Tao Te Ching
Doctrine of the Mean, Maintaining Perfect Balance, Zhongyong 中庸
By Zisi
Translated as “The Middle Way,” “The Constant Mean,” and in Ezra Pound's words, “The Unswerving Pivot;” Kong Ji’s famous and densely symbolic book guides both common and sophisticated citizens toward natural balance and harmony. A huge influence more than 2000 years ago, in the 12th century CE when it became an integral part of the Chinese educational system and the criteria for determining political advancement for over 700 years. Both credited for a Chinese golden age and blamed for preventing Chinese advancement in the modern era, Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong, all studied and analyzed this book. It’s becoming popular again today in modern China.
Themes
Quotes from Doctrine of the Mean, Maintaining Perfect Balance, Zhongyong 中庸
“Completion of the self is true goodness…the Way that unites external and internal.”
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“Cultivating shoots of goodness gives form to truthfulness that then burns bright influencing and transforming the people.”
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“Knowing how to cultivate oneself is to know how to govern others; knowing how to govern others is to know how to govern the empire, the state, and the family.”
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“Perfect truthfulness though unmoving, creates change; though taking no action, brings about completion; though making no display, becomes manifest.”
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57. Wu Wei
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“The most truthful and capable of giving full realization to their human nature can form a trinity, a union of heaven, earth, and man.”
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“The sage honors his inborn, basic goodness rising in influence when sanity reigns in society; enduring protected by silence when the Way does not prevail.”
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“The skilled reader turns it over and over in his mind, and once he gets it, draws on it his whole life, finding that it has no limits.”
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“The Tao is the way things are which you can't depart from even for one instant.”
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“The way of the superior man is hidden but becomes more prominent every day, whereas the way of the inferior man is conspicuous but gradually disappears.”
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24. Unnecessary Baggage
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“Those who turn inward and find that they are not true to themselves cannot govern the people well.”
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“Truthfulness is the beginning and end of things; without truthfulness, there is nothing.”
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“Use oneness [truthfulness] to put the 3 universal world virtues—wisdom, goodness, and courage—into practice.”
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“When understanding proceeds from truthfulness, one truly understands.”
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