Tao Te Ching 33 (Second Part)

Those who overcome others have strength.

Those who overcome themselves are powerful.

Today I will interpret the second part of the Tao Te Ching chapter 33. Those who overcome others have strength. Overcoming others is hard, and it takes strength to overcome them. Overcoming them not just physically but in other aspect needs a lot of strength and courage to do such thing. If one person is overcome by others, it means that the person who has been overcome lacks strength and courage and he/she let him/herself to be overcome by others. When a person overcomes someone, it means that he has a lot of strength and courage in him/her.

Those who overcome themselves are powerful. It is true that overcoming yourself needs power. It is very hard to overcome oneself, especially to temptations around you and to the things that distract you. When you have things that you want but you don’t have money to buy it, you are being tempted to do bad things to comply with what you want. But when you have control of yourself from the temptation of doing bad, it means that you have the power to overcome yourself because you stop yourself from doing a bad thing that you know you can satisfy yourself even it is bad. Even when doing a risk that you know it will help others and yourself. You are afraid of doing a risk but for the good of yourself and others, you will do such risk. And it means that you overcome the fear in yourself.