About this passageThe chapter describes a practice — emptying, and holding still — and then what becomes visible from it: that things run through their activity and go back to where they started, the way a plant that has grown all it can returns to its root. Stillness here is not a mood but the end of a cycle, and the text calls knowing this cycle the beginning of clear sight.
The (state of) vacancy should be brought to the utmost degree, and that of stillness guarded with unwearying vigour. All things alike go through their processes of activity, and (then) we see them return (to their original state). When things (in the vegetable world) have displayed their luxuriant growth, we see each of them return to its root. This returning to their root is what we call the state of stillness; and that stillness may be called a reporting that they have fulfilled their appointed end.
The report of that fulfilment is the regular, unchanging rule. To know that unchanging rule is to be intelligent; not to know it leads to wild movements and evil issues. The knowledge of that unchanging rule produces a (grand) capacity and forbearance, and that capacity and forbearance lead to a community (of feeling with all things).
In plainer words
Empty yourself out as far as you can, and hold still, and keep holding. Everything runs its course and then goes back to where it began — you can watch a plant do it, growing all it can and then returning to the root. That return is what stillness is. Knowing this is what being clear-sighted means; not knowing it is what makes people thrash about and come to harm. Knowing it makes a person roomy, and roomy becomes generous, and generous becomes one thing with everything else.
A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.