Chapter 60 · Governing as Cooking Small Fish

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

Governing a great state is like cooking small fish. Let the kingdom be governed according to the Tao, and the manes of the departed will not manifest their spiritual energy. It is not that those manes have not that spiritual energy, but it will not be employed to hurt men. It is not that it could not hurt men, but neither does the ruling sage hurt them. When these two do not injuriously affect each other, their good influences converge in the virtue (of the Tao).

Cooking a Small Fish

Dao De Kooi — an original rendering by David Kooi

Running a big country is like cooking a small fish - poke at it too much and it falls apart. Let the Dao handle things and the ghosts lose their teeth. Not that they vanish - they just stop doing harm. And when the people up top stop doing harm either, the good of it flows back to everyone.

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

Governing a great state is — missed like cooking small fish

The dotted words are the ones you missed.

Begin learning this chapter →

Free. No account needed to start.

Read the whole chapter end to end →How the practice works →