Dao De Jing, chapter 25

There is a thing, intermixed and complete,
That was born before heaven and earth.
Silent, ah!, undisturbed, ah!
Established alone and never changing,
Circulating widely yet never ceasing,^[25-1]
We can consider it the mother of all under heaven^[25-2].
I don’t know its name, so call it “the Way”
And strive to remember that it’s known as “Great.”
The Great [I call] “the Outflow,”
The Outflow [I call] “the Remote,”
The Remote [I call] “the Returning.”
Thus, the Way is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and kings too are great.
Within our domain^[25-3] there are four great things,
And a king is one of them.
Man’s exemplar is earth,
Earth’s exemplar is heaven,
Heaven’s exemplar is the Way,
The Way’s exemplar is indeed itself.

^[25-1] Other texts omit this line
^[25-2] Other texts have “heaven and earth”
^[25-3] Other texts have “country”

有物混成，
先天地生。
寂兮寥兮，
独立不改，
周行而不殆，
可以为天下 母。
吾不知其名，字之曰道，
强为之名曰大。
大曰逝，
逝曰远，
远曰反。
故道大，天大，地大，王亦大。
域中有四大，
而王居其一焉。
人法地，
地法天，
天法道，
道法自然。

I would have found it Very Helpful if this chapter came Much Earlier. Ahem. Regarding line 8, note that in chapter 18 the author calls it the “Great Way.” More cross-references: for expanding and returning, see chapters 14 & 16, and for the mothering Way, see chapter 6 (and possibly 10). For what it’s worth, some textual traditions (but not the three I’m using) emend “king” to “man” (understood to have a sense of “kingly/superior man”), possibly because of the switch to “man” right after. That the Mawangdui texts explicitly use “country/kingdom” argues against this, though. (The base text’s “domain” can refer to a region or the universe.)

---L.