Tao Te Ching · 46 of 81 · tr. James Legge

Chapter 46

When the Tao prevails in the world, they send back their swift horses to (draw) the dung-carts. When the Tao is disregarded in the world, the war-horses breed in the border lands. There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one's lot; no fault greater than the wish to be getting. Therefore the sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and unchanging sufficiency.

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Themes

Detachment Gelassenheitpraxis

Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.

The text advocates for the letting-go of ambition and the wish to be getting as a path to enduring sufficiency.

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Evil As Privationtheology

Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.

Guilt, calamity, and fault are framed as deviations from the Tao rather than independent positive forces.

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Paradox As Teachingethics

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

The imagery of swift horses drawing dung-carts versus war-horses breeding on borders uses reversal to critique societal values.

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Wu Weipraxis

Effortless action aligned with the spontaneous flow of the Dao; non-coercive, non-striving conduct that yields results without forcing — the sage acts without acting.

[auto] The passage explicitly describes the state of the Tao prevailing through non-striving conduct and contentment rather than ambition or war.

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Related passages · 8 parallels

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