Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching Read Online Free PDF Page B

affairs of the world start small.
    So the wise soul ,
by never dealing with great things,
gets great things done.
    Now, since taking things too lightly makes them worthless ,
and taking things too easy makes them hard,
the wise soul,
by treating the easy as hard,
doesn’t find anything hard.
    ----
    Waley says that this charmingly complex chapter
plays with two proverbs. “Requite injuries with good deeds” is the first. The
word te , here meaning goodness or good deeds, is the
same word Lao Tzu uses for the Power of the Way. (“Power is goodness,” he says
in chapter 49.) So, having neatly annexed the Golden Rule, he goes on to the
proverb about “taking things too lightly” and plays paradox with it.

 
64 - Mindful of little things
    It’s easy to keep hold of what hasn’t stirred ,
easy to plan what hasn’t occurred.
It’s easy to shatter delicate things ,
easy to scatter little things.
Do things before they happen.
Get them straight before they get mixed up.
    The tree you can’t reach your arms around
grew from a tiny seedling.
The nine-story tower rises
from a heap of clay.
The ten-thousand-mile journey
begins beneath your foot.
    Do, and do wrong ;
Hold on, and lose.
Not doing, the wise soul
doesn’t do it wrong ,
and not holding on,
doesn’t lose it.
(In all their undertakings ,
it’s just as they’re almost finished
that people go wrong.
Mind the end as the beginning ,
then it won’t go wrong.)
    That’s why the wise
want not to want ,
care nothing for hard-won treasures,
learn not to be learned,
turn back to what people overlooked.
They go along with things as they are ,
but don’t presume to act.

65 – One power
    Once upon a time
those who ruled according to the Way
didn’t use it to make people knowing
but to keep them unknowing.
    People get hard to manage
when they know too much.
Whoever rules by intellect
is a curse upon the land.
Whoever rules by ignorance
is a blessing on it.
To understand these things
is to have a pattern and a model ,
and to understand the pattern and the model
is mysterious power.
    Mysterious power
goes deep.
It reaches far.
It follows things back ,
clear back to the great oneness.
    ----
    Where shall we find a
ruler wise enough to know what to teach and what to withhold? “Once upon a time,” maybe, in the days of myth and legend, as a
pattern, a model, an ideal?
    The knowledge and the
ignorance or unknowing Lao Tzu speaks of may or may
not refer to what we think of as education. In the last stanza, by power he
evidently does not mean political power at all, but something vastly different,
a unity with the power of the Tao itself.
    This is a mystical
statement about government-and in our minds those two realms are worlds apart.
I cannot make the leap between them. I can only ponder it.

66 – Lowdown
    Lakes and rivers are lords of the hundred valleys.
Why? Because they’ll go lower.
So they’re the lords of the hundred valleys.
    Just so, a wise soul ,
wanting to be above other people,
talks to them from below
and to guide them
follows them.
    And so the wise soul
predominates without dominating ,
and leads without misleading.
And people don’t get tired
of enjoying and praising
one who, not competing ,
has in all the world
no competitor.
    ----
    One of the things I
love in Lao Tzu is his good cheer, as in this poem, which while giving good
counsel is itself a praise and enjoyment of the spirit of yin, the water-soul
that yields, follows, eludes, and leads on, dancing in the hundred valleys.

67 – Three treasures
    Everybody says my way is great
but improbable.
    All greatness
is improbable.
What’s probable
is tedious and petty.
    I have three treasures.
I keep and treasure them.
The first, mercy ,
the second, moderation,
the third, modesty.
If you’re merciful you can be brave ,
if you’re moderate you can be generous,
and if you don’t presume to lead
you can lead the high and mighty.
    But to be brave without compassion ,
or generous without