There's a story in the Zhuangzi about a man named Hundun who had no face — no openings, no gates. He was apparently doing fine. His well-meaning friends decided to give him what everyone else had. One opening per day. On the seventh day, Hundun died.

Chapter 10 asks seven questions. Each one is an opening being drilled. Not to acquire something — but to ask whether the drilling has already cost something, and whether what it cost can be found again underneath.

De is what you already are when the accumulated strategies, roles, and improvement projects thin out enough to see through. Not an achievement. Not a moral quality. What's there when the well-intentioned drilling stops.

This episode looks at Hakomi character strategy, the mirror that shows things as they are when it's clean, and what it means to stop relating to the people you love through a role.

De isn't something you earn. It's what's already here.

Dao with Ian Felton works through all 81 chapters of the Daodejing as a practice manual for living.