Translation: Tao Te King – Chapter 20. Remaining distant

Chapter 20. Remaining distant

Leave your dogma and free yourself of worrying. The difference between certainty and uncertainty isn’t that big.

Do they help us to differentiate between good and evil? For one must carefully keep track of differentiations.

But oh! People are never freed of their stupidity.

Picture of Laozi
Drop it like a Laozi 老子. Does this guy look as broke as he talks? Public domain because 2,700 > 70. Uploader User:Lawrencekhoo

They are full of ambition like the bull of the pit is full of lustfullness.

I am lonely in my shyness, I am without ambition, I am undeveloped like a little child.

I am nothing more than an orphaned, lost, homeless child.

Everyone else has plenty of good belongings but I am abandoned.

How stupid and simple I am! I am amazed.

All others radiate brilliance, I am alone in my dimness.

People are full of judgement; I alone am dull.

I am hurled around like an ocean. I roar and never rest.

Everybody has something to do; I alone am incompetent and without merit.

I alone am estranged from people but I rejoice in my mohter’s hem!


Own translation from 1925 Finnish translation by Pekka Ervast (ISBN 951-8995-01-X) with kind permission of Ruusu-Ristin Kirjallisuusseura ry.

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