Chapter 48 · Daily Decrease Toward the Tao

Tao Te Ching (Legge, 1891) · chapter title added by Learn the Dao

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.

Take Something Off Every Day

Dao De Kooi — an original rendering by David Kooi

Chase learning and you pile more on every day. Follow the Dao and you take something off every day. Less, then less, until you're not forcing anything - and once you're not forcing, there's nothing that doesn't get done. You run the world by leaving it alone. Start meddling and you've already lost it.

Learn the Dao is a quiet practice for learning the thing that can’t be known — committing the Tao Te Ching to memory, one line at a time.

Read a chapter. Recite the next line from memory. The app shows you, gently, what you missed — then brings each line back just before you’d forget it.

Your recall — for example

He who devotes himself to learning (seeks) from — missed day to day to increase (his knowledge)

The dotted words are the ones you missed.

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