Tao te Ching: 10

Can you keep the spritit and embrace the One without departing from them?
Can you concentrate your vital force (ch'i) and achieve the highest degree of weakness like an infant?
Can you clean and purify your profound insight so it will be spotless?
Can you love the people and govern the state without knowledge (cunning)?
Can you play the role of the female in the opening and closing of the gates of Heaven?
Can you understand all and penetrate all without taking any action?
To produce things and rear them,
To produce, but not to take possession of them,
To act, but not to rely on one's own ability,
To lead them, but not to master them—
This is called profound and secret virtue (hsüan-te).

Don't think about pink elephants.

It is difficult, isn't it? Yet that is exactly what it means to embrace Tao without departing from them. One must be mindful of Tao without trying to be exactly that. It can't be a goal to strive for, because we lose wu-wei and become cunning.

I think it's also important to note that ch'i here means vital force. Mencius makes use of this term as well, but let me try to explain what I think it means here. Ch'i and li are opposites and compliments. Li is propriety. It is a ritual or good conduct. Ch'i is matter, energy, or action. Chinese philosophers didn't seem to make much of a distinction between matter and energy it seems. This is remarkably prescient, because it makes me think of our own modern physics. By virtue of E=mc², we have a way to translate between matter and energy. In fact, there appears to be little to no difference between the states on the quantum scale. Lao Tzu asks if we can concentrate our ch'i, our essence and our physical being, to achieve a high degree of weakness.

Why would we want to be weak? Water is undeniably weak when sitting in a puddle, yet a torrent of it will erode a mountain into a canyon, and freezing it will shatter the strongest stone. Can we be like water, Lao Tzu wants to know.

Can we be without our preconceptions and our desires and our goals so that we can see things as they truly are? Can we rule with wu-wei and keep our kingdom hsü? Can we dwell within the low and not aspire to great heights, but instead welcome in the things that must be done.

Can you do this without trying to do this?

He then says what must be done. Disclaimer: I'm not a parent. Doesn't his steps sound like the steps an ideal parent should take? Remember, the translator uses the phrase "to rely on one's own ability," and while that's fine, I still think the alternate translation "to not expect any reward" as in Chapter 2 is more appropriate.

So Lao Tzu says that if you can produce things and nurture them, without taking posession of them or trying to control them, but instead leading them to grow without thought of reward, then this is called hsüan-te.

Hsüan-te is a combination of hsüan, which means profound or mysterious, and te which means virtue. Te crops up again and again in eastern philosophy. Virtue often means moral character, but within Taoism it means something more: the Tao inherent in a thing. So hsüan-te is a profound or mysterious virtue that has the Tao inherent within it.