Being and Nothing The word yu (you) means
“to have, there are”; as a noun it can mean possessions
or patrimony. As a philosophical term it can be translated
“Being”, but it really is better translated
“existence” or perhaps “presence”, since it
does not have the idealistic, rationalistic connotations of
the term from Western philosophy. Wu, the
counterpart of you, means “Without, there are none,
absence” and can be translated Nothing. In Lao Tzu we see
“Being and Nothing give birth to one another” in Ch. 2
and “Being is born from Nothing” in Ch. 40. The
two expressions are not contradictory, but the statement in Ch.
40 seems to give priority to Nothing and is a more aggressive
statement of the principle. The most usable expression of
the wu / yu contrast where “yu” is
identified with ownership and wu with use. Yu thus can be
identified with immobility, actuality, ownership, control, and by
extension with perfect knowledge, whereas wu is identified with
activity, potentiality, stewardship, co-existence, and openness
to reality. Louis Dumont speaks of a
traditionalist relationship of “encompassment”, in
which reality is seen as made up of matched pairs which are in
some respects polar and equal, but in which in another respect
one of the pair “encompasses” or includes the other.
(In the West the husband-wife relationship was like that, and in
some forms of Christian theology God the Father encompasses the
other two.) In Lao Tzu Nothing encompasses Being, and
that the equality in Ch. 20 is trumped by the priority given to
Nothing in Ch. 40. This priority goes against Confucianism and
most Western possibility too, but makes perfect sense, since the
world of potentiality includes the world of actuality but is of
necessity much larger. In practice, the priority given
to Nothing is just part of Lao Tzu’s warning against greed
of total knowledge, total control, total success, etc. Other
expressions of similar effect in the text of Lao Tzu
include “emptiness” and holes together with the word ying
“full”. The word yung “use,
function” where it appears often expresses the
idea of “use” or “stewardship” as opposed to
ownership or control. Being/Nothing: Chs. 2, 11, 40,
43. Holes, emptiness, etc. (other expressions): Chs. 1?, 3, 4, 5, 20, 22, 43, 45. Yung (yong) (M. 7567) To
use or employ. Use, function, activity. Chs. 4, 6, 11, 27, 28,
31, 35, 40, 45, 52, 57, 68, 69, 80. Ying (M. 7474): Full, fullness: Chs. 4, 9, 15, 22, 39, 45.
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