As a Buddhist, I sometimes get some interesting insight out of Taoist writing. Passages like this one are certainly confusing to some audiences and open to different interpretation. In Buddhism(I follow the Soto Zen school of thought), there is a similiar principle: truth cannot be "defined" and nailed down sometimes. Truth is bigger than that. The Tao(the nature of relaity / the universe), the author is telling us, is too big to define by common terms? In Buddhism (especially in zen) they like to teach the principle of the middle way through stories, koans and proverbs with huge paradoxes. It sounds like a similar statement to many of these paradoxes. That maybe truth is a "lil bit of both" in most cases, or as the old zen masters like to say "all" and "none"(meaning the same thing)
The third paragraph seems to be a statement about the nature of desire? In Buddhism(which is my only point of reference) you are encouraged to "stop trying so hard - you are already alright!"(probably an important lesson for chess players worried about their ratings to bear in mind!) Desire leads to dis-satisfaction and dis-satifaction is ultimate damnation. You live in fear and unhappiness, and your kharma(actions) affect others negatively as well. This does NOT mean that the goal should be pure cessitation of desire. No one can do that. There is a great story about teh Buddha and a farmer - Ill giveyou the really really really short version:
The buddha met a farmer while he was alive. The farmer was a complainer. He cmplained about everything. The Buddha listened to the man and his complaints and told him "I can't help you".
"What?" replied the guy. "I thought you were a great teahcer and a wise man?"
"You sound like you have told me about 1,000 problems today" said the Buddha.
"Yeah, I don't want to have all these problems - I worry about them all the time!" said the farmer.
"My BAD!" said the Buddha, "You actually have 1,001!"
"I think I CAN help you with that 1,001st problem" he said.
"What is it?" asked the farmer.
"Your 1,001st problems seems to be that you want to not have so many problems" said the Buddha. "I can help you do something about that one..."
Sounds like it is blending these two pricniples in one lesson in the Taoist passage you included to me. Thats just my take on it.(Thats waht I got out of it - maybe I am WAAY off!) Who understands all this stuff anyway!?!
this is a part of a sacred writing in the ancient chinese philosophy/religion of taoism.
what do you think it means?
Tao Te Ching
by Lao-tzu
J. Legge, Translator
(Sacred Books of the East, Vol 39) [1891]
1
The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and
unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and
unchanging name.
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven
and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all
things.
Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development
takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them
the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that
is subtle and wonderful.