無極

Α 無極 🕀 太極 Ω

陰陽

無為

inexertion inaction

When your body is not aligned [形不正],
The inner power will not come.
When you are not tranquil within [中不靜],
Your mind will not be well ordered.
Align your body, assist the inner power [正形攝德],
Then it will gradually come on its own *

When you enlarge your mind and let go of it,
When you relax your [qi 氣] vital breath and expand it,
When your body is calm and unmoving:
And you can maintain the One and discard the myriad disturbances.
You will see a profit and not be enticed by it,
You will see the harm and not be frightened by it.
Relaxed and unwound, yet acutely sensitive,
In solitude, you delight in your own person.
This is called "revolving the vital breath":
Your thoughts and deeds seem heavenly. **

There is a numinous [mind] naturally residing within [有神自在身];
One moment it goes, the next it comes,
And no one is able to conceive of it.
If you lose it you are inevitably disordered;
If you attain it you are inevitably well ordered.
Diligently clean out its lodging place [敬除其舍]
And its vital essence will naturally arrive [精將自來].
Still your attempts to imagine and conceive of it.
Relax your efforts to reflect on and control it.
Be reverent and diligent
And its vital essence will naturally stabilize.
Grasp it and don't let go
Then the eyes and ears won't overflow
And the mind will have nothing else to seek.
When a properly aligned mind resides within you [正心在中],
The myriad things will be seen in their proper perspective. ***

οὐροβόρος

* Verse 11, tr. Roth, Harold D. (1999). Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. Columbia University Press. p. 66.

** Verse 24, tr. Roth, Harold D. (1999). Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. Columbia University Press, p. 92

*** Verse 13,  tr. Roth, Harold D. (1999). Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. Columbia University Press, p. 70