The most quoted contrast in the book's second half: in pursuit of learning, something is added every day; in pursuit of the Tao, something is let go every day. Two curricula, running in opposite directions. Education stacks up knowledge, skills, positions, opinions; the Way is a daily subtraction — of pretence, of grasping, of the accumulated interference between you and things as they are.
The subtraction has a destination: less and less, until one arrives at non-action — and through non-action, nothing is left undone. The emptied person is not incapacitated but finally unobstructed; what remains after the letting-go acts with the whole current of things behind it. The chapter ends by applying the rule to power: to take hold of the world, one must be free of contrivance; the moment one becomes contriving, one is no longer adequate to the world. Scheming disqualifies the schemer. The world gives itself, the book keeps insisting, only to hands that have stopped grabbing.
Key verses
In pursuit of learning, something is added every day. In pursuit of the Tao, something is let go every day. Less and less, until one arrives at non-action. Through non-action, nothing is left undone. To take hold of the world, one must always be free of contrivance; the moment one becomes contriving, one is no longer adequate to the world.
Read Chapter 48 in full
Every verse with translation, word meanings, and commentary — free.
ਐਪ ਵਿੱਚ ਮੁਫ਼ਤ ਪੜ੍ਹੋਪਰੰਪਰਾਵਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਪੁੱਛੋ
ਇੱਕ ਸਵਾਲ। ਪੰਜ ਪਰੰਪਰਾਵਾਂ ਦੇ ਜਵਾਬ।
ਬਿਨਾਂ ਖਾਤੇ ਦੇ ਹਰ 24 ਘੰਟਿਆਂ ਵਿੱਚ 2 ਸਵਾਲ।