Tao Te Ching Chapter 42-7 Lose = Gain

Today's Tao

Therefore, things sometimes gain by losing them. They sometimes lose by gaining them. (Ch.42)


"When the Attainment peaks, it is the same as the beginning.

Being the same means being void.

Being void means being big."

(«Chuang Tzu» 12-8)


Please read Tao by Matsumoto / Chapter 42 / One, two, three for more details.


Let's clarify what Chuang Tzu says here.


Step 1:

Tao projects a hologram. The process is called Attainment.


Step 2:

The hologram goes back to Void = Big = Tao = the beginning.

The process is called Dark Depth Attainment.


When a process completes, the step of undoing it begins.

That's why gaining is the beginning of losing and losing is the beginning of gaining.


«Related Articles»
-One's birth 42-1
-Two's birth 42-2
-Three's birth 42-3
-Birth of everything 42-4
-Yin =Yang 42-5
-No good 42-6
-Lose = Gain 42-7
-Chuang Tzu's teachings 42-8
-Father of Teachings 1 42-9
-Father of Teachings 2 42-10
-Tao by Matsumoto / Tao Te Ching / Chapter 42


Tao answers your question!



-Basho means a banana plant in Japanese. I wonder why Matsuo Basho chose his pen name "Basho the banana". I don't know if a banana was something cool in his time, but at least I can tell that it was exotic. Sometimes, exoticism pushes one to go beyond his limit of imagination and achieve something unprecedented. The name of this great poet reminds me that Haiku also once was a cutting edge avant-garde artistic movement. He may have needed this unusual name to say "no" to the conventional ways to compose poems.