Verse 11, and the three objects
The clearest passage in the entire Tao Te Ching is also the one about pottery. Lao Tzu rarely argues, but here he does, and he does it with things you can pick up.
Notice how physical all of this is. The tradition is not asking you to contemplate the void. It is pointing at a mug.
Empty means available
English gives emptiness a negative charge. An empty fridge, an empty promise, an empty afternoon. The word arrives already meaning something is missing.
Xu runs the other way. A cup that is empty is a cup that is ready. Nothing is missing from it, because holding nothing is precisely the condition that lets it hold something. Fill it and you have gained tea and lost the capacity for anything else.
This reframing does a lot of work once you take it seriously. An unscheduled hour is not a gap in your day where productivity should have been. It is the only part of the day that can absorb anything unexpected. A conversation with silence in it is not a failing conversation.
The full thing has no room to receive. That is not a poetic observation, it is just true of containers, and the tradition's move is to notice that it stays true of attention, schedules, and rooms.
Not the same as Buddhist emptiness
Both Taoism and Buddhism have a central concept translated into English as emptiness, and the two are not the same. Because they arrive in English wearing identical clothes, they get merged constantly.
Buddhist emptiness, śūnyatā, is a claim about what things are. It says nothing has a fixed independent essence; everything arises in dependence on other things. It is a metaphysical position, and grasping it is meant to loosen your attachment to a solid self.
Taoist xu is a claim about usefulness. It says the hollow part of an object is the working part. Verse 11 is not arguing that the cup lacks inherent existence. It is pointing out that you drink from the space.
One is about the nature of things. The other is about how things function. They are compatible, they historically influenced each other in China, and they answer different questions. If a source tells you Taoist emptiness means everything is illusory, that source has imported the wrong tradition.
What xu is not
It is not nothingness
Chinese has a separate word for that, 無 wú, meaning not-having or non-being. Xu is the emptiness of something: a hollow in a shape, a space bounded by walls. There is always a vessel implied. The room's emptiness depends on the room.
It is not blankness
An empty mind in the xu sense is not a mind that has stopped working. It is a mind that has not already decided. Zhuangzi's fasting of the heart-mind describes exactly this, an attention not pre-loaded with what it expects to find.
It is not emptiness as loss
The feeling English calls emptiness, the hollowed-out ache after something ends, is not what this word points at. Xu is the state of a cup before tea, not the state of a cup someone took the tea from.
How to work with it
Xu is practiced almost entirely by subtraction, which means the work is noticing where you have reflexively filled something that was working better empty.
- Leave one hour unscheduled. Not for a task. Verse 11 says the room is useful because of the part with nothing in it, and a calendar is a room.
- Do not answer immediately. A pause before responding is a small hollow, and it is where anything other than your first reflex has room to arrive.
- Arrive without a position. Before a difficult conversation, notice what you have already concluded. A full heart-mind can only receive what fits in the gaps left over.
- Stop adding to what already works. The instinct to improve a good thing usually fills the space that made it good. This is wu wei applied to design.
Common questions
What does xu mean in Taoism?
Xu (虛) means empty or hollow, but in the sense of available rather than lacking. Verse 11 makes the case with three objects: a wheel works because of the hole at the hub, a pot because of the space inside, a room because of the emptiness between its walls. The material provides the benefit and the gap provides the use. Applied inwardly, xu describes attention that has not already been filled with conclusions.
How do you pronounce xu?
Xu is pronounced roughly shoo, with the first tone, staying high and level. The x in Pinyin is a soft sh made with the tongue forward near the lower teeth. The u is the rounded front vowel written ü, closer to the u in the French tu than to the oo in food, though oo is a reasonable approximation for English speakers. The Wade-Giles spelling is hsü.
What does Verse 11 of the Tao Te Ching mean?
It argues that usefulness comes from empty space. Thirty spokes meet at a hub, and it is the hole that makes the wheel work. Clay is shaped into a pot, and it is the hollow that makes it a pot. Doors and windows are cut into a room, and the emptiness is what you live in. The verse closes by separating two things: benefit comes from what is there, and usefulness from what is not. Both are needed, and we habitually only notice one.
Is Taoist emptiness the same as Buddhist emptiness?
No, though both are translated as emptiness in English. Buddhist śūnyatā is a claim about the nature of things: that nothing has a fixed independent essence and everything arises in dependence on other conditions. Taoist xu is a claim about function: that the hollow part of an object is the part that works. One is metaphysical, the other is practical. They are compatible and they influenced each other historically, but they answer different questions.
Is xu the same as wu, nothingness?
They are related but distinct. Wu (無) means not-having or non-being in a general sense. Xu is the emptiness of something in particular, a hollow bounded by a shape: the space inside a cup, the gap at a wheel's hub, the room within walls. Xu always implies a vessel. That is why Verse 11 can point at ordinary objects rather than at an abstract void.
How do you practice emptiness in Taoism?
Mostly by not filling things. Leaving an hour unscheduled, pausing before answering, entering a conversation without a conclusion already formed. Verse 16 gives the inward version of the instruction, to attain complete emptiness and hold to stillness. The practice is not achieving a blank mental state but noticing where you have reflexively filled a space that worked better open.