What is pu the uncarved block?

Laozi (Lao Tzu), answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Laozi (Lao Tzu) answers

Pu — the uncarved block — is the state of the ten thousand things before human hands have shaped them according to human purposes. The wood before the carpenter cuts it. The person before cultivation has sorted them into the named virtues. The state before governance has organized it into offices and ranks. The unwrought material, when divided and distributed, forms vessels.¹

Hear what that means: the moment the block is carved, you have vessels — useful, named, differentiated things. But the block itself, before the carving, contains all possible vessels without being any one of them. It is the fullness prior to the division. Once you cut, you have gained a cup and lost the tree. This is why the sage, when employed, becomes the head of all the officers of government without employing violent measures.²

The sage does not impose a shape; the sage holds to the uncarved condition and lets the natural differentiations of the people proceed from their own ziran. The sage-ruler is pu in human form — present, containing all possibilities, forcing none. The same principle governs the cultivational path. Know how white attracts, yet keep yourself within black's shade.³

Know how glory shines, yet love disgrace, and become like a spacious vale to which all things come.⁴ The sage does not rush toward the bright and the differentiated; the sage returns to the undivided, the simple, the infant-state — and it is precisely in that return that the unchanging excellence is completed. Pu is therefore not ignorance or emptiness in the impoverished sense.⁵

It is the fullness of the undivided. The infant has more vitality than the warrior hardened by discipline; the uncarved block contains more than any vessel cut from it. What you gain by carving is always less than what you lose.

Sources

1. The unwrought material, when divided and distributed, forms vessels.

   Tao Te Ching

2. The sage, when employed, becomes the Head of all the Officers (of government); and in his greatest regulations he employs no violent measures.

   Tao Te Ching

3. Who knows how white attracts, Yet always keeps himself within black's shade, The pattern of humility displayed

   Tao Te Ching

4. Who knows how glory shines, Yet loves disgrace, nor e'er for it is pale; Behold his presence in a spacious vale, To which men come from all beneath the sky.

   Tao Te Ching

5. The unchanging excellence completes its tale; The simple infant man in him we hail.

   Tao Te Ching