In Pursuit of the Tao, Every Day Something Is Dropped
This chapter draws a direct contrast between formal learning, which accumulates, and the pursuit of the Tao, which strips away, until the practitioner arrives at a governing style that succeeds by doing as little as possible.
Laozi contrasts two disciplines by their opposite trajectories: in the pursuit of learning (為學), something is gained every day; in the pursuit of the Tao (為道), something is dropped every day (日損). This subtractive process continues, he says, until one arrives at non-action, and from non-action nothing is left undone — the same paradox stated in chapter 37, but here framed explicitly as the endpoint of letting go rather than a static description. The chapter then extends the principle to governing: the world is normally won by constantly refraining from interference; the moment a ruler resorts to constant meddling, Laozi says, that ruler becomes unfit to win the world. Read together, the two halves treat subtraction not as loss but as discipline — each thing dropped is one fewer point of friction between the practitioner and the situation they're trying to work with, until so little remains in the way that action and result become nearly indistinguishable.
In the pursuit of the Tao, every day something is dropped.
Tao Te Ching