Tao Te Ching
道德經
Eighty-one short chapters on acting without struggling—the way water gets where it is going by going down.
Eighty-one very short chapters, traditionally by Laozi, more likely assembled around the 4th century BCE. It is about the Tao—the way things go when nothing is forcing them—and about wu wei, acting without struggling. Its politics are anti-heroic, its ethics anti-perfectionist, and its method is paradox used deliberately: it opens by telling you that anything it can say is already wrong. It is here because the Upanishads' neti neti and Ramakrishna's salt doll have an exact counterpart in its first line, and because its counsel on work belongs beside the Gita's.
道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。
dào kě dào, fēi cháng dào. míng kě míng, fēi cháng míng.The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.
Kena 2.3 and the salt doll, from the other side of the Himalayas.
上善若水。水善利萬物而不爭。
shàng shàn ruò shuǐ. shuǐ shàn lì wàn wù ér bù zhēng.The highest excellence is like that of water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving, the low place which all men dislike.
Service without striving. Sarada Devi's patience of the earth.
知人者智，自知者明。勝人者有力，自勝者強。
zhī rén zhě zhì, zì zhī zhě míng. shèng rén zhě yǒu lì, zì shèng zhě qiáng.He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent. He who overcomes others is strong; he who overcomes himself is mighty.
Dhammapada 103 in Chinese.
千里之行，始於足下。
qiān lǐ zhī xíng, shǐ yú zú xià.The journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step.
For anyone standing at the start.
Where the translation is marked “Aumidhra”, the English is our own plain rendering from the original, made with the public-domain translations above as reference. Where a translator is named, the wording is theirs.
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