Lynn's - Daode jing of Laozi

Reversion is the action of the Dao. (1)

Nobility uses humility as its foundation, and loftiness uses lowliness as its roots. (2) What exists becomes useful by making use of what does not exist. (3)  This is what is meant here by "reversion".  If action occurs so that it always proceeds to a state of nothingness, all things will go smoothly. (4)  Thus the text says: "Reversion is the action of the Dao".

Softness is the function of the Dao. (5)

Because its softness and pliancy embraces all things equally, its capacity is infinite.

The myriad things under Heaven achieve life in existence.  Existence arises from nothingness.

All things under Heaven achieve life because of existence, but the origin of existence has nothingness for its roots.  If one would have things achieve their full existence, he must allow them to revert to nothingness.

Text, in Italics above, is Wang Bi's commentary.

The notes below, are from the translator, Richard John Lynn -

(deb's note - "section" is used for verse in these notes.)

(1)  Cf. section 65, penultimate passage; and section 78, second passage.

(2)  Cf. section 39, last passage.

(3)  Cf. section 11, second passage.

(4)  This translates dong jie zhi qi suowu ze wu tong yi.  The zhi in the base text, however, is not "proceed" but "know/understand", which requires a different rendering: "As for action, if one always understands its state of nothingness, all things are his to embrace."  Zhi (proceed) actually occurs in the version of Wang's commentary preserved in the Daode zhenjing jizhu (Collected commentaries on the True Classic of the Way and Virtue) (late 11th century), 6:18 (17021B).  Both Hatano Taro and Lou Yulie think that zhi (proceed) is the better reading, and Lou suggests the paraphrase: "If the action of the myriad things is such that they are all rendered able to return to their fundamental roots, that is, reside in nothingness, one can then embrace the myriad things" (Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 110n. 3).  See Hatano, Roshi Dotokukyo kenkyu, 280.

(5)  Cf. section 10, second passage; section 36, second passage; and section 78, second passage.

From Stephen Mitchell - tao te ching - A New English Version

Return is the movement of the Tao.

Yielding is the way of the Tao.

All things are born of being.

Being is born of non-being

From Byron Katie - A Thousand Names For Joy

- Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

Return is the movement of the Tao.

Yielding is the way of the Tao.

You can't have it, because you already are it.  You already have what you want, you already are what you want.  That's as good as it gets.  It appears as this now -- perfect, flawless.  And to argue with it is to experience a lie.  The Work can give you this wonderful awareness: the awareness of the lie and of the power of truth, the beauty of what really is.

The four questions unravel each story, and the turnaround leads back to the storyteller: you.  You are the storyteller.  You have become the stories you told yourself.  And you are what lives prior to every story.  Every story, every thing, is God: reality.  It apparently emerges from out of itself, and it appears as a life.  It lives forever within the story, until the story ends.  From out of itself, I appeared as my story, until the questions brought me home.  I love it that inquiry is so unfailing.  Story: suffering.  Inquiry: no story (no suffering).  Freedom is possible in every moment.

When I say things like "Until I'm free to be happy in the presence of my greatest enemy, my work's not done," people can hear that as a motive for doing inquiry.  It's not; it's an observation.  If you do The Work with any kind of motive, even the best of motives -- getting your husband back or healing your body or saving the world -- it won't be genuine, because you'll be looking for a certain kind of answer, and you won't allow the deeper answers to surface.  Only when you don't know what you're looking for can you be open to the answers that will change your life.  Any motive other than the love of truth won't work.  It's the truth that sets you free.  That's an accurate statement -- it's not just written in a bible somewhere.  And the truth we're talking about is not someone else's truth; it's your own.  That's the only truth that can set you free.

Yielding or surrendering to the way of it is easy once your mind is clear.  What people call surrender is actually a noticing.  You notice that everything is continually disappearing, and you celebrate it as it goes back to where it came from: non-existence, the uncreated.  And eventually surrender ceases to be necessary.  The word implies that there's something outside you to surrender to.  But you just notice what isn't, what's gone, what you can never prove existed in the first place -- a sound, a name, a picture, a voice.  You keep noticing, until finally there's nothing to surrender to.

The mind surrenders to itself.  When it isn't at war with itself, it experiences a world that is completely kind, the benevolent mind projecting a benevolent world.  It can no longer validate suffering on this earth, because it has ended suffering within itself.  It becomes completely pitiless, completely loving.

People ask how I can live if nothing has meaning and I'm no one.  It's simple.  We're being lived.  We're not doing it.  Without a story, we move effortlessly, fluidly, without resistance.  This possibility can be very frightening for people who think that they have control.  So question your thoughts, and see how life goes on so much more kindly without you.  Even in the world's apparent collapsing, I see only joy.

If you knew how important you are, you would fragment into a billion pieces and just be light.  Any concept keeps you from the awareness of that.  If you really knew who you are without your story, you'd have to be the nameless, the limitless, the ecstatic -- just a fool, crazy with love.  It's so painful to live outside the light.  I don't know how people do it.  It was so painful that I could do it for only forty-three years. (Forty-three centuries.)

Dr Dyer's Essay for Verse 40 -

I see one of the greatest teachings of the Tao Te Ching here in the shortest of its 81 passages.  If you can master the wisdom in these four lines, you'll be as happy, content, and centered in the Tao as any sage.

With the first word, returning, you're being nudged toward an understanding of the basic principle of your existence.  Without needing to leave your body, you're asked to die while alive.  You accomplish this by realizing that you're one of the 10,000 things that has appeared in the world of form.  What Lao-tzu is expressing here in the 40th verse is what contemporary quantum physics has confirmed many centuries later: Particles do not come from particles at the tiniest subatomic level.  Instead, when the infinitesimally small specks are collided in a particle accelerator, there's nothing remaining but waves of "particle-less" energy.  In order for you, a much bigger speck, to form, you must have come from an originating spirit.

Now Lao-tzu may have known nothing of quantum physics in the 6th century B.C., but he was teaching an essential truth even then: Its spirit that gives life.  So to truly live out your destiny as a piece of the originating Tao, you must shed your ego and return to spirit -- or you can wait until your body dies and make your return trip at that time.

Six centuries after Lao-tzu dictated the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching, the man who wrote a huge percentage of the New Testament also spoke of whence we come.  Formerly called Saul of Tarsus, he became known as Saint Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.  In his letter to the people of Ephesus, he wrote: "You were created to be like God, and so you must please him and be truly holy" (Eph. 4:24).  This is an invitation for us all to return to what we came from, which is loving, kind, and not exclusive in any way.

How is this accomplished, according to Saint Paul and Lao-tzu, who emphasizes this point in many of the verses of the Tao Te Ching ?  You do so by yielding your ego, surrendering, and being humble.  To that end, in his letter to the people of Corinth, Saint Paul quotes Jesus directly: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Paul then goes on to say himself, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:9-10).  Indeed, yielding is the way of the Tao, as well as the key to an uplifted existence, according to virtually all spiritual texts that have survived over the centuries.

When you truly change the way you think about all of life, the world begins to look very different.  You begin seeing everyone and everything as if they have round-trip tickets: You know they all arrived from spirit, and you know they must return.  All that composes also decomposes, and whether anyone else understands that isn't important to you.  You find the awareness that life on Earth is a death sentence to be a liberating and amusing viewpoint.  You're choosing to live each day, each moment that you have and as much as you can, as the nonbeing aspect of yourself.

As a being of spirit, you decide to use your "return ticket" while you're still in physical form by keeping yourself in precisely the same loving status that you occupied before entering this world of boundaries.  As you take your return journey, you not only get to lose your ego-identification card, you have the added bonus of regaining the power of your Source, which is the all-creating power of the universe.  You merge into the oneness of a being who dissolves ego concerns, and the world that you now see is perfect and infinite in nature.  There is no more worry, anxiety, or identification with your possessions -- you're a free person.  You're a spiritual being first, last, and always.