Once a week, I have been posting an excerpt from the Tao Te Ching in my blog and inviting you, my friends, to share any thoughts, insights, et cetera you might have.  I am posting this week's selection a day earlier than usual, since I may be unavailable Friday.  Here are "chapters" 56 - 60 (out of 81 total).  I'm honored to call all of you my friends, even when we don't happen to see eye to eye.  Many thanks!  — J.

Tao Te Ching

by Lao-tzu

J. Legge, Translator

(Sacred Books of the East, Vol 39)

56

He who knows (the Tao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he
who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it.

He (who knows it) will keep his mouth shut and close the portals
(of his nostrils). He will blunt his sharp points and unravel the
complications of things; he will attemper his brightness, and bring
himself into agreement with the obscurity (of others). This is called
'the Mysterious Agreement.'

(Such an one) cannot be treated familiarly or distantly; he is
beyond all consideration of profit or injury; of nobility or
meanness:—he is the noblest man under heaven.

57

A state may be ruled by (measures of) correction; weapons of
war may be used with crafty dexterity; (but) the kingdom is made one's
own (only) by freedom from action and purpose.

How do I know that it is so? By these facts:—In the kingdom the
multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of the
people; the more implements to add to their profit that the people
have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan; the more
acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do strange
contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation, the
more thieves and robbers there are.

Therefore a sage has said, 'I will do nothing (of purpose), and the
people will be transformed of themselves; I will be fond of keeping
still, and the people will of themselves become correct. I will take
no trouble about it, and the people will of themselves become rich; I
will manifest no ambition, and the people will of themselves attain to
the primitive simplicity.'

58

The government that seems the most unwise,
Oft goodness to the people best supplies;
That which is meddling, touching everything,
Will work but ill, and disappointment bring.

Misery!--happiness is to be found by its side! Happiness!--misery
lurks beneath it! Who knows what either will come to in the end?

Shall we then dispense with correction? The (method of) correction
shall by a turn become distortion, and the good in it shall by a turn
become evil. The delusion of the people (on this point) has indeed
subsisted for a long time.

Therefore the sage is (like) a square which cuts no one (with its
angles); (like) a corner which injures no one (with its sharpness).
He is straightforward, but allows himself no license; he is bright,
but does not dazzle.

59

For regulating the human (in our constitution) and rendering
the (proper) service to the heavenly, there is nothing like
moderation.

It is only by this moderation that there is effected an early
return (to man's normal state). That early return is what I call the
repeated accumulation of the attributes (of the Tao). With that
repeated accumulation of those attributes, there comes the subjugation
(of every obstacle to such return). Of this subjugation we know not
what shall be the limit; and when one knows not what the limit shall
be, he may be the ruler of a state.

He who possesses the mother of the state may continue long. His
case is like that (of the plant) of which we say that its roots are
deep and its flower stalks firm:—this is the way to secure that its
enduring life shall long be seen.

60

Governing a great state is like cooking small fish.

Let the kingdom be governed according to the Tao, and the manes of
the departed will not manifest their spiritual energy. It is not that
those manes have not that spiritual energy, but it will not be
employed to hurt men. It is not that it could not hurt men, but
neither does the ruling sage hurt them.

When these two do not injuriously affect each other, their good
influences converge in the virtue (of the Tao).