The ancient text says: The world knows that beauty is beautiful, and evil is evil; everyone knows that good is good, and si is not good.
There is no phase, difficult and easy to form, long and short, high and low, sound and sound, back and forth. Constant also.
It is the saints who do nothing and do what they do not say; all things are done and begin, born and have, for the sake of the sake of the buddha, and for the sake of the accomplishment of the dwelling. Fu Wei Fu Ju is not going to go.
【Translation】
Everyone in the world knows that beauty is beautiful, and it reveals ugliness. We all know that the reason why good is good is to show that it is not good.
Existence and non-transformation, difficulty and easy form each other, long and short appear to each other, high and low enrich each other, sound and sound harmonize with each other, front and back follow each other - this is eternal.
Thus the saints approached the world from the point of view of inaction and practiced indoctrination in an unspoken way. Allowing all things to arise naturally without being founded, doing something without adding their own tendencies, establishing merit without pretending to be self-righteous. Because we do not take credit, we do not care about losing.
【Comment】
This chapter shows Lao Tzu's view of relativity. The Tao is a whole, in which everything is relative. Where there is beauty, there is ugliness, and where there is height, there is shortness. According to Lao Tzu's theory of relativity, all judgments, such as high and low, length and shortness, and existence or absence, are relative. Everything we have seen is relative not only in the senses, but also in the judgment of knowledge. Good and bad are in a whole, change the angle, good becomes bad, bad becomes good. Everything comes from the Tao and ends in the Tao, and everything will change from this side to that side, because its two sides are opposites.
"Rapids retreat" and "meritorious retreat" are two words often said by the ancients, which clearly show the ancients' "view of merit and fault". In ancient Chinese historical sources, figures who were discredited because of their self-esteem abounded. For example, Li Si, as the minister of the Qin Dynasty, helped Qin Shi Huang unify China, but his fate was very tragic, because he was meritorious and did not know whether to stop at the right time, and was eventually framed by Zhao Gao and died of the "five punishments".
In history, there are very few people who can successfully succeed and retire, because most people do not understand the change of the times, cannot let go of glory and wealth, and are therefore unable to die well.