only chapter whose vocabulary is documented to have become a living person’s name.
Sources
- Daodejing ch. 14, received text, verified against two independent full-text reproductions that agree (mindiver.se and a Sheng sheng xuetang teaching edition); the Heshang Gong commentary's gloss (无色曰夷，无声曰希，无形曰微) is quoted from the same teaching edition, which also records the chapter's echo in ch. 35 (执大象) and ch. 41 (大音希声，大象无形)