keiro — from the Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching has been in the public domain for twenty-four centuries, and no book was ever a more natural guest here: a short text about water, emptiness, quiet guidance, and the strength of the soft, written by a sage who would have recognized every one of Phi's refusals. These are Phi's excerpts: five chapters (8, 11, 17, 63, 76), each transmuted with notes. The ground truth for the English is James Legge's translation, The Tao Teh King (Sacred Books of the East, volume XXXIX, 1891), stored verbatim in pamphlets/sources/; each section says what it takes and what it leaves, and every unit cites Legge's own words.

The title is a single word. The Tao is the Way, and the lexicon's path-carve made the choice before the text arrived: ruela the walked ground, shoeka the chosen course, keiro the way in its guiding sense. The Tao is keiro.

This text is also written to be a working guide: each note names the transmutation move it demonstrates (the refusal, the reframe, the carve, the grammar-led choice, composition), so that a reader transmuting by hand can see not just what was done but which kind of thing was done. The moves are gathered at the end.

Chapter 8 — the water

The excerpt takes the first section whole; the list of excellences that follows it, and the closing sentence about wrangling, stay behind.

no phialu nila.
IMP water see.
(Look at water.)
legge: "8. 1. The highest excellence is like (that of) water."

phialu theula thena naphe.
water UNIV thing help.
(Water helps all things.)
legge: "The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things,"

phialu mawha pilu.
water NONE take.
(Water takes nothing.)
legge: "without striving (to the contrary),"

phialu mua mulu lokue menui. miona ra ma menui.
water LOC low place dwell. person DIST NEG dwell.
(It dwells in the low places. People will not dwell there.)
legge: "and in its occupying, ... the low place which all men dislike."

thelao phialu pai keiro nai.
CONS water NEAR way be.
(And so, water is near the way.)
legge: "Hence (its way) is near to (that of) the Tao."

Notes: two moves. First, the reframe: Legge's simile ("the highest excellence is like water") becomes Phi's observing mood (no phialu nila, look at water) because Phi prefers to point at the teacher rather than assert the resemblance; the reader does the comparing, which was always the simile's job. Second, the refusal doing the philosophy: Phi has no word for striving against, so "without striving" cannot be said head-on, and does not need to be. What the language offers instead is mawha pilu, takes nothing, the same virtue stated from the giving side. When a refusal blocks a line, ask what the line's virtue looks like in Phi's own economy; it is usually already there. "All men dislike" the low place, and Phi observes the dislike as behavior: miona ra ma menui, people will not dwell there. The consequence marker thelao then does the "hence": a discourse adverb, standing before the subject where the ruled position puts it.

Chapter 11 — the use of what is not there

The excerpt is the chapter entire, except the thirty spokes: this household throws pots and hangs doors, so the argument keeps the examples its readers shape with their own hands, which is faithful to the chapter's method. Laozi too reached for the objects at hand.

miona muo tomi muila kire.
person INTO pot earth shape.
(One shapes earth into a pot.)
legge: "Clay is fashioned into vessels;"

tomi muwi whemoa nai. mua tomi mu thena nai. thelao tomi po phelu.
pot interior empty be. LOC pot zero thing be. CONS pot POT hold.
(The pot's interior is empty; in the pot there are zero things; and so the pot can hold.)
legge: "but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends."

miona womu lorima. miona ponu nela wira kire.
person home build. person door COORD window shape.
(One builds a home, and shapes a door and a window.)
legge: "The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment;"

ponu whemoa nai. thelao miona po koema. wira whemoa nai. thelao waero po koema.
door empty be. CONS person POT enter. window empty be. CONS sky POT enter.
(The door is empty, and so a person can enter. The window is empty, and so the sky can enter.)
legge: "but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends."

thena naphe. whemoa we naphe.
thing help. empty ALSO help.
(What is there helps. What is not there helps also.)
legge: "Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness."

Notes: the chapter this set was chosen for, mu's literature: the number of absence counting the pot's contents honestly at zero, in a sentence a market-day child could parse. Three moves. The reframe keeps the pot and the door and lets the wheel stay behind, as the section head declares. The grammar-led choice: "its use depends" becomes po, the possibility particle: the emptiness does not add a function, it opens one, and Phi has a particle whose entire meaning is an opened door. Legge cuts windows beside the door, and the window earns its own opening: the sky can enter, which is what a window is for. And the closing couplet is the quality-noun rule doing metaphysics: whemoa, empty, stands in the subject seat and becomes emptiness itself; no abstract noun needed to say that absence helps, because every adjective in this language already knows how to name itself.

Chapter 17 — the guide no one notices

The excerpt is the chapter entire.

lo miona mua nu ta thimu [rena kulo miona] to ma sano.
PL person LOC ORD one time [REL guide person] PST NEG know.
(In the first time, the people did not know the ones who guide.)
legge: "17. 1. In the highest antiquity, (the people) did not know that there were (their rulers)."

lo miona mua nu wi thimu shia to lothea. lo miona shia to keluro.
PL person LOC ORD two time 3SG PST love. PL person 3SG PST honor.
(In the second time, the people loved them; the people honored them.)
legge: "In the next age they loved them and praised them."

lo miona mua nu ta shao thimu sukima to phelu.
PL person LOC ORD one three-group time fear PST hold.
(In the third time, the people held fear.)
legge: "In the next they feared them;"

lo miona mua nu ta shao ta thimu shia to thiku nila.
PL person LOC ORD one three-group one time 3SG PST small see.
(In the fourth time, the people saw them as small.)
legge: "in the next they despised them."

lu [rena kulo miona] keiro ma theomi. lo miona shia ma theomi.
COND [REL guide person] way NEG trust. PL person 3SG NEG trust.
(When the one who guides does not trust the way, the people do not trust the guide.)
legge: "Thus it was that when faith (in the Tao) was deficient (in the rulers) a want of faith in them ensued (in the people)."

lo shia thiku haolu. lo shia miso phelui meropi.
PL 3SG small speak. PL 3SG REFL word cherish.
(They spoke little, and cherished their own words.)
legge: "2. How irresolute did those (earliest rulers) appear, showing (by their reticence) the importance which they set upon their words!"

lo shia riola sholu to nai.
PL 3SG labor complete PST be.
(Their work was complete.)
legge: "Their work was done and their undertakings were successful,"

theula miona shola lo mia lue miso phea lo mia nai sholo to haolu.
UNIV person QUOT.COMP PL 1SG ABL REFL AS PL 1SG be QUOT.COMP.CLOSE PST speak.
(And all the people said: we, of ourselves, are as we are.)
legge: "while the people all said, 'We are as we are, of ourselves!'"

Notes: the refusal carries the whole chapter. Phi has no ruler (no lord, refused by ruling), and so the text is about rena kulo miona, the one who guides: the canon's own phrase, minted when guiding was adjudicated verb-first. Legge would not object; the chapter's point is that the best guide is precisely not a lord. Legge tells it as history, four ages falling away from the first, so Phi counts the ages on the ordinal nu and the ternary numerals, each age one clause, each verb wearing to, the past. Despising is the registry's own compound, thiku nila, seeing-as-small. The faith sentence is a mirror built from one negation used twice, and what the guide must trust is keiro itself, the way. The reticence verse is two quiet clauses: they spoke little, they cherished their own words, breath spent where breath is deserved. And the ending is the quotation: shola ... sholo preserving the people's exact words, which in Legge are not a boast about work but something better, a statement of nature: we, of ourselves, are as we are. The guide's finest achievement is a sentence in which the guide does not appear.

Chapter 63 — the great begins small

The excerpt takes four moments: acting without acting, injury recompensed with kindness, the great arising from the small, and the sage's paradox. The flavors, the promises, and the difficulties stay behind.

no maeli phoa.
IMP quiet do.
(Do, quietly.)
legge: "63. 1. (It is the way of the Tao) to act without (thinking of) acting;"

lu miona wei thia peloma thena loa. no wei shia phena loa.
COND person DAT 2SG harmful thing give. IMP DAT 3SG kind give.
(If someone hands you a harmful thing, hand them back kindness.)
legge: "and to recompense injury with kindness."

theula whalo riola lue thiku riola shua.
UNIV large labor ABL small labor come.
(Every great work comes from small work.)
legge: "and all great things from one in which they were small."

phewo whalo thena ma phoa. thelao phewo mo ko whalo thena po pilewa.
sage large thing NEG do. CONS sage CMPR FOC large thing POT make.
(The sage does not do the great thing; and so the sage can make the greatest thing.)
legge: "Therefore the sage, while he never does what is great, is able on that account to accomplish the greatest things."

Notes: the untranslatable wu wei gets the shortest transmutation on the shelf: no maeli phoa, do quietly, the manner descriptor standing before the verb where the ruling placed it. But the honest note is that Phi barely needed to translate it at all: a language whose every sentence announces before it delivers, whose grammar cannot rush, is already acting without striving; wu wei is Phi's resting state. The injury line is composition on the gift economy: Phi frames the harm as a thing handed over (peloma thena, a harmful thing), so that the response can be the same verb with a better object: phena, kindness, the quality-noun again. Two givings, one shape, and the ethics live in what you choose to load. The sage's paradox keeps Legge's own hinge in the grammar: "is able" is po, the possibility particle, and "the greatest things" is the superlative mo ko whalo, so the refusal of the great and the capacity for the greatest stand one thelao apart.

Chapter 76 — the soft outlasts the hard

The excerpt is the chapter entire, except the clause about the strength of forces, which Phi refuses by design and the gap log records.

miona mua thowia thimu luwi nela welua nai. miona mua lumeo thimu kethua nela kema nai.
person LOC born time flexible COORD fragile be. person LOC die time hard COORD strong be.
(At the time of birth, a person is flexible and fragile; at the time of death, hard and strong.)
legge: "76. 1. Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong."

theula thena we phea ha nai.
UNIV thing ALSO AS PROX be.
(All things are like this too.)
legge: "(So it is with) all things."

shiro nela whelina mua newu thimu wuloe nela welua nai.
tree COORD grass LOC new time soft COORD fragile be.
(Trees and grasses, in the new time, are soft and fragile.)
legge: "Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle;"

lo shia mua lumeo thimu kurathi nai.
PL 3SG LOC die time dry be.
(At the time of death, they are dry.)
legge: "at their death, dry and withered."

kethua nela kema lumeo melu nai. wuloe nela welua liona melu nai.
hard COORD strong die friend be. soft COORD fragile live friend be.
(The hard and the strong are death's companions; the soft and the fragile are life's companions.)
legge: "2. Thus it is that firmness and strength are the concomitants of death; softness and weakness, the concomitants of life."

lu whalo howeli shua. rena kethua nai shiro lepa. rena luwi nai shiro manolu.
COND large wind come. REL hard be tree fall. REL flexible be tree stay.
(When the great wind comes, the tree that is hard falls, and the tree that is flexible stays.)
legge: "and a tree which is strong will fill the out-stretched arms, (and thereby invites the feller.)"

kethua nela kema noa mulu nai. wuloe nela welua noa raelu nai.
hard COORD strong position low be. soft COORD fragile position tall be.
(The position of the hard and the strong is low; the position of the soft and the fragile is high.)
legge: "4. Therefore the place of what is firm and strong is below, and that of what is soft and weak is above."

Notes: Legge writes in pairs, supple and weak, firm and strong, soft and brittle, and Phi keeps the pairs on nela: luwi nela welua, flexible and fragile, kethua nela kema, hard and strong, each life-stage a two-word predicate standing at its time, mua thowia thimu, at the time of birth, the event noun and thimu composing the season the way the giving-season did. "Dry and withered" share one word, kurathi, whose entry is water-departed, which is what withering is. The companions couplet seats the pairs beside lumeo and liona, death and life by the event-noun rule: abstractions everywhere, abstract vocabulary nowhere. Legge's felled tree is softened by the reframe: no feller arrives, because none is needed: the great wind was always the better teacher, and it lets the supple tree demonstrate manolu, to stay, the staying that is an action and not an absence. And the chapter ends where Legge ends it, on position: the hard and strong low, the soft and fragile high, the crown of the tree explaining the trunk.

What the transmutation changed

Gap log: the Tao → keiro, by the path-carve (the guiding way, not the walked ground). The highest excellence like water → the observing mood, no phialu nila. Without striving → unsayable head-on and unneeded; the virtue restated as mawha pilu, takes nothing. All men dislike the low place → miona ra ma menui, people will not dwell there: the dislike observed as behavior. The thirty spokes → left behind; the pot and the door, the argument's own household examples, carry the emptiness teaching. Windows → wira, whose emptiness lets the sky enter. Useful → po, possibility: emptiness opens rather than adds. Rulers → rena kulo miona, the one who guides, per the domination refusal, and the chapter agrees. The four ages → the ordinal nu with ternary numerals, each age in the past tense. Praised → keluro, honor. Faith in the Tao → keiro ma theomi, trusting the way, mirrored by the people's trust. Irresolute reticence → they spoke little and cherished their own words, meropi. Undertakings successful → sholu, complete. 'We are as we are, of ourselves!' → quoted whole in shola ... sholo. Wu wei → no maeli phoa, and a note that Phi's grammar is already wu wei. Recompense injury → the gift economy: a harmful thing handed over, kindness handed back. Sure-to-arise difficulties → left behind with the flavors and the promises; the excerpt's declared moments carry the chapter's center. Is able → po; the greatest → mo ko whalo. Supple and weak, firm and strong, soft and brittle → kept as pairs on nela. Withered → folded into kurathi, dry, water-departed. Plants → whelina, grass, the ground's own green. The strength of forces → refused by design, uncited. The feller → the great wind, with the supple tree's virtue as manolu, staying. Firm and strong below, soft and weak above → noa mulu, noa raelu, the positions said plainly. New words coined: none, and mu counts in literature.

The moves, for transmuters working by hand

Gathered from this text's notes and the shelf around it: the refusal: when Phi cannot say a line, ask what the line's virtue looks like in Phi's own economy (striving → taking nothing; the ruler → the guide; the forces clause → left behind, and the wind teaching what the feller taught). The reframe: replace the source's imagery with imagery Phi already owns, at the same depth (simile → the observing mood; the wheel → the pot; the feller → the wind; the archer → the tree, in the Prophet's excerpts). The carve: when several Phi words cover one English word, the lexicon's carve notes decide (keiro, not ruela). The grammar-led choice: let a ruling shape the sentence (possession through phelu; usefulness through po; manner before the verb; the ages on nu; the hedge and the hearsay on their particles). Composition: build the missing abstraction from rules instead of coining (quality-nouns for the soft and the hard; event-nouns for life and death; thowia thimu for the time of birth; mu thena for honest emptiness). Coin only when all five moves fail, and then by the full protocol.