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Dao De Jing Introduction – The Way and Its Power

The naturalist, individualist and politic doctrine of Lao-tse exhibited in 81 poetic and obscure texts. Tr. Waley (en), Lau (en), Julien (fr) and Wilhelm (de).

Table of content

0. Introduction

I. The Way

1. The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way.
2. Because every one recognizes beauty as beauty, ugliness exists.
3. Cease to set store by products that are hard to get...
4. The Way is like an empty vessel.
5. Heaven and Earth are ruthless.
6. The Valley Spirit never dies.
7. Heaven is eternal, the Earth everlasting.
8. The highest good is like that of water.
9. Stretch a bow to the very full...
10. Can you keep the unquiet physical-soul from straying ?
11. We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel...
12. The fives colours confuse the eye...
13. Favour and disgrace goad as it were to madness...
14. Because the eye gazes but can catch no glimpse of it, it is called elusive.
15. Of old those that were the best officers of Court...
16. Push far enough towards the Void, Hold fast enough to Quietness...
17. Of the highest the people merely know that such a one exists...
18. It was when the Great Way declined that human kindness and morality arose.
19. Banish wisdom, discard knowledge...
20. Between wei and o what after all is the difference?
21. Such the scope of the All-pervading Power...
22. “To remain whole, be twisted!”
23. To be always talks is against nature.
24. 'He who stands on tip-toe, does not stand firm...
25. There was something formless yet complete...
26. As the heavy must be the foundation of the light...
27. Perfect activity leaves no track behind it...
28. “He who knows the males, yet cleaves to what is female”...
29. Those that would gain what is under heaven by tampering with it...
30. He who by Tao purposes to help a ruler of men...
31. Fine weapons are none the less ill-omened things.
32. Tao is eternal, but has no fame.
33. To understand others is to have knowledge...
34. Great Tao is like a boat that drifts...
35. He who holding the Great From goes about his work in the empire...
36. What is in the end to be shrunk must first be stretched...
37. Tao never does; yet through it all things are done.

II. The Power

38. The man of highest “power” does not reveal himself...
39. As for the things that from of old have understood the Whole...
40. In Tao the only motion is returning; the only useful quality, weakness.
41. When the man of highest capacities hears Tao...
42. Tao gave birth to the One...
43. What is of all things most yielding...
44. Fame or one's own self, which matters to one most?
45. What is most perfect seems to have something missing...
46. When there is Tao in the empire the galloping steeds are turned back...
47. Without leaving his door, he knows everything under heaven.
48. Learning consists in adding to one's stock day by day...
49. The Sage has no heart of his own...
50. He who aims at life achieves death.
51. Tao gave them birth...
52. That which was the beginning of all things under heaven...
53. He who has the least scrap of sense...
54. What Tao plants cannot be plucked, what Tao clasps, cannot slip.
55. The impunity of things fraught with the “power”...
56. Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.
57. “Kingdoms can only be governed if rules are kept”...
58. When the ruler looks repressed the people will be happy and satisfied.
59. You cannot rule men nor serve heaven unless you have laid up a store...
60. Ruling a large kingdom is indeed like cooking small fish.
61. A large kingdom must be like the low ground...
62. Tao in the Universe is like the south-west corner in the house.
63. It acts without action, finds flavour in what is flavourless...
64. “What stays still is easy to hold”...
65. Those who practiced Tao with success did not enlighten the people...
66. How did the great rivers and seas get their kingship?
67. Every one under heaven says that our Way is greatly like folly.
68. The best charioteers do not rush ahead...
69. “When you doubt your ability to meet the enemy's attack”...
70. My words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice...
71. “To know when one does not know is best”...
72. Never mind if the people are not intimidated by your authority.
73. He whose braveness lies in daring, slays.
74. The people are not frightened of death...
75. The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain.
76. When he is born, man is soft and weak; in death he becomes stiff and hard.
77. Heaven's way is like the bending of a bow.
78. Nothing under heaven is softer or more yielding than water...
79. To allay the main discontent...
80. Given a small country with few inhabitants...
81. True words are not fine-sounding; fine-sounding words are not true.

Chinese landscape on plate (27)

The Way and Its Power – Dao De Jing – Chinese off/onFrançais/English
Alias Daode Jing, Dao De Jing, Tao Te Ching, Tao Teh Ching, le Tao-tö-king, Lao-Tzu Te-Tao Ching, the Laozi, Lao Zi, the Lao Tze, le Lao-tseu, The Book of the Way and its Virtue, the Way and its Power.

The Book of Odes, The Analects, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Three-characters book, The Book of Changes, The Way and its Power, 300 Tang Poems, The Art of War, Thirty-Six Strategies
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