Laozi
為學日益，為道日損。 損之又損，以至於無為。 無為而無不為。取天下常以無事， 及其有事，不足以取天下。
James Legge
He who devotes himself to learning (seeks) from day to day to increase (his knowledge); he who devotes himself to the Tao (seeks) from day to day to diminish (his doing).
He diminishes it and again diminishes it, till he arrives at doing nothing (on purpose). Having arrived at this point of non-action, there is nothing which he does not do.
He who gets as his own all under heaven does so by giving himself no trouble (with that end). If one take trouble (with that end), he is not equal to getting as his own all under heaven.
Victor H. Mair
The pursuit of learning results in daily increase, Hearing the Way leads to daily decrease. Decrease and again decrease, until you reach nonaction. Through nonaction, no action is left undone. Should one desire to gain all under heaven, One should remain ever free of involvements. For, Just as surely as one becomes involved, One is unfit for gaining all under heaven.
C. Spurgeon Medhurst
The pursuit of study brings daily increase; the pursuit of Tao daily decrease; decrease upon decrease, until non-action is reached, whence all action proceeds. [^1]
Only continued non-concern will win the Empire; where there is concern there is an insufficiency for the task.
As mere outwardness retreats the true inwardness is discerned. Beware lest intellectual evolution become spiritual devolution. God has chosen “the things that are not, that He might bring to naught the things that are.” Study brings daily increase, the Tao daily decrease, until non-action is reached. The force with which men of violence seize the Kingdom of God is not the self-assertion of the passions, but that mystic force which does violence to the lower nature, plucks out the right eye, or cuts off the right foot. This philosophy is not concerned lest it suffer wrong, or be defrauded of right, knowing that only continued non-concern will win the Empire.
”Surely,” says Thomas a Kempis, “an humble husbandman that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher who, neglecting himself, is occupied in studying the course of the heavens.”
[^1] Students will find illumination on this chapter in the earlier pages of The Voice of the Silence.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Studying and learning daily you grow larger. Following the Way daily you shrink. You get smaller and smaller. So you arrive at not doing. You do nothing and nothing’s not done.
To run things, don’t fuss with them. Nobody who fusses is fit to run things.
Note UKLG: The word shi in the second stanza, my “fuss,” is troublesome to the translators. Carus’s quite legitimate translation of it is “diplomacy,” which would give a stanza I like very much:
To run things, be undiplomatic. No diplomat is fit to run things.