The opening line
"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name."
The book opens by disqualifying itself. Whatever you're about to read is, by the author's own admission, not the thing.
The Chinese is tighter than any English version: dao ke dao fei chang dao. The same character does three jobs, as noun, as verb, and as noun again. Roughly: the way that can be way-ed is not the constant way. English can't do that, which is why every translation of this line reads differently.
What it's claiming is that the moment you specify the Tao, you've produced a smaller object than the thing you meant. Any definition draws a border, and the Tao is what has no border.
The nameless and the named
"The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things."
Two registers, and the chapter keeps them separate. Before distinctions there's undifferentiated origin. Once naming starts you get particulars: this, not that. "The ten thousand things" is the standard classical phrase for the whole furniture of the world.
The move is worth noticing. Naming isn't dismissed as error. It's called a mother, which is generative. Distinctions make a world you can live in, and they also cost you the view of what was there before them.
The line translators fight over
"Ever desireless, one sees the mystery. Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations."
Classical Chinese had no punctuation, and this passage can be parsed at least two ways depending on where you break it. One reading contrasts a person without desire with a person with desire. The other breaks it so that it's about constantly having no desire in order to observe subtlety, which shifts it from a description of two people into an instruction.
Commentators have argued about this for 1,800 years. If you compare two translations and they seem to be describing different things, this line is usually why. Our translation guide covers which editions handle it how.
The closing
"These two spring from the same source but differ in name. This appearing as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery."
The nameless and the named turn out to have one origin. The chapter refuses the dualism it just set up, which is a move it will make repeatedly across the next 80 chapters.
"Darkness within darkness" translates xuan, a word meaning dark, deep, or profound, with a sense of a blackness you can't see into rather than an absence of light. It isn't ominous. It's the colour of not being able to make something out, offered as the entrance rather than the obstacle.
Why it's a bad first page and a good one
Bad, because a reader arriving for wisdom gets told in line one that it can't be delivered. Plenty of people close the book there.
Good, because everything after it makes sense only under this constraint. The Tao Te Ching proceeds by image, paradox and negative statement precisely because the direct route was ruled out on page one. Once you accept that the book is pointing rather than defining, its method stops looking evasive.
Our reading guide covers five ways through the whole text, and the summary gives you the seven arguments it keeps making. 365 Days of Tao opens on 1 January with exactly this chapter, then works through the remaining 80 across the year.
Common questions
What does Tao Te Ching chapter 1 mean?
That the Tao can't be captured in language: any definition produces something smaller than the thing meant. It then distinguishes the nameless origin from the named world, and ends by saying both come from one source.
What does 'the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao' mean?
That specifying the Tao draws a border around it, and the Tao is what has no border. The Chinese uses the same character as noun and verb, a pun English can't reproduce, which is why translations of this line vary so much.
Why do translations of chapter 1 differ so much?
Classical Chinese had no punctuation, and the desire passage can be parsed at least two ways: as a contrast between two kinds of person, or as an instruction. Commentators have argued about it for 1,800 years.
What does 'darkness within darkness' mean?
It translates xuan, meaning dark, deep or profound: a blackness you can't see into rather than an absence of light. The chapter offers it as the gateway rather than the obstacle.
Should I start reading the Tao Te Ching at chapter 1?
You can, but expect to be refused an answer. Many readers do better dipping in and returning to chapter 1 once they've seen the book's method elsewhere.