Dao De Jing: Chapter 40
道 德 经
返 者 道 之 动
弱 者 道 之 用
天 下
万 物 生 于 有
有 生 于 无。
Dao De Jing
Fan zhe dao zhi dong
Ruo zhe dao zhi yong
Tian xia
Wan wu sheng yu you
You sheng yu wu.
Reverting back to its opposite is how the Dao moves
Being delicate and profound is how the Dao is used
Under heaven, down here on earth
The ten thousand things emerge from Being-Within-Form
And Being-Within-Form emerges from Being-Without-Form.
Comments:
The first character, fan 返, has many meanings. It means to return, to come or go back. In this context, it can mean to come or go back to the Dao, the source, the beginning. But another meaning I believe more important as it relates to Laozi and Dao De Jing, is to revert back to it’s opposite. Black becomes white, and vice versa. Hot becomes cold, cold becomes hot; inside becomes outside, and outside becomes inside; life becomes death, and vice versa death becomes life. Laozi uses the word Dao both as a noun and a verb. In this first line, it is used as a process, a constant, ever-present, unavoidable process.
Second line’s first character, ruo 弱, means weak, frail, delicate, young and little. It meaning also implies being lost. So although the Dao can be experienced and followed, it can also be lost. Lost from our consciousness and attention. It is therefore also profound.
The third line literally meaning “under heaven”, but also it means down here on earth. That is, what goes on down here on this planet.
The phrase wan wu 万物, is seen often throughout ancient Chinese poetry. It literally means the “ten thousand things”. Ten thousand implies numerable, myriad, or too many things to count. It refers to the part of existence that can be perceived and/or conceptualized. So all of the people, places and things down here on earth that can be empirically experienced a posteori, through our senses, as well as a priori, through our thoughts and imaginings.
The terms you 有, “Being-Within-Form” and wu 无, “Being-Without-Form” are used in what I consider to be the best translation of the Dao De Jing into English by Wang Keping. So often these two critical components of the Dao are misinterpreted. They are not “ being” and “non-being”, or “existence” and “nonexistence” as so often written. These English words imply that the Dao can be out of existence, instead out of our awareness. The question is not “to be, or not to be“, as Hamlet and Shakespeare would say, but rather is it revealed, or is it hidden? The metaphor would be the full moon in the night time sky. Can be we see it, or is the moon the hidden behind the clouds? Being hidden behind the clouds does not mean that the moon has stopped existing. The psychologists call this situation object permanence. Once a young child has achieved object permanence, then the games of hide-and-seek and peek-a-boo can begin.
In another tradition, one of the major sections of the Upanishads, known as the Chandogya, tells of an exchange between a father and a son. The father is trying to instruct his son on the nature of the Self. To use an example, he asks his son to bring him the fruit of the nyagrodha tree. He does. Break it open and what do you see? These seeds that are very small. Break one open, and what do you see. The son replies, “Nothing at all”. That hidden essence you do not see, from that this large tree will grow.
One could go on and state that life and death are really two aspects of the same thing. Life does not become death. Life is the revealed Being-Within-Form state of existence, while death is the hidden Being-Without-Form of existence.
The importance of this chapter of the Dao De Jing is difficult to understate if one wants to understand the philosophy(s) of Daoism and the other traditions of the East.