What’s still is easy to maintain.
What’s not here is easy to prepare for.
What’s fragile is easy to smash.
What’s small is easy to scatter.
Manage things before they become issues. 5
Share guidance before confusion occurs.
Oak trees ten times taller than men
From little acorns grow.
Lofty towers are erected
On a mere heap of bricks. 10
A journey across the country
Starts with a single step.
To do is to undo.
To grasp is to lose.
Therefore 15
Sages do nothing and thus cannot be undone.
They do not grasp and thus are never at a loss.
Others pursue their own agendas
Yet they fail on the verge of success.
Those who show due caution at the end 20
Just as they did at the beginning
Do not fail.
Therefore
Sages want no wants.
They do not prize rarities. 25
They learn to unlearn.
They recover what others leave behind.
They assist the ten thousand things in being natural.
All because they do not presume to act.
***
NOTES
lines 7 and 8: I have taken a liberty here. More literally, the lines read, “A tree that fills one’s embrace grows from a small seed.”
line 9: More literally, “A nine-story tower arises.”
line 11: More literally, “A thousand-li journey” – a li being a unit of distance measuring “approximately one-third of a mile,” according to Star.[1]
line 25, prize rarities: Such enthusiasms are also decried in poems 3 and 12.
COMMENTARY
Perceiving the small is called clarity, poem 52 insists, and one aspect of that clarity is to perceive what the small can do if it gets big. When you recognize small things as the source of big things, you can eliminate issues and confusion from your life. The key to this freedom is of course non-action (see Introduction section IV.3), cited explicitly in line 16: Sages do nothing. Most people do things and undo themselves in the process, pursue agendas and arrive nowhere. Sages choose instead to achieve all that can be achieved, so they stop presuming to act.
FOOTNOTE
1. Tao Te Ching, The Definitive Edition. Jonathan Star, translation and commentary. New York: Penguin Group, 2001, p. 224.
Links To:
The Classic of Dao and De by Laozi: Contents
For more on Daoism, see:
Film Dreams: Frank Capra
Music: KALW Radio Show #3, Ancient China in 20th-Century Music
Music: SFCR Radio Show #8, Daoism in Western Music, part 1
Music: SFCR Radio Show #9, Daoism in Western Music, part 2
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 