Chapter 71 · Knowing That We Do Not Know

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

To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment);

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

To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease. It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.

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The sage has not — missed the disease

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Chapter 71, in a second rendering

Knowing You Don't Know

Dao De Kooi — an original rendering by David Kooi

Knowing you don't know - that's the top of the heap. Not knowing and being sure you do - that's the sickness. The only way out is to see the sickness as a sickness. That's the whole cure. The steady hand isn't sick because they call it what it is. Hold your beliefs loose enough that new evidence can update them, and you stay well.

Next · Chapter 72When the people do not fear what they ought to fear…Read chapter 72 →

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