Chapter 60 · Governing as Cooking Small Fish

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

Learn the Dao: a quiet practice for learning the thing that can’t be known.

The chapter’s first line

Governing a great state is like cooking small fish.

Free. No account needed to start.

This chapter in plain modern English — David Kooi’s rendering ↓

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).

Learn this chapter by heart, one line at a time.

Read a chapter. Recite the next line from memory. The app shows you, gently, what you missed — then has each line ready again around when it would start to slip.

Your recall of a later line — for example

and the manes of the departed will — missed not manifest their spiritual energy

The dotted words are the ones you missed.

Try this chapter’s first line ↑

Free. No account needed to start.

Chapter 60, in a second rendering

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.

Next · Chapter 61What makes a great state is its being (like) a low-lying, down-flowing (stream)…Read chapter 61 →

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