Common

The intelligent scholar hears of the tao, and tries to find the perfect translation, learns Chinese, studies hard.
The average student hears of the tao, and toys with it now and then.
The wise fool hears of the tao and laughs. There is no tao without laughter. The spontaneous response.

So the way to light is dark and stormy.
Progress feels like giving up.
The easy way is actually long and difficult.
Morality and religion show themselves as empty and fruitless.
Perfection is a sham.
Manners are inadequate.
Power seems brittle.
The keen knife blunts.

And the finest souls find their way only very late.
The most delicate music is elusive.
The universe is beyond our notions of form.
The tao is not to be trapped in a bottle, named and labeled.
Tao is what is behind and beneath and between all we study and strive for.

Common. Short for common land, which is public property. A common cannot be enclosed and denied to the use of the public without an Act of Parliament. Until the late 18th and early 19th centuries every village in England had its common lands, divided into strips of which each villager had the use of one or more to cultivate for his own use. When the crops had been taken in from these, the whole areas was thrown open for the common grazing of cattle, etc. By various Acts of Parliament these common lands were taken from the villagers and enclosed by larger farmers, etc., only the less fertile portions being left uncultivated and given over to the common grazing purpose of the community. In Scotland an Act of 1695 gave the power to divide the common land among the persons who had the rights thereon.

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1963, p. 226.