Introduction

Verse 43 is a pause-and-let-it-sink-in moment in our journey.

Enjoy!

Translation

Nature’s softest,
overpowers nature’s hardest.

Yin and Yang join seamlessly.

I know (y)in-action’s action
universally benefits.

Wordless teaching,
(y)in-action’s universal benefit,
Few can achieve it!

Commentary

Nature’s softest,
overpowers nature’s hardest.

Water carving rock. The willow tree bends instead of breaks like the oak when the snow is heavy—rolling with the punches and fighting fire with water. By this point, the concept of softness being superior to hardness has been well-examined in the text.

There is one interesting note here, which is the choice to use “overpowers” as the translation for 驰骋 (chíchěng). Chíchěng evokes horses running wild and means “rushing about,” with a secondary meaning of “to play an active part.” In one of the commentaries, there is a note defining this phase as:

“Chíchěng: freeing oneself to run. Here, it means directing something according to your will, to control easily.”

This term generates a sense that softness is not just overcoming hardness but fundamentally overpowering hardness. Resolving the seeming paradox of softness being the greater force is a critical insight into Weaving the Way.

Yin and Yang join seamlessly.

My translation here departs significantly from the standard, which goes something like:

Only the least substantial thing can penetrate the seamless. (Ames & Hall) OR
That which has no (substantial) existence enters where there is no crevice (Chinese Text Project)

As ongoing readers will have noticed, the text constantly brings Yin and Yang into co-creative harmony with each other as the functional mystery of Weaving the Way. This message is reiterated here very unambiguously.*

Here is a refresher on yin and Yang from the intro to verse 32:

“Yin is a wordless knowing of the energetic essence unifying all that is. Yang is the capacity to name and organize those aspects of experience so we can engage in our environment as individuals.”

I know (y)in-action’s action
universally benefits.

Please visit verses 29 and 38 for more about (y)in-action, more commonly translated as effortless effort, non-action, or left untranslated as wúweì. This line contributes to the title of the verse by pointing out that our capacity to move from a state of pure potential enables the most universally beneficial action. Again, this is a recap of a thread that has run through the text up to this point.

Wordless teaching,
(y)in-action’s universal benefit,
Few can achieve it!

This refrain evokes Verses 17 and 22, along with quite a few others, I’m sure. The motif summarized here is that Weaving the Way is something lived as a way of being, not something learned in the mind and thought about by others. We must live from not thinking about the harmony of yin and Yang as an extension of the Dao.

“Few can achieve it!” strikes right at the heart of Weaving the Way. On the one hand, we are all only the Dao constantly unfolding. On the other hand, we have these beautiful higher faculties of cognition and complex patterning that muck everything up. Our job is to recognize and remember our innate integrity, casting aside all of the shadowy overlays that filter the pure light into limiting and unskillful constructs. Getting back to where we started is a serious undertaking.

*无有入于无间. Commonly parsed as (无有)入于无间 generates the standard translation. I am parsing it as （无）（有）入于无间, which I believe follows more closely with the ongoing interplay of yin and Yang as the means by which the Dao functions.

无: absence, non-existing, has not. By extension, yin.
有: presence, existing, have. By extension, Yang.
入于: enter into
无间: no space, seamless, no gap.