[review] [book] Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu): The Summit of Human Wisdom
Here is a post written by a Vietnamese philosopher I deeply respect. I’ve been struggling to write a review of the Tao Te Ching for a long time and have written a few timid comments here, luckily his post perfectly sums up what I think about the Tao Te Ching. Personally, I read the Tao Te Ching from the Pléiade Collection published by Gallimard (Fnac link, Amazon link), but I think there are certainly other editions that are cheaper. Reading the Tao Te Ching will open the doors to the I Ching.
Tao Te Ching: The Summit of Human Wisdom, by Dang Than
If you want to avoid all the misfortunes of existence, read Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.
If you want to live like a king without doing anything, read the Tao Te Ching.
If you want to succeed effortlessly, read the Tao Te Ching.
If you want to reach the top in all the games of life, read the Tao Te Ching.
If you want to see through people’s hearts and minds, read the Tao Te Ching.
If you want to understand the ultimate essence of the universe, read the Tao Te Ching too.
Do you want to govern a country, get rich, win people’s hearts, cultivate your health, take a concubine, educate your children, or even be a butcher without ever needing to sharpen your knife for three years? Read the Tao Te Ching! Then follow up with the Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu).
If one day you suddenly realize that the more knowledge you have, the more confused you get; the more money you have, the more worried you are; the more power you have, the more afraid you are; the more laws you have, the more chaos there is; the more you talk about ‘morality’, the more you notice its absence… then congratulations. You stand before the door that Lao Tzu opened over two thousand five hundred years ago.
Don’t believe rumors that the Tao Te Ching doesn’t teach you to conquer the world; it teaches you something far more important: not to let the world conquer you. Also don’t believe the chatter that turns it into a book about seeking immortality. Don’t believe it’s a pessimistic book. Don’t believe it’s a book about ‘letting go’. It’s a treatise on the secret workings of the world.
Lao Tzu doesn’t see the human being as an isolated individual. He sees the sky, the earth, power, war, economy, desire, language, command, organization, and even death as currents flowing in the same river. Whoever fights the current exhausts himself. Whoever understands the current knows when to row, when to drop anchor, when to let go of the oars and let the water carry him.
Nowadays, people love to talk about ‘disruptive thinking’. Lao Tzu, for his part, was rather a specialist in… dissolving thought.
Everyone says you have to be hard and strong, ‘by being hard you can stand against the wind’; he says: it’s the flexible that are strong. Everyone says you have to be full, complete; he says: it’s the empty that is useful. Everyone says you must win at all costs; he says: not competing, that is invincibility. Everyone says you have to rise high; he says: the sea is king of the hundred rivers because it stays lower than them. At first listen, you’d think he only speaks in paradoxes.
The Tao Te Ching speaks very little of good and evil in the ordinary sense. What interests Lao Tzu more is balance. Too hard, it breaks. Too full, it overflows. Too sharp, it dulls. Too rich, it breeds thieves. Too famous, it breeds resentment. Too cunning, it ends up harming itself. Every ‘too much’ opens a door to misfortune.
That’s why he constantly refers to ‘knowing how to be content’. Knowing how to be content doesn’t mean staying poor. It means preventing greed from making us its slave.
Reading chapter 38, more than one will be taken aback. Lao Tzu says: when the Tao is lost, comes Virtue; when Virtue is lost, comes Humanity; when Humanity is lost, comes Justice; when Justice is lost, comes Ritual. Thus, the more we have to loudly proclaim a value, the more it’s a sign that it is lacking. The bigger the slogan, the weaker the root.
A society that doesn’t need to plaster “be honest” everywhere is generally still a fairly honest society. A company that proclaims its “corporate culture” every day may be in the process of losing it. A person who constantly boasts about their honesty often makes others discreetly check their wallet. Lao Tzu smiles gently, but that smile still resonates after two thousand five hundred years.
In Chapter 39, he speaks of what is most remarkable: “Attain the One”. Heaven, earth, spirits, the ten thousand beings, the ruler… all must preserve their “One.” Not a number. But the axis that must not break. The family has its “One.” The company has its “One.” A human life also has its “One.” Lose it, and everything else is just decoration. Read the Tao Te Ching to discover what your own “One” is.
Thus, studying the Tao Te Ching is not to speak more mysteriously. It is to decide with more clarity; to lead with more talent; to love more deeply; to undertake more durably; to fall less often into the traps of the ego; to ruin your own life less often.
Strange thing: after millennia, humanity has invented artificial intelligence, probes to Mars, quantum computers… and yet it continues to fall exactly into the holes that Lao Tzu pointed out from the time he rode his buffalo. Perhaps it’s because technology always advances in a straight line, while greed knows only how to go in circles.
The Tao Te Ching is thus the book of all ages, as long as man has not learned to conquer himself. And perhaps that is also why this slim volume (81 chapters, but on average a little over 60 characters per chapter) has silently survived so many terrifying empires, so many frightening doctrines, and so many revolutions that “shook heaven and earth.” At the end of the Tao Te Ching, one strips away countless superfluities, until nothing remains of oneself but the luminous void.
THE TAO TE CHING FACING THE GREAT SCOURGE: “TOO MUCH CRAVING MEANS LOSING EVERYTHING,” by Dang Than
As I said, to avoid the misfortunes of existence, one must read the Tao Te Ching. This text helps avoid 95% of fatal mistakes, the remaining 5% being simply due to oversight. And the worst scourge it denounces can be summed up in a phrase: 貪而無厭, a greed that never knows satisfaction.
1. Greed, the root of all misfortunes
Most human dramas stem from limitless desire. Once this desire is freed from all measure, one ends up sacrificing health for money, humanity for power, family for glory, and finally losing the very things one thought one wanted to keep.
“There is no greater misfortune than not knowing contentment, nor greater fault than the desire to possess everything”, warns Lao Tzu in Chapter 46, before adding this almost tautological formula that is nonetheless so hard to live by: he who knows that what he has is enough will never lack anything. This is not a praise of resigned poverty, but an art: that of knowing when to stop at the right moment.
Chapter 44 pushes the question even further: between name and body, which is closest to us? Between body and wealth, which truly matters? Between gaining and losing, which causes us the most suffering? These are questions that force us to reconsider our priorities, because often we only measure the value of our health, our freedom, or our loved ones after we have lost them.
Knowing contentment does not mean bridling ambition; it means placing it under the guard of intelligence. It is this ability to stop in time that ultimately allows us to durably preserve what we have built and escape this classic trap: coveting a little more, and losing everything.
2. The brake of a balanced life
Lao Tzu does not preach the renunciation of all desire, but the art of knowing its limits. A car needs brakes to drive safely; an existence needs, in the same way, to know where to stop. He who knows contentment continues to work, create, and move forward. Simply, he never lets desire take the wheel.
In Chapter 33, we read: knowing others is wisdom; knowing oneself is insight. Conquering others is strength; conquering oneself is true power. And knowing contentment is wealth. Here is a definition of wealth quite different from the one we know: a perpetually anxious billionaire remains, deep down, a poor man; he who lives peacefully because he knows contentment is rich with inner wealth.
Chapter 44 goes further: knowing contentment preserves from shame, knowing when to stop preserves from danger — and thus one endures. A lesson particularly relevant today when everything pushes us to chase performance, profit, and fame. How many sacrifice their health for money, their family for career, only to end up losing that very career for lack of having kept the health and loved ones that would have supported it.
This is neither resignation nor laziness. It is the art of setting, knowingly, a reasonable stopping point, so that success does not turn against its builder. One keeps moving forward, but one knows when to let go and when to hold on. It is the safety brake of any success that lasts.
3. Knowing how to retire after success
One of the most concrete lessons of the Tao Te Ching is a simple idea: the hardest part is not advancing, but knowing when to stop. Many fail not for lack of a good start, but because having already succeeded, they want even more.
“To hold a vase already full and try to fill it further: better to stop. To sharpen a blade to its extreme: it will not stay sharp for long”, warns chapter 9. When wealth, power, or fame reach their peak, continuing to accumulate is to defy an implacable law: the law of backlash.
Hence the famous conclusion: the work accomplished, knowing when to withdraw in time, such is the law of Heaven. Withdrawing does not mean giving up, but refusing to let victory turn into pride, success become a burden, or greed extinguish reason.
History, like business, is full of examples of people who won a battle but ultimately lost after their own victory, for lack of knowing when to stop. Understanding the Tao is not about fleeing success; it’s about refusing to become its slave. Knowing when to step back at the right moment is still the best way to go far.
4. Beware of excessive accumulation
The Tao Te Ching does not condemn wealth per se, but warns against accumulation that exceeds all natural measure. “A house full of gold and jade, no one can keep it”, we read in chapter 9. The more possessions pile up, the greater the risks of loss, covetousness, and conflict. It’s not wealth that is dangerous, but what it makes grow in us.
In chapter 53, Lao Tzu depicts a lavish court, fields left in ruin, empty granaries: the image of a society where a minority hoards wealth while the rest grows poorer. This imbalance, he says, inevitably leads to instability.
The lesson is simple: accumulate enough to live, not so much that you become a slave to your possessions. Knowing how to share, circulate resources, and stop before greed spirals out of control is what preserves, over time, both wealth and social peace.
5. Not competing means never losing
For Lao Tzu, rivalry is the fuse that ignites resentment; not seeking to prevail is, on the contrary, an art of endurance. Chapter 8 praises water, which always stays in the low places, contests nothing with anyone, yet nourishes all things. Chapter 22 cuts to the chase: not competing is precisely what prevents anyone from competing with you. This has nothing to do with weakness; it’s a way of transcending the game of victory and defeat itself.
Chapter 66 extends the metaphor: if the sea rules over the hundred rivers, it’s because it knows how to stay lower than them. A leader who wants others to come to him must know how to humble himself; one who wants respect must not try to wrest it.
In everyday life, most conflicts arise from this desire to outdo the other : in advantages, visibility, status. The more you compete, the more bonds crack; the more you triumph, the more grudges accumulate. Lao Tzu charts another path: humility rather than competition, influence rather than coercion, cooperation rather than blind struggle. Those who aren’t governed by a spirit of rivalry make fewer enemies, keep others’ trust, and go further on the road to lasting success.
6. Fewer desires, more discernment
A desire too heavy doesn’t just make you unhappy: it distorts judgment. Too greedy for money, power, or pleasure, you end up minimizing risks and overestimating opportunities, and decisions become flawed. That’s why chapter 3 advises those who govern to limit what stirs covetousness, while chapter 12 lists warnings: the five colors blind the eye, the five sounds deafen the ear, the five flavors dull the palate, frantic hunting distracts the mind, and rare goods corrupt conduct.
Lao Tzu doesn’t deny the value of material things or sensory pleasures. He simply reminds us that an overload of stimulation clouds judgment. When the mind lets itself be led by desire, intelligence itself ends up serving it. Conversely, moderating desires allows for more objective observation, more careful weighing of things, and fewer mistakes. A calm mind always sees further than one cluttered with desires: that’s the foundation of sound decisions and a life that lasts.
7. Misfortune almost always begins with a tiny thing
Great disasters rarely erupt all at once: they are most often born from a tiny deviation. “The tree you can barely embrace was born from a tiny shoot; the nine-story tower rose from a pile of earth; the journey of a thousand miles began with a single step”, says chapter 64, a law that applies equally to success and failure.
It’s the same with greed. At first, it might be a paltry sum ill-gotten, a lie that seems harmless, a small abuse of power, an exception you grant yourself. But if you don’t stop in time, these small deviations accumulate, become habits, then character traits—until a crisis you can no longer recover from.
Hence this idea: those who understand the Tao don’t fix misfortune once it’s happened; they act as soon as the germ appears. Mastering a covetous thought is infinitely simpler than repairing a broken life. Avoiding a misstep today is always better than correcting a thousand mistakes tomorrow. That’s what it means to prevent evil at its root.
8. Keep the root rather than chase the branches
We must not confuse the essential with the incidental. Chapter 38 states clearly: it is only after losing the Tao that people speak of Virtue; after losing Virtue, of Humanity; after losing Humanity, of Justice; after losing Justice, they resort to Ritual. In other words: the further you get from the root, the more forms you must invent to compensate for what you’ve lost at the core.
In life, many chase after money, titles, fame, and admiration, neglecting to cultivate their character, skills, and discernment. A weak root never sustains lasting success; a strong inner strength, on the other hand, always eventually bears fruit.
Understanding the Tao, then, means building yourself before building your fortune, cultivating your character before seeking recognition. Not out of disdain for success, but because a great fruit only holds if the root remains vigorous. Keeping that root is the surest way to escape the trap: desire too much, and lose everything.
9. In summary
Throughout the text, Lao Tzu returns to a law that seems simple, yet is dizzying in its depth: all great misfortunes begin with a greed that doesn’t know where to stop. For a little more profit, you lose your honor; for a little more power, your freedom; for a little more wealth, your health, your family, sometimes your entire life. What remains is to know precisely what this “greed without a stopping point”means, and that, in itself, requires true discernment.
Faced with greed, Lao Tzu doesn’t propose austere dogmas, but three very concrete principles: know how to be content, know when to stop, know how to keep your root. Be content, so as not to be led by desire. Stop, so that success doesn’t turn into misfortune. Keep your root, so as never to trade the essential for a fleeting gain.
Studying the Tao Te Ching, then, isn’t about renouncing money or success; it’s about learning to master them. Understanding the Tao doesn’t prevent wealth, success, or power; it only prevents becoming their slave. To keep for a long time, you must know how to be content; to obtain more, you must know when to stop; to lose nothing, you must desire less. This is perhaps one of the most pragmatic, enduring, and timeless lessons Lao Tzu has bequeathed to humanity.
