Core Concepts · At the Fullest, Becoming Returns
At the Fullest, Becoming Returns Shēng jí jí shēng fǎn · At the Fullest, Becoming Returns
It must be expressed strictly according to the original text's intensity.
Correct:
When a continuously developing tendency reaches its fullest, it will often / frequently begin to gestate a turn; this return may in turn become the beginning of a new round of happening.
Must not be arbitrarily changed into
'Any thing necessarily reverses at its extreme.'
The original text presents it as a repeatedly observable pattern; it should not be strengthened into a mechanical deterministic law.
Primary evidence
Once you understand this one grain, you will look at your own rises and falls differently. When things go well for you, do not let triumph go to your head—momentum at its fullest turns back; climb too high, and the next step is the turn back. When things go badly, do not despair—decline at its extreme is the return, the place where a new round is about to rise. The darkest moment is usually the night before dawn. The favorable and the adverse in human life were never a straight line running one way to the end—they are round after round, a circle. The one who cannot see this loses himself in triumph and collapses in adversity, dragged up and down by that momentum, his heart flying to heaven and plunging to earth. The one who sees it knows to rein in when things go well, and knows things will return when they go badly; he does not wrestle with that round, because he knows it is a round, not forever—he sits at the position where he can watch round after round, and he stays steady.
Wenzi｜Sheng｜Chapter undefined, §3｜https://tongzai.space/becoming/chapter-6/#p025