Shui (水, Water) in the Dao De Jing: Meaning and Occurrences
In the Dao De Jing, water (水) is the image of the highest good: it benefits the myriad things without contending and takes the low places, and nothing is softer or weaker, yet nothing surpasses it against the hard and strong.
水 (shuǐ), water, is named in only two chapters, but they are among the best known in the book. Chapter 8 opens with 上善若水: "Supreme benevolence is like water." Water benefits all things without contending, goes to the places everyone dislikes, and so is close to the Way.
Chapter 78 returns to it: nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water, yet for attacking the hard and strong nothing surpasses it. The chapter draws the lesson that the weak overcomes the strong and the soft overcomes the hard, which everyone knows and no one can practice.
Other lines speak of water without the word 水: in chapter 32 the Way in the world is like streams and valleys flowing to rivers and seas (江海), and in chapter 66 rivers and seas are kings of the hundred valleys because they are good at being below them. Those lines are not counted here.
Every occurrence of 水
Chapter 8
Chapter 78
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Line 1
天下莫柔弱于水，
Nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water,