Introduction

This verse begins with a tone of quiet provocation: the teaching is profound, yes. But it’s also simple, and the way is clear. So, why is it so difficult to live?

The verse doesn’t soften the problem, because it’s a real problem. What follows is not moralism or complaint, but a structural diagnosis. Something in the nature of society blocks access to the depth of Integrity central to Weaving the Way.

Rather than offer a remedy or an instruction, the verse shifts deeper. What is required cannot be taught, only lived. And living it is a radical choice. 

Translation

I speak of the:
  Deep interchange of knowing,
  Profound exchange of action,
  And no one
  can know it
  nor enact it.

Speech has a Leige,
  Engagement has a Precedent.
    Only not-knowing!

This is why I am unknowable.
  Those who understand are few,
    so I am valuable.

This is why The Wise
  seem unrefined,
    yet
  carry jade within. 

Commentary

I speak of the:
  Deep interchange of knowing,
  Profound exchange of action,
  And no one
  can know it
  nor enact it. 

This verse opens with the “I know that what I’m teaching is so profound that it’s simple – but I know it’s not easy!” tone we have seen before in verse 35. In 35, we are being invited into our tendency to overlook the vibrancy of life itself, the Dao, in favor of external pleasures. Here, we are recognizing that Integrity with the way demands a deep investigation into how we know, and embody what we know, in a dynamic interchange of knowing and acting. 

“No one can know it nor enact it,” serves multiple functions. First, according to legend, the author of this text was leaving the kingdom due to frustration with the state of affairs, and likely the lack of people who understood his teaching. Second, the stronger an identity someone carries, the less capacity there is for them to accord with the Way spontaneously. The phrase ‘no one’ here doesn’t mean absence—it points to the fruition of practice: a person unbound by identity, open enough to dwell in the interchange of knowing and acting at the level required for true Integrity (德).

Speech has a Leige,
  Engagement has a Precedent.

These are the challenges, stated with a mocking irony.

Speech and Engagement have social norms that dictate our behavior in place of our internal alignment and truth. As long as we are externally referenced, Integrity is unavailable.