第四十章 Dao De Jing · Chapter 40
Returning is the movement of the Way and weakness its use; presence is born from absence.
Text
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反者，道之动；
Returning is the movement of the Way;
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弱者，道之用。
weakness is the use of the Way.
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天下万物生于有，
The myriad things of the world are born from presence,
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有生于无。
and presence is born from absence.
Words in this chapter
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 反 | fǎn | return, reversal |
| 者 | zhě | one who, that which |
| 道 | dào | the Way |
| 之 | zhī | of, 's (linking particle) |
| 动 | dòng | to move |
| 弱 | ruò | weak, weakness |
| 用 | yòng | to use |
| 天下 | tiān xià | all under heaven, the world |
| 万物 | wàn wù | the myriad things |
| 生 | shēng | to produce, give life, arise |
| 于 | yú | to, at |
| 有 | yǒu | presence, what is |
| 无 | wú | absence, what is not |
Compare: James Legge (1891)
The movement of the Tao
By contraries proceeds;
And weakness marks the course
Of Tao's mighty deeds.
All things under heaven sprang from It as existing (and named); that existence sprang from It as non-existent (and not named).
Public domain. Source: Wikisource.
Meaning of chapter 40
Chapter 40, the shortest in the book, names the movement of the Way and the source of all things in four lines.
Returning (反) is the movement of the Way, and weakness (弱) is its use. 反 means both turning back and turning into the opposite; as in chapter 25 (远曰反), the site keeps both senses. The second line ties the Way to the theme of chapters 36, 43 and 78: the soft and weak overcome the hard and strong.
The last two lines give an order of birth: the myriad things of the world are born from presence (有), and presence is born from absence (无). The pair comes from chapters 1, 2 and 11, where presence and absence give rise to each other and the empty space in a wheel, a pot or a room is what makes it useful. Here they are set in sequence instead, with absence first. Wang Bi's note on this chapter says that what begins to exist has absence as its root (以无为本), the idea at the center of his reading of the whole book.