Verse 9

Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English version

Better stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of heaven.

This is about as straight-forward as a translation can be. It puts me in mind of a song about a poker player on a train, the verse going something like this: “Know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Know when to walk away..” In other words, know when it's time to stop doing something.

The Illustrated Tao Te Cing

This one has what is, to me, a sort of strange translation of part of the verse:

Are you strutting your wealth like a peacock?
Then you've set ourself up to be shot.

I can understand disaster following a person, because disaster is a fairly general term, but saying one is going to be “shot” makes the sentence way too much of a present-day time type of thing, not something that would be true through all ages.

Victor Mair

This version talks about “Instead of keeping a bow taut while holding it straight, better to relax,” which is a fairly different wording than not filling something to the brim. It's the same basic idea, just two different ways of saying the same thing, again showing how the Tao Te Ching seems to have multiple differing translations.

R.B. Blakney

This version is yet again different, not talking about a bow or a cup. Instead, it says “To take all you want/Is never as good/As to stop when you should.” Yet again, the same basic idea, but yet again another way of wording it.

---

Back to start of Spirituality section

My Index Page