GNL's Not Lao

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Zatvorena za pisanje odgovora.
Men flow into life, and ebb into death.

Some are filled with life;
Some are empty with death;
Some hold fast to life, and thereby perish;
For them, life is but an ideal.

Those who are filled with life
Need not fear tigers and rhinoceri in the wilds,
Nor wear armor and shields in battle;
For the rhino finds no place in them for its horn,
The tiger no place for its claw,
The soldier no place for a weapon.
It is as if death has no use for them.
 
Flow bears all things;
Harmony nurtures them;
Nature shapes them;
Use completes them.

Each follows flow and honors harmony,
Not by law,
But by life.

Flow bears, nurtures, shapes, completes,
Shelters, comforts, and makes a home for them.

Bearing without possessing,
Nurturing without taming,
Shaping without forcing,
This is harmony.
 
The source of the world is as its mother;
To understand the mother, study the child;
Embrace the child, and you embrace its mother,
Who lives on when the child is long dead.

Reserve your judgments and words
And you maintain your influence;
Speak your mind and take positions
And nothing can save you.

As observing detail is clarity,
So maintaining flexibility is strength;
Use the light but shed no light,
So that you incur no risk,
But maintain tact.
 
With but a small understanding
One may treat flow like a highway,
Fearing only to leave it;
Following a highway is easy,
Yet people delight in difficult paths.

When palaces are kept up
Fields are left to weeds
And granaries empty;
Wearing fine clothes,
Bearing sharp swords,
Glutting with food and drink,
Hoarding wealth and possessions -
These are the ways of theft,
And far from flow.
 
Cultivate harmony within yourself,
and harmony becomes real;
Cultivate harmony within your family,
and harmony becomes fertile;
Cultivate harmony within your community,
and harmony becomes abundant;
Cultivate harmony within your culture,
and harmony becomes enduring;
Cultivate harmony within the world,
and harmony becomes ubiquitous.

Live with a person to understand the person;
Live with a family to understand the family;
Live with a community to understand the community;
Live with a culture to understand the culture;
Live with the world to understand the world.

How can I live with the world?
By accepting.
 
Who is filled with harmony is like a newborn.
Wasps and snakes will not bite him;
Hawks and tigers will not claw him.

His bones are soft yet his grasp is sure,
For his flesh is supple;
His mind is innocent yet his body is virile,
For his vigor is plentiful;
He sings all day yet his voice is sweet,
For his harmony is perfect.

But knowing harmony creates appearance,
And pursuing appearance creates ritual.
Exceeding nature creates calamity,
And controlling nature creates violence.
 
Who understands does not preach;
Who preaches does not understand.

Reserve your judgments and words;
Smooth differences and forgive disagreements;
Dull your wit and simplify your purpose;
Accept the world.

Then,
Friendship and enmity,
Profit and loss,
Honor and disgrace,
Will not affect you;
The world will accept you.
 
Do not control the people with laws,
Nor violence, nor espionage,
But conquer them with inaction.

For:
The more morals and taboos there are,
The more cruelty afflicts people;
The more guns and knives there are,
The more factions divide people;
The more arts and skills there are,
The more change obsoletes people;
The more laws and taxes there are,
The more theft corrupts people.

Yet take no action, and people nurture eachother;
Make no laws, and people deal fairly with each other;
Exact no interest, and people cooperate with each other;
Pursue no end, and people harmonize with each other.
 
When government is lazy and informal
The people are kind and honest;
When government is efficient and severe
The people are discontented and deceitful.

Good fortune follows upon disaster;
Disaster lurks within good fortune;
Who can say how things will end?
Perhaps there is no end.

Honesty is ever deceived;
Kindness is ever seduced;
Men have been like this for a long time.

So the gentle are firm but not cutting,
Pointed but not piercing,
Straight but not rigid,
Bright but not blinding.
 
Manage a great nation as you would cook a delicate fish.

To govern men in accord with nature
It is best to be restrained;
Restraint makes agreement easy to attain,
And easy agreement builds harmonious relationships;
With sufficient harmony no resistance will arise;
When no resistance arises,
then you possess the heart of the nation,
And when you possess the nation's heart,
your influence will endure:
Deeply rooted and firmly established.
This is the method of far sight and long life.
 
When you use flow to conquer the world,
Your demons will lose their power to harm.
It's not that they lose their power as such,
But that they won't harm others;
Because they won't harm others,
You won't harm others:
When neither you nor your demons can do harm,
You will be at peace with them.
 
A nation is like a hierarchy, a marketplace, and a maiden.
A maiden wins a husband by submitting to his advances;
Submission is a means of union.

So when a large country submits to a small country
It will adopt the small country;
When a small country submits to a large country
It will be adopted by the large country;
The one submits and adopts;
The other submits and is adopted.

It is in the interest of a large country
to unite and gain service,
And in the interest of a small country
to unite and gain patronage;
If both would serve their interests,
Both must submit.
 
Flow is the fate of men,
The treasure of the saint,
And the refuge of the sinner.

Fine words are often borrowed,
And great deeds are often appropriated;
Therefore, when a person falls, do not abandon them,
And when a person gains power, do not honor them;
Remain impartial and offer flow.

Why should others appreciate flow?
The ancients said,
"In this way, those who seek may easily find,
And those who regret may easily absolve,"
So flow is the most precious gift.
 
Practice no-action;
Attend to do-nothing;
Taste the flavorless,
Magnify the small,
Multiply the few,
Return love for hate.

Deal with the difficult while it is yet easy;
Deal with the great while it is yet small;

The difficult develops naturally from the easy,
And the great from the small;
So the gentle, by dealing with the small,
Achieve the great.

Who finds it easy to promise finds it hard to be trusted;
Who takes things lightly makes things difficult;
The gentle recognize difficulty, and so have none.
 
What lies still is easy to grasp;
What lies far off is easy to anticipate;
What is brittle is easy to shatter;
What is small is easy to disperse.

Yet a tree broader than a man
can embrace is born of a tiny shoot;
A dam greater than a river
can overrun starts with a clod of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles
begins at the spot under one's feet.

Therefore deal with things before they happen;
Create order before there is confusion.
 
He who acts, spoils;
He who grasps, loses.
People often fail on the verge of success;
Take care at the end as at the beginning,
So that you may avoid failure.

The gentle desire no-desire,
Value no-value,
Learn no-learning,
And return to the places people have forgotten;
They would help all people to become natural,
But then they would not be natural.
 
The ancients did not seek
to rule people with knowledge,
But to help them become natural.

It is difficult for knowledgeable people
to become natural;
So to use law to control a nation
weakens the nation,
But to use nature to control a nation
strengthens the nation.

Understanding these two paths
is understanding subtlety;
Subtlety runs deep, ranges wide,
Dissolves confusion and preserves peace.
 
The river carves out the valley by flowing beneath it.
Thereby the river is the master of the valley.

In order to master people
One must speak as their servant;
In order to lead people
One must follow them.

So when the gentle rise above the people,
They do not feel oppressed;
And when the gentle stand before the people,
They do not feel hindered.

So support for the gentle does not fail,
They do not contend, and none contend against them.
 
All the world says,
"I am important;
I am distinguished from all the world.
I am separate because I am distinguished,
Were I common, I would be unimportant."

Yet here are three treasures
That I cherish and commend to you:
The first is compassion,
By which one finds courage.
The second is reserve,
By which one finds strength.
And the third is commonality,
By which one finds influence.

Those who are courageous, yet careless,
Strong, yet impetuous,
Or influential, yet separate,
Cannot endure.
 
Compassion is the finest weapon and best defence.
If you would establish harmony,
Compassion must surround you like a fortress.

Furthermore,
A good soldier does not inspire fear;
A good fighter does not display aggression;
A good conqueror does not favor battle;
A good leader does not exercise force.

This is the value of commonality;
This is how to win the cooperation of others;
This to how to build the same harmony that is in nature.
 
There is a saying among soldiers:
It is easier to lose a yard than take an inch.

In this way one may deploy troops
without marshalling them,
Bring weapons to bear without exposing them,
Engage the foe without invading them,
And exhaust their strength without fighting them.

Still there is nothing worse
than misunderstanding your foe;
To do so endangers all of these treasures;
When a well-matched force opposes yours,
Find a way for them to live.
 
My words are easy to understand
And my actions are easy to perform
Yet none other can understand or perform them.

My words have meaning; my actions have reason;
Yet these cannot be known and I cannot be known.

We are each unique, and thereby valuable;
Though the gentle wear coarse clothes,
their hearts are jade.
 
When people have nothing to lose,
Then revolution will result.

Do not take away their lands,
And do not destroy their livelihoods;
If your burden is not heavy they will not shirk it.

Gentle rulers maintain themselves but exact no tribute,
Value themselves but require no honors,
Ignore appearance and accept substance.
 
The brave and bold perish;
The brave and subtle profit.
The subtle profit where the bold perish
For fate does not honor daring.
And even the gentle dare not tempt fate.

Fate does not attack, yet all things succumb to it;
It does not ask, yet all things answer it;
It does not call, yet all things meet it;
It does not plan, yet it determines all things.

Fate's net is vast and its mesh is coarse,
Yet none escape it.
 
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Zatvorena za pisanje odgovora.

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