Work

Sixty-three

Act without acting.
Serve without corncern for affairs.
Find flavor in what has no flavor.

Regard the small as large, and the few as many.
And repay resentment with kindness.
Plan for the difficult while it is easy;
Act on the large when it is minute.
The most difficult things in the world 
Begin as things that are easy.
The most difficult things in the world
Arise from the minute.
Therefore the sage, to the end,
Does not strive to do the great.
Those who too lightly agree,
Will necessarily be trusted by few;
And those who regard many things as easy,
Will necessarily end up with many difficulties.      
Therefore, the Sage always regards things as difficult,          
And as a result, in the end he has no difficulty.

Corrected with the Mawangtui text

Care at the beginning
 

Care at the end

Sixty-four

What is at rest is easy to hold;
What has not yet given a sign, is easy to plan for;
The brittle is easily shattered;
The minute is easily scattered.
Act on it before it comes into being;
Order it before it turns into chaos. 

A tree so big as a man's embrace
Starts out as the tiniest shoot;
A terrace of nine stories high
Rises up from a basket of dirt.
A high place of a hundred or thousand feet high
starts under your feet. 

Those who act on it ruin it;
Those who hold on to it lose it.
Therefore the Sage does not act,
And as a result, he does not ruin things,
He does not hold on to things,
And as a result, he does not lose things. 
In people's handling of affairs,
They always ruin things
When they are right at the point of completion.
Therefore we say, If you are as careful at the end
As you were at the beginning, you will have no failures.

Therefore the Sage seeks freedom from desire
And does not value goods that are hard to obtain.
He learns not to learn
And returns to what the masses pass by.
He could help the ten thousand things
To find their own nature,
Yet he dare not do it.

History

Sixty-five

Those who practiced Tao in antiquity,
Did not use it to enlighten the people,
Rather they used it, to make them dumb.
Now the reason why people are difficult,
Is because their knowledge.
As a result, to use knowlwedge to rule the state
Is thievery of the state.
To use ignorance to rule the state
Is kindness to the state.
One who constantly understands these two,
Also understands the principle.
To constantly understand the principle -
This is called Profound Virtue.
Profound Virtue is deep, is far-reaching,
And together with things it returns.
Thus we arrive at the Great Accord.

 Corrected with the Mawangtui text

Lead by following

Sixty-six

The reason why rivrs and oceans are able
to be the kings of the hundred valleys is
that they are good at being below them.
For this reason they are able to be the kings
of the hundred valleys.

Therefore in the Sage's desire to be above the people,
He must in his speach be below them.
if he would lead them, he must follow behind.
And in his desire to be at the front of the people
He must in his person be behind them;
Thus he dwells above,
Yet the people do not regard him as heavy;
And he dwells in front,
Yet the people do not regard him as posing a threat.
The whole world delights in his praise
and never tires of him.
It is not because he is not contentious,
That as a result, no one in the world
can content with him.

Corrected with the Mawangtui text