The Nameless Mother of the World
The lecture opens at Yixin Lecture Center and returns to the end of chapter 24. The teacher says they are now examining the final line of the chapter — the phrase usually read as “leftover food and a useless excrescence,” something people naturally dislike.
He focuses first on a textual problem: should the phrase read *zhuì xíng* or *zhuì xíng* — in other words, should the second word be written “conduct” or “form/shape”? Because the two sound alike, copyists may have confused them.
He says Lü Chunyang Patriarch’s commentary treats the correct reading as **贅形**, “an excrescent growth on the body,” not “extra conduct.” He also mentions the commentator Yi Shunding, who likewise suspects the character for “conduct” is a scribal mistake and that the phrase should be linked to *Zhuangzi* language about bodily excrescences.
He then says that before explaining the chapter fully, he must first clarify the relevant textual notes and dictionary meanings.
He begins listing dictionary notes.
First, he briefly identifies Yi Shunding as a Qing-period scholar.
Second, he explains the word **贅疣**: an extra growth on the skin, like a wart, polyp, or small tumor — something unnecessary and unattractive.
Third, he explains related *Zhuangzi* wording about hanging excrescences and warts, again pointing to the idea of bodily growths that do not belong. On this basis, he says it is more reasonable to read the phrase in the *Tao Te Ching* as **贅形** — an abnormal bodily addition — rather than as something about “conduct.”
He then says they must look more closely at *Zhuangzi* passages about extra fingers and other deformities, because those passages help explain Laozi’s point.
He now uses *Zhuangzi* examples: a foot with an extra toe, or a hand with six fingers instead of five. Such things are not part of the body’s natural form.
A sixth finger, he says, is not an enhancement. It is an excess. Likewise, a wart or fleshy growth is not something the body truly needs; it is merely attached to it.
This is the framework for understanding Laozi’s phrase. “Excrescent form” means something added beyond what is natural, necessary, and whole. It is not the proper unfolding of original nature but a surplus growth.
He says the meaning should now be clear: Laozi compares certain self-displaying behaviors to leftovers and to ugly growths on the body. People naturally shrink from such things, so one who truly follows the Dao does not cherish them.
Without commentary, he says, the line can feel obscure. But with Lü Chunyang’s help, it becomes plain: what is excessive, swollen, boastful, and unnatural is repellent to the Way.
He ends that session there and says good night.
In the next session he reopens the end of chapter 24 and states the point more directly.
Lü Chunyang, he says, explains “leftover food” as scraps no one wants to eat, and “excrescent form” as useless flesh attached to the body. Laozi’s warnings against self-display, self-approval, self-assertion, self-boasting, and the like belong in this category: they are spiritually disgusting in the same way leftovers and tumors are disgusting physically.
He stresses again that the reading **贅形** is preferable to **贅行**.
He then broadens the point into criticism of superficial religion. Some people “cultivate appearance” rather than true practice: they put on robes, look the part, and preserve an outer form. But real cultivation is lived conduct. If practice becomes mere spiritual costume, it too becomes an ugly excrescence — extra flesh, not real life.
He then says chapter 24 is complete and they will move on to chapter 25, beginning with “There was something undifferentiated and complete, born before Heaven and Earth…”
On chapter 25, he says the “thing” spoken of here is the **pre-cosmic Great Dao** — prior to Heaven and Earth, without ancestor or origin behind it.
Drawing on chapter 42, the idea of Taiji, the Two Modes, and the Three Powers, he explains that before Heaven and Earth separated, primordial energy was undivided. This is what Laozi means by “There was something mixed and complete, born before Heaven and Earth.”
He then explains “silent” and “formless.” The Dao cannot truly be heard or seen. If it could be fully spoken, it would not be the constant Dao. If it had a definite visible form, it would not be the source before all forms.
“Standing alone and unchanging,” he says, means absolute independence. Heaven and Earth themselves pass through cycles of formation, abiding, decay, and emptiness, but the Dao does not lose its nature in those cycles. Worlds alter; the Dao remains.
He stops there for the evening.
He resumes with the second half of chapter 25: “It stands alone and does not change; it moves in cycles and does not weary; it may be regarded as the mother of the world.”
Lü Chunyang, he says, explains **周行而不殆** as ceaseless cyclic movement. The Dao operates sun, moon, and stars without emotional bias and without rest. “Unfeeling” here does not mean coldness but freedom from the seven emotions. The Dao gives rise to and sustains all things without personal attachment.
He then launches into a long cosmological explanation. The world moves through repeating eras, which he correlates with the four kalpas: formation, abiding, decay, and emptiness. He also overlays this with Daoist periodization such as green-yang, red-yang, and later decline.
His basic point is that the cosmos never stands still. Heavenly bodies circle; ages turn; civilizations rise, flourish, decline, and collapse. This is what Laozi means by movement without exhaustion.
Because the Dao continuously gives birth to Heaven and Earth and nourishes the ten thousand things, it can be called “the mother of the world.”
The lecture then wanders through a rough cosmological and geological illustration of world-cycles, volcanism, fossils, buried forests becoming coal, and materials transformed over vast ages. The details are highly oral and partly OCR-damaged, but the intended point is clear: nature passes through immense recurring processes of creation and destruction, and nothing in the manifest world is fixed.
From that, he returns to the text: because the Dao gives birth to all things as a mother nourishes children, it is called “the mother of the world.”
He then turns to **吾不知其名** — “I do not know its name.” Drawing on Hanshan Deqing, Heshang Gong, Han Feizi, and others, he says Laozi does not mean ignorance in a simple sense. Rather, the Dao has no adequate fixed name. Since it has no visible form and all things arise from it, sages can only assign a provisional designation. “Dao” is a forced convenience, not a final label.
He next cites the *Doctrine of the Mean*: the Way can be known in its simpler aspects even by ordinary men and women, yet in its utmost depth even sages cannot fully express it.
His explanation is that the **function** of the Dao is vast, but its **substance** is hidden. People can understand moral teachings, cause and effect, filial piety, and practical cultivation; but the ultimate ground of the Dao cannot be exhaustively spoken.
So when classical texts say even sages “do not know,” he says this means not that they are ignorant in the ordinary sense, but that ultimate reality cannot be fully conveyed in language. It must be inwardly realized.
He adds that traditions may use different terms — Daoist *Wuji*, Christian heaven, Islamic paradise, and so on — but language differs because viewpoints differ. Names are never the thing itself. At best, “Dao” is the sage’s temporary word for what must finally be awakened to in the heart.
He ends that session there.
He returns to **“I do not know its name”** and gives Lü Chunyang’s central interpretation: the constant Dao is originally **without form and without name**. Any name applied to it is borrowed and provisional.
He brings in Buddhist language of “form” and “no-form.” Forms are appearances grasped by the mind; the real principle is beyond such grasping. To name something is already to limit it.
For that reason, he says, the true Dao cannot be captured in speech. The point of scriptural language is not final description but guidance. Expressions and metaphors are ladders for beginners, not the thing itself.
So how is the pre-heaven Dao known? He answers: not by chasing outward objects, but by inward realization. He cites sayings about “no thought, no anxiety,” “do not seek the Dao outside this,” and Huineng’s line that awakening is to be sought only in one’s own mind.
His conclusion is straightforward: the deathless Dao is understood by inner awareness and heart-realization, not by verbal definition.
He illustrates this with a Chan koan about “the preaching of the insentient.”
The source is noisy, but the meaning is recoverable: “insentient” can refer either to the natural world — mountains, rivers, trees, stones — or to a mind that does not cling when meeting circumstances. Only one who is inwardly still can “hear” such preaching.
He explains that this does not mean hearing words with the ears. It means awakening through direct encounter. He links it to the Buddha silently holding up a flower and Mahākāśyapa smiling: true understanding was transmitted without speech.
So the real lesson is that the pre-heaven Dao is not taught mainly in language. One may see a thing or hear a sound, but what matters is whether the heart awakens without attachment.
He closes that evening’s lecture there.
He now explains **“I force myself to name it: great.”**
Lü Chunyang’s reading, he says, is that “great” does not mean physical largeness or visible magnitude. It means that nothing can be compared with the Dao. The Dao in one’s own nature is like empty space: deep, hidden, mysterious, subtle, and able to contain all things.
He uses parables about painting a “deep mountain ancient temple” or a “deep well” to show that true depth cannot be captured by obvious visual display. The deepest thing is not what merely looks large or dramatic; it is what cannot be fully measured or depicted.
He then quotes Huineng’s teaching that self-nature contains the ten thousand dharmas. In that sense the Dao is called “great” because it includes all things and has no equal.
But he warns against misunderstanding this. If ordinary people hear “great,” they may cling to outward size — building huge temples, making giant statues, staging grand rituals, and imagining that external grandeur is the Dao. Laozi therefore immediately moves on to “great means going forth” in order to break attachment to visible size.
So “great” here means boundless like emptiness, not big in a material sense.
This literal version consolidates the lecture’s English material into continuous notes, keeping close to the spoken sequence while preserving explanatory detail.