The Use of Emptiness
This chapter reveals the paradoxical power of emptiness — the usefulness of a wheel, pot, or room comes not from what is present, but from what is absent. Form shapes, but emptiness serves.
Thirty spokes join at a hub,
but the use of the wheel
comes from the empty space between.
Clay is shaped into a pot,
but the use of the pot
is in its emptiness.
Doors and windows are cut into walls,
but the value of a room
is in the space inside.
So what is,
gives form.
What is not,
gives function.
