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Introduction

The premise of this verse is very straightforward. What isn’t there is what makes something useful. 

In contemplating this text, I have found it to emphasize equally both “isn’t there” and “is there,” or yin/absence and yang/presence, etc., polarities. To be explicit, Weaving the Way is all about the harmonious emergence of complementary energies from the singular pressure of the Dao. Biasing one energy over the other is nonsensical. 

Therefore, I am significantly departing from the traditional reading, which emphasizes the “isn’t there” aspect. The location of a comma added by later commentators creates this contrived emphasis.

The following translation emerges by moving that comma one character to the right. If you’d like to see the Chinese, it’s at the end of the commentary.

Translation

Thirty spokes join at one hub.
Integrating what isn’t and is,
  makes a cart useful.

In using clay to make a cup.
Integrating what isn’t and is,
  makes the cup useful.

Cutting out doors and windows.
Integrating what isn’t and is,
  makes a room useful.

Benefit from what is.
Make use of what isn’t. 

Commentary

Thirty spokes join at one hub.
Integrating what isn’t and is,
  a cart makes use of it. 

There’s no place for an axle without a hub. There’s no support for the rim without the spokes.

If either what isn’t or what is was otherwise, the wheel would be useless to the cart.

In using clay to make a cup.
Integrating what isn’t and is,
  makes the cup useful.

Same as above.

A solid lump of clay doesn’t hold much of a beverage for your enjoyment. Likewise, pouring said beverage into thin air won’t capture much of it for you to enjoy. 

Cutting out doors and windows.
Integrating what isn’t and is,
  makes a room useful. 

A box with four walls and a roof without an entrance or windows is a box. You die if you are sealed into the box, and you can’t get whatever is inside if you’re outside the box when it’s sealed. In either case, such a thing is hardly useful as a room. 

Benefit from what is. 

In each of the examples, the benefit is in what is. The spokes of the wheel hold the cart up. The walls of the clay cup hold the beverage. A room’s walls and roof make it a safe and secure shelter. 

Benefitting from what is there is how things work. Existence supports life’s processes. Even the existence of so-called “negative” stimuli is supportive by bringing our attention to something that needs addressing. 

Make use of what isn’t.

However beneficial what exists is, the usefulness of something is in what it doesn’t have. The three examples above illustrate that point deftly. Here is one is/isn’t combo that may not be immediately obvious.

Emotions are beneficial because their existence directs our lives. They’re useful because they constantly change according to circumstances; they have no independent, separate, permanent existence. 

More words here would belabor and dilute the point. 

Enjoy chewing on how useful “Nothing” is!

Technical Note

The conventional rendering of the lines in question is exemplified in the first stanza and repeats in the next two. The traditional reading is:

卅辐同一毂
当其无，
有车之用也

I am reading it as:

卅辐同一毂
当其无有
车之用也

The critical part is whether the comma belongs between 无 and 有 or not. To explore that, keeping the two characters together, as I have chosen to do, yields this:

当其无有

当 = cooperate, equal, match, integrate (among many other meanings)
其 = its’ 
无 = yin, is not, absence, non-existence, has not, what isn’t there
有 = yang, is, presence, existence, has, what is there 

It feels obvious that we should consider the two qualities, 无 and 有, to be what is acted on by 当. Thus, my translation:

Thirty spokes join at one hub.
Integrating what isn’t and is,
  a cart makes use of it. 

Separating them, as conventionally done, yields a translation more like:

Thirty spokes join at one hub.
Considering what it lacks,
therein the cart has use of it.

Or, Nina Correa’s version:

Fit thirty spokes into the hub of a wheel.
It is the space between the spokes that makes the wheel valuable; thus the vehicle can be put to use.

My interpretation may seem slightly nuanced, but I believe it has significant ramifications for rendering the text philosophically coherent, spiritually accurate, and pragmatic.