Trust in virtue

The holy man has no fixed heart.

In the hundred families their heart he finds his own heart.

Good ones I treat with goodness them.

Not good ones I also treat with goodness them.

Virtue is good.

The faithful ones, I treat faithfully them.

The unfaithful ones I also treat faithfully them.

Virtue is faithful.

The holy man lives in the world,

cautiously, as cautiously dealing with the world.

He universalises his heart.

The hundred families all fix upon their ears eyes.

The holy man all treats as children them.

 

To forget knowledge

Attend to learning daily he gains.

Practises reason daily he diminishes.

He diminishes himself and again he diminishes.

Thus attains unto non-doing.

He does non-doing yet there is nothing undone.

To take the empire always he uses non-diplomacy

When using diplomacy not is he fit thereby to take the empire.

 

Seeing the distant

 

Not going out of the door 

I know the world.

Not peeping through the window 

I see heaven's reason.

One goes out more and more to the distance,

one's knowledge more and more grows little.

Therefore the holy man

not goes about but he knows.

Not he sees but he defines

Not he labors but he completes.

To moderate desires

 

The world has reason,

curb race horses for hauling dung.

The world has no reason,

war horses are raised in the common.

Sin there is none greater than to desire.

Misfortune there is none greater than not to know contentment

Calamity there is none greater than desire for gaining.

Therefore knows contentment's contentment is always contented.

Grand virtue

 

Great perfection seems imperfect.

Its function not is worn out.

Great fulness seems empty.

Its function is not exercised.

Great straightness seems crooked.

Great skill seems clumsy.

Great eloquence seems stammering.

Motion conquers cold.

Quietude conquers heat.

Purity clearness are the world's standard.

Setting up precepts

 

Name and person which nearer?

Person and treasure, which more?

Gain and loss, which is more painful?

Extreme fondness surely greatly wastes.

Much hoarding surely intense loss.

Know contentment not is despised.

know when to stop is not endangered.

He will be able thereby to last to continue.

The universal function

 

The world's most tender, 
gallops and courses over the world's most hard.

The not having existence 

enters the impenetrable.

I therefore know the not-doing's having advantage,
the not-speaking's doctrine,
the not-doing advantage in the world
few obtain them.