I love this verse!!

Whilst the first verse is always the one that gets quoted when trying to explain what the Dao is (well, usually only those opening lines), I think this verse explains the paradigm better. And I reckon you're soon on the money @TheLynx with that tension of understanding the paradox: striving and non-striving emerging from each other and yet being different to each other too!

What amazed me when I first read this was how it encapsulates Structuralist theory (from semiotics and linguistics, and also anthropology) over 2000 years beforehand!! What's even more amazing is how the work being done in neuroscience is showing that there is indeed something that happens in our neurological systems that shows that our perception of the world is in a sense dualistic and relativistic, in that we always 'know' something as it relates to something else.

I found the last two lines really hard to translate, and it's helpful to have so many translations around as comparison... but other than the grammatical issues, I think my mind gets to the point of struggling to grasp these ideas.

"whether states of being exist because of the existence of their opposites, independent of the awareness of an outside source...or whether the act of something or someone perceiving them gives rise to their interdependence"

My interpretation here is that it is both (of course). 天下 tiānxià is literally "below Heaven", or the whole world. This is a pretty specific phrase, in that humans (and, interestingly plants and animals) are "below Heaven". Heaven is to put it simply a realm of pure consciousness and potentialities. It is only because there is Earth (material existence, manifestation) that differentiations can come into being. A good metaphor would be that Heaven is like an ocean, but Earth is like a collection of individual molecules of water.

The point of this verse and verse 1 (as well as many other verses) is that we cannot have one without the other, and also we can't know one without the other.

If we create distinctions, we are then presupposing Earth (yin) to be the answer; if we create absolutely no distinctions ("all is one") then we presuppose Heaven (yang). This is what the perpetual Dao is.... it is both of these. So we get that awesome line "tangible and intangible create one another" (or "existence and non-existence", - literally "to have" and "not".... to be and to not be).

In a sense, because we are material beings, dependent on physiological sense organs with which to experience reality, our perception can only limit our understanding of this. I've always wondered if these kinds of statements weren't used by the students of this school to create 'pattern interrupts', similar to later zen koans.

Looking forward to the next one, as always.... 😊🙏🏽☯️