Desire not to desire

Here's a couple of verses from the Tao Te Ching, a classical collection of wise sayings from the fourth century B.C., which is attributed to a contemporary of Confucius called, Lao Tzu.

The collection espouses a philosophy of meekness as the surest path to survival - much of it clearly completely forgotten in today's modern, political world :-(

The pictured copy is a 1987 reprint of the original 1963 translation by D.C.Lau ... I bought this in London in July 1988 ...

... I have never tired of reading it, over all of the intervening 26-years:


THE WAY

63

Do that which consists in taking no action;
Pursue that which is not meddlesome;
Savor that which has no flavor.

Make the small big and the few many;
Do good to him who has done you an injury.

Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult;
Make something big by starting with it when small.

Difficult things in the word must needs have their beginnings in the easy;
Big things must needs have their beginnings in the small.

Therefore it is because the sage never attempts to be great that he succeeds in becoming great.

One who makes promises rashly rarely keeps good faith;
One who is in the habit of considering things easy meets with frequent difficulties.

Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult.
That is why in the end no difficulties can get the better of him.

64

It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure;
It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop;
It is easy to break a thing when it is yet brittle;
It is easy to dissolve a thing when it is yet minute.

Deal with a thing while it is still nothing;
Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in.

A tree that can fill the span of a man's arms
Grows from a downy tip;
A terrace nine storeys high
Rises from hodfuls of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles
Starts from beneath one's feet.

Whoever does anything to it will ruin it;
Whoever lays hold of it will lose it.

Therefore the sage, because he does nothing, never ruins anything;
And, because he does not lay hold of anything, loses nothing.

In their enterprises the people
Always ruin them when on the verge of success.
Be as careful at the end as at the beginning
And there will be no ruined enterprises.

Therefore the sage desires not to desire
And does not value goods which are hard to come by;
Learns to be without learning
And makes good the mistakes of the multitude
In order to help the myriad creatures to be natural
and to refrain from daring to act.

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