Enter into the space between

The Cook and the Ox

… Good cooks replace their knife every year, because they cut.

Common cooks replace their knife every month, because they hack.

Well, my knife is nineteen years old.

It has unraveled several thousand oxen and its edge is as if freshly issued from the grindstone.

The sections have space between them, and the knife-edge lacks thickness.

Using something that lacks thickness to enter where there’s space — one’s scope in which to wander is vast. Indeed the knife has room to spare.

That’s why after nineteen years the knife-edge is as if freshly issued from the grindstone.

Still, when I come across a knot, I see the difficulty it presents.

Warily, cautiously — my gaze stilled, my action slowed — I move the knife ever so subtly.

And poof! The knot unravels itself like a clod of soil crumbling to the ground.

Lowering the knife and straightening up, I’ll look around, at a loss for the cause of it.

My intention fulfilled, I wipe the knife and put it away.

-- Chuang Tzu, translated by Christopher Tricker

The Cicada and the Bird (The Usefulness of a Useless Philosophy)