Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 3Weak Wishes, Strong Bones
Chapter 3
Less fame, less fighting,
Less praise, less competition,
Less treasure, less theft,
Less desire, less delusion –
Therefore the wise leader begins by
Opening minds, emptying desires;
Weakening ambition, strengthening resolve,
Preventing external interference.
They do not-doing
And all goes well.
Commentary
“We cannot enjoy full happiness, untroubled by suffering unless we realize the nature of things.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Everything natural is easily procured, and only the useless is costly.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Freedom of thought means having no thought in the midst of thought.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Like and dislike are the mind’s disease, certain to drown you in samsara’s sea.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Bestowing honors embarrasses those who don’t receive them…Prizing treasures pains those who don’t possess them… Displaying attractions distresses those who don’t enjoy them to the point where they cause trouble.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Never compete. Every competition damages your reputation… people of goodwill are always at peace and those of good reputation are of goodwill.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Man was made for Joy and Woe;
And when this we rightly know
Thro’ the World we safely go.”
Comments: Click to comment
“He prayeth best, who loveth best all things both great and small”
Comments: Click to comment
“Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex”
Comments: Click to comment
“The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it.”
Comments: Click to comment
“The word ‘kuh’ might be translated ‘backbone,’ but in the original it reads ‘bones.’ To make a man strong-boned means to render him steady in character.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.”
Comments: Click to comment
“A sound leader's aim is to open people's hearts.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”
Comments: Click to comment
“That which, in the language of religion, is called ‘this world’ is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Throughout life, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”
Comments: Click to comment
“According to the Taoist view, honor leads to greed, discrimination, and strife… they frown on the idea of personal honor.”
Comments: Click to comment
“When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true”
Comments: Click to comment
“a good student is careful not to forget what he studied until after the test is taken”
Comments: Click to comment
“When self-concern is quiet… heaven and earth are open.”
Comments: Click to comment
“doing not doing… not a statement susceptible to logical interpretation, or even to syntactical translation into English; but it’s a concept that transforms thought radically, that changes minds.”
Comments: Click to comment
“All (Buddhist) teachings are basically related with a way of subjugating our ego, shedding our ego.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Either you look and see beyond language – as first perception – or you see the world through the filter of your thoughts.”
Comments: Click to comment
“The Tao that cannot be named is the intelligence of the universe: whatever is happening right now... the don't-know mind”
Comments: Click to comment
“Siddhartha’s path does not ultimately lead to happiness… it’s a release from the the straitjacket of delusion… a direct route to freedom from suffering and confusion.”
Comments: Click to comment
Comments (1)
-
Shan Dao
7 years ago
Red Pine leaves out the line we translate as “They do not doing,” calls it “superfluous here,” and points out its absence in the Kwotien text (but included in the Fuyi and Tunhuang translated as “they act by not acting.”)
Log in to comment.We followed more closely Le Guin’s, “When you do not doing” who described this phrase as a concept “not susceptible to logical interpretation or syntactical translation into english” but one that “transforms thought radically” and that this entire book is “both an explanation and demonstration of it.” Banner goes perhaps furthest from a literal translation but has one that might be most appropriate in this particular context: “Without being forced, without strain or constraint”