The best at warfare aren’t warlike.
The best at fighting can’t be provoked.
The best at defeating enemies
Don’t win them new adherents.
The best at utilizing people 5
Relegate themselves lower.
We call this De’s independence from contention.
We call this utilizing the strengths of others.
We call this compliance with Heaven’s perfection.
***
NOTES
lines 5 and 6: Poems 61 and 66 elaborate on leadership through being lower.
line 7, De’s independence from contention: See poem 63, line 6 for a different expression of this idea. See also notes to poem 81, lines 3 and 4.
COMMENTARY
Laozi begins poem 68 with the military theme that occupies poems 30, 31, and 69, and makes a keen psychological insight: The bellicose are bad at warfare because they’re always in the grip of fear; they’re aggressive because they have to be, not because they are warriors of De. When you’re good at warfare, you are the one who decides when and why you fight – and you make sure the loser stays that way and cannot reassemble. To be good at warfare is to be good at leading an army – meaning you understand how to reach a pitch below theirs (poem 66). Lowering yourself through stillness is empowering (poem 61); it leads to De, the release of character as a natural process, without contention. Integrity of character is the basis of rulership, and as poem 16 states, Being regal accords with Heaven. / Accordance with Heaven accords with Dao.
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 