Chapter 48

Chapter 48

One who seeks knowledge learns something new every day.
One who seeks the Tao unlearns something new every day.
Less and less remains until you arrive at non-action.
When you arrive at non-action,
nothing will be left undone.

Mastery of the world is achieved
by letting things take their natural course.
You can not master the world by changing the natural way.

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This chapter contains a beautiful lesson if you interpret it in a particular way.

Upon reading this chapter, I imagine a student learning mathematics at high school. If he becomes good enough in several lessons of the math textbook, he no longer has to rely on elementary formulas to arrive at an answer when solving a problem. His built experience and intuition would guide him such that he uses only little effort to find out the answer. This kid no longer takes a formulaic approach but uses ideas and principles when approaching math problems. He even toys with the mathematical ideas and manipulates them somehow; that is, he is able to construct a “narrative” out of his school math knowledge.

Because he relies less and less on formulas and instead makes use of ideas and intuition, he “unlearns” the fixed ways of solving math problems. When you “arrive at non-action” in this way, you actually achieve a highest level where you are nearly untouchable in your field. Your brain will take care of things by itself. This is not unlike the case where some words automatically pop up in our head out of nowhere, because it is the brain that does the thinking.