Coming back is how Dao goes.
Being weak is what Dao does.
Everything everywhere comes from what is.
What is comes from what is not.
***
NOTES
line 1, coming back: See Introduction section IV.7.
COMMENTARY
Poem 40 is the shortest in the Dao De Jing, only twenty-one words in the original. Laozi’s brevity here is intensified by how directly he speaks. Even the lines that sound paradoxical – Coming back is how Dao goes, What is comes from what is not – are simple statements of fact from the perspective of unity (see Introduction section IV.8). The truth sounds like a paradox, poem 78 reminds us. And without the truth of unity, you’re stuck with Me as opposed to Other – which isn’t enough for you to go on, because it isn’t the way things work, as poem 39 explains in detail.
Links To:
The Classic of Dao and De by Laozi: Contents
For more on Daoism, see:
Film Dreams: Frank Capra
Music: KALW Radio Show #3, Ancient China in 20th-Century Music
Music: SFCR Radio Show #8, Daoism in Western Music, part 1
Music: SFCR Radio Show #9, Daoism in Western Music, part 2
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 