69
There is a saying:擨t is sometimes better to wait and see than to act first. It is safer to retreat a foot, than to advance and inch.?br>
Following this saying, energy is conserved. When the correct course of action becomes apparent, you are able to act. In trying to overcome the ego, it can抰 be defeated directly. Don抰 see it as bad, and there will be no conflict in you. If you create conflict, your three treasures will be lost, and you will become an enemy to yourself. To overcome the ego, yield to it, and simply be aware of its motivations. Once its motivations are apparent, it is discredited and will lose all power over you.
70
The way of the master is simple, and easy to practice. But your mind cannot understand, and you can抰 try to attain it. Ordinary people are interested in the mundane world, and even if they hear of the Tao they don抰 grasp its depth. Few and far between are those who follow the way. They realise those who don抰 follow, aren抰 ready, so don抰 try to persuade them. Those who become ready have to lose all hope. Once all hope is lost, there is hope.
71
You can only know when there is no knowing. Thinking you know is a delusion. If you realise the delusion is your own, it can be cleared. The master has rejected all knowing, and his delusion has cleared. He is now enlightened.
72
The master抯 sense of wonder is constant, like a d閖?vu that never ends. He realises this wonder is missing from others, but leaves them be unless they ask for help. Having no self, he understands them. If he would push or prod, they would distance themselves. He has let go of the idea that people can be helped.
73
Acting passionately can lead to trouble. Being indifferent, there is no trouble. The reasons why things happen can hardly be known, so we can抰 know if something is good or bad. By not trying to succeed, everything is successful. Without speaking, everything is said. By not seeking, it can be found. The natural way covers everything and every event like a net. Though its meshes may be wide, nothing slips through.
74
Death is a natural part of life, and it is your fate. If you accept this fully, there is no fear. Having no fear, your actions are powerful. If you try to manage your life, you won抰 live. Because of death there is no risk, hence nothing to manage. A life based on death will be fulfilling. A life based on life will lead to death.
75
If you require many concessions from children, they won抰 be able to fulfil their own hearts. Give them many rules to follow and they will rebel. When people outwardly value life, death is taken lightly. If death is taken lightly, life will easily be sacrificed.
76
When a baby is born, it is soft and flexible. When a man dies he is static and stiff. A living plant bends and flowers. Dead, it is brittle and barren. Stiff and static, you are as if dead. Flexible and soft, you are a beacon of life. That which is stiff and brittle will easily snap, and be destroyed. That which is soft and flexible will bend, and endure.
77
The Tao functions like a bending bow. When something is gained, something else is lost. If there is excess here, there will be deficiency there. A rich man, who takes more from those who are lacking, will become deficient in the Tao. The master gives, therefore he has. He doesn抰 need recognition and acts with no thought of reward. With no thought of reward, everything he does is rewarding.
78
Water is the softest thing in the world. But in dissolving things that are hard, nothing can better it. This is because it can抰 be broken, thus it endures. Everybody knows the soft is stronger than the hard, and the passive overcomes the aggressive, but few put this into practice. The master is humble, therefore he is great. Because he can follow, he is able to lead. Truth is paradoxical.
79
Behind every failure, is a success. If you blame, you will be blamed. The master takes responsibility for himself and is not concerned with the actions of others. He expects nothing from them, and doesn抰 rely on them. If a mistake is made he accepts it. Through this he avoids disturbance.
80
When happy: Even if you have occult powers, they will not be used, You can achieve great works, but there is no need, You can travel far and wide, but you stay at home, You can become a great man, but you remain unknown, You can control people, but you leave them be. Joy is found in ordinary goings on. Even though you may be able to see the border to the next country, you are content to die of old age never having been there.
81
True words aren抰 beautiful. Beautiful words are not truthful. The wise do not argue. Those who argue are not wise. Those who know have no knowledge. Those with knowledge don抰 know. The master has nothing, but gives everything he has. The more he gives, the happier he is. Only with the Tao can you be fulfilled. The beginning doesn抰 exist; the end doesn抰 exist, except through the other. Is finishing verse eighty-one, the end, or the beginning? If you think it is the end, you need to read it again. If you think it is the beginning, you also need to read it again.
English_Bynner_TTK
Das Tao Te King von Lao Tse
Chinese - English by
Witter Bynner, 1944
1
Existence is beyond the power of words
To define:
Terms may be used
But are none of them absolute.
In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,
Words came out of the womb of matter;
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder
Existence opens.
2
People through finding something beautiful
Think something else unbeautiful,
Through finding one man fit
Judge another unfit.
Life and death, though stemming from each other, seem to conflict as stages of change,
Difficult and easy as phases of achievement,
Long and short as measures of contrast,
High and low as degrees of relation;
But, since the varying of tones gives music to a voice
And what is the was of what shall be,
The sanest man
Sets up no deed,
Lays down no law,
Takes everything that happens as it comes,
As something to animate, not to appropriate,
To earn, not to own,
To accept naturally without self-importance:
If you never assume importance
You never lose it.
3
It is better not to make merit a matter of reward
Lest people conspire and contend,
Not to pile up rich belongings
Lest they rob,
Not to excite by display
Lest they covet.
A sound leader's aim
Is to open people's hearts,
Fill their stomachs,
Calm their wills,
Brace their bones
And so to clarify their thoughts and cleanse their needs
That no cunning meddler could touch them:
Without being forced, without strain or constraint,
Good government comes of itself.
4
Existence, by nothing bred,
Breeds everything.
Parent of the universe,
It smooths rough edges,
Unties hard knots,
Tempers the sharp sun,
Lays blowing dust,
Its image in the wellspring never fails.
But how was it conceived?--this image
Of no other sire.
5
Nature, immune as to a sacrifice of straw dogs,
Faces the decay of its fruits.
A sound man, immune as to a sacrifice of straw dogs,
Faces the passing of human generations.
The universe, like a bellows,
Is always emptying, always full:
The more it yields, the more it holds.
Men came to their wit's end arguing about it
And had better meet it at the marrow.
6
The breath of life moves through a deathless valley
Of mysterious motherhood
Which conceives and bears the universal seed,
The seeming of a world never to end,
Breath for men to draw from as they will:
And the more they take of it, the more remains.
7
The universe is deathless,
Is deathless because, having no finite self,
It stays infinite.
A sound man by not advancing himself
Stays the further ahead of himself,
By not confining himself to himself
Sustains himself outside himself:
By never being an end in himself
He endlessly becomes himself.
8
Man at his best, like water,
Serves as he goes along:
Like water he seeks his own level,
The common level of life,
Loves living close to the earth,
Living clear down in his heart,
Loves kinship with his neighbors,
The pick of words that tell the truth,
The even tenor of a well-run state,
The fair profit of able dealing,
The right timing of useful deeds,
And for blocking no one's way
No one blames him.
9
Keep stretching a bow
You repent of the pull,
A 'whetted saw
Goes thin and dull,
Surrounded with treasure
You lie ill at ease,
Proud beyond measure
You come to your knees:
Do enough, without vieing,
Be living, not dying.
10
Can you hold the door of your tent
Wide to the firmament?
Can you, with the simple stature
Of a child, breathing nature,
Become, notwithstanding,
A man?
Can you continue befriending
With no prejudice, no ban?
Can you, mating with heaven,
Serve as the female part?
Can your learned head take leaven
From the wisdom of your heart?
If you can bear issue and nourish its growing,
If you can guide without claim or strife,
If you can stay in the lead of men without their knowing,
You are at the core of life.
11
Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel's use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
稵hus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.
12
The five colors can blind,
The five tones deafen,
The five tastes cloy.
The race, the hunt, can drive men mad
And their booty leave them no peace.
Therefore a sensible man
Prefers the inner to the outer eye:
He has his yes, --he has his no.
13
Favor and disfavor have been called equal worries,
Success and failure have been called equal ailments.
How can favor and disfavor be called equal worries?
Because winning favor burdens a man
With the fear of losing it.
How can success and failure be called equal ailments?
Because a man thinks of the personal body as self.
When he no longer thinks of the personal body as self
Neither failure nor success can ail him.
One who knows his lot to be the lot of all other men
Is a safe man to guide them,
One who recognizes all men as members of his own body
Is a sound man to guard them.
14
What we look for beyond seeing
And call the unseen,
Listen for beyond hearing
And call the unheard,
Grasp for beyond reaching
And call the withheld,
Merge beyond understanding
In a oneness
Which does not merely rise and give light,
Does not merely set and leave darkness,
But forever sends forth a succession of living things as mysterious
As the unbegotten existence to which they return.
That is why men have called them empty phenomena,
Meaningless images,
In a mirage
With no face to meet,
No back to follow.
Yet one who is anciently aware of existence
Is master of every moment,
Feels no break since time beyond time
In the way life flows.
15
Long ago the land was ruled with a wisdom
Too fine, too deep, to be fully understood
And, since it was beyond men's full understanding,
Only some of it has come down to us, as in these sayings:
'Alert as a winter-farer on an icy stream,'
'Wary as a man in ambush,'
'Considerate as a welcome guest,'
'Selfless as melting ice,'
'Green as an uncut tree,
'Open as a valley,'
And this one also, 'Roiled as a torrent,
Why roiled as a torrent?
Because when a man is in turmoil how shall he find peace
Save by staying patient till the stream clears?
How can a man's life keep its course
If he will not let it flow?
Those who flow as life flows know
They need no other force:
They feel no wear, they feel no tear,
They need no mending, no repair.
16
Be utterly humble
And you shall hold to the foundation of peace.
Be at one with all these living things which, having arisen and flourished,
Return to the quiet whence they came,
Like a healthy growth of vegetation
Falling back upon the root.
Acceptance of this return to the root has been called 'quietism,'
Acceptance of quietism has been condemned as 'fatalism.'
But fatalism is acceptance of destiny
And to accept destiny is to face life with open eyes,
Whereas not to accept destiny is to face death blindfold.
He who is open-eyed is open-minded-
He who is open-minded is open-hearted,
He who is open-hearted is kingly,
He who is kingly is godly,
He who is godly is useful,
He who is useful is infinite,
He who is infinite is immune,
He who is immune is immortal.
17
A leader is best
When people barely know that he exists,
Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
Worst when they despise him.
'Fail to honor people,
They fail to honor you;'
But of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will all say, 'We did this ourselves.'
18
When people lost sight of the way to live
Came codes of love and honesty,
Learning came, charity came,
Hypocrisy took charge;
When differences weakened family ties
Came benevolent fathers and dutiful sons;
And when lands were disrupted and misgoverned
Came ministers commended as loyal.
