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that’s why people are starving.
    People rebel.
The rich oppress them ,
that’s why people rebel.
    People hold life cheap.
The rich make it too costly ,
that’s why people hold it cheap.
    But those who don’t live for the sake of living
are worth more than the wealth-seekers.
    ----
    How many hundreds of
years ago was this book written? And yet still this
chapter must be written in the present tense.

76 – Hardness
    Living people
are soft and tender.
Corpses are hard and stiff.
The ten thousand things ,
the living grass, the trees,
are soft, pliant.
Dead, they’re dry and brittle.
    So hardness and stiffness
go with death ;
tenderness, softness,
go with life.
    And the hard sword fails ,
the stiff tree’s felled.
The hard and great go under.
The soft and weak stay up.
    ----
    In an age when
hardness is supposed to be the essence of strength, and even the beauty of
women is reduced nearly to the bone, l welcome this reminder that tanks and tombstones
are not very adequate role models, and that to be
alive is to be vulnerable.

77 – The bow
    The Way of heaven
is like a bow bent to shoot :
its top end brought down,
its lower end raised up.
It brings the high down ,
lifts the low,
takes from those who have,
gives to those who have not.
    Such is the Way of heaven ,
taking from people who have,
giving to people who have not.
Not so the human way :
it takes from those who have not
to fill up those who have.
Who has enough to fill up everybody?
Only those who have the Way.
    So the wise
do without claiming ,
achieve without asserting,
wishing not to show their worth.

 
78 – Paradoxes
    Nothing in the world
is as soft, as weak, as water ;
nothing else can wear away
the hard, the strong,
and remain unaltered.
Soft overcomes hard ,
weak overcomes strong.
Everybody knows it ,
nobody uses the knowledge.
    So the wise say :
By bearing common defilements
you become a sacrificer at the altar of earth;
by bearing common evils
you become a lord of the world.
    Right words sound wrong.

 
79 – Keeping the contract
    After a great enmity is settled
some enmity always remains.
How to make peace?
Wise souls keep their part of the contract
and don’t make demands on others.
People whose power is real fulfill their obligations ;
people whose power is hollow insist on their claims.
    The Way of heaven plays no favorites.
It stays with the good.
    ----
    This chapter is
equally relevant to private relationships and to political treaties. Its realistic morality is based on a mystical perception of
the fullness of the Way.

80 – Freedom
    Let there be a little country without many people.
Let them have tools that do the work of ten or a hundred ,
and never use them.
Let them be mindful of death
and disinclined to long journeys.
They’d have ships and carriages ,
but no place to go.
They’d have armor and weapons ,
but no parades.
Instead of writing ,
they might go back to using knotted cords.
They’d enjoy eating ,
take pleasure in clothes,
be happy with their houses,
devoted to their customs.
    The next little country might be so close
the people could hear cocks crowing
and dogs barking there ,
but they’d get old and die
without ever having been there.
    ----
    Waley says this endearing and enduring vision
"can be understood in the past, present, or future tense, as the reader desires." This is always true of the
vision of the golden age, the humane society.
    Christian or Cartesian
dualism, the division of spirit or mind from the material body and world,
existed long before Christianity or Descartes and was never limited to Western
thought (though it is the "craziness" or "sickness" that
many people under Western domination see in Western civilization) . Lao Tzu
thinks the materialistic dualist, who tries to ignore the body and live in the
head, and the religious dualist, who despises the body and lives for a reward
in heaven, are both dangerous and in danger. So, enjoy your life, he says; live
in your body, you are your