Line by Line - Verse 14, Line 11

and the Semblance of the Invisible;
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~

The image of the imageless,
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~

The image of the imageless
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~

(No corresponding line)
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~

When I was a child, one of my favorite TV cartoon characters was Casper the Friendly Ghost. A ghost, by its very nature, is supposed to be invisible, but an invisible cartoon character would be hard to depict on TV. Consequently, we got to see Casper!

It is in this same vein that we term the Grand Mystery as Tao. We talk about it utilizing phraseology that others can comprehend and we describe it via descriptive imagery. Yet, how does one genuinely talk about something that is formless and imageless?

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