Where Kindness Begins
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為無為，事無事，味無味。大小多少，報怨以德。圖難於其易；為大於其細；天下難事必作於易，天下大事必作於細。是以聖人終不為大，故能成其大。夫輕諾必寡信，多易必多難。是以聖人猶難之，故終無難。
Act without acting; work without working; taste what has no taste. Make the great small and the many few; repay resentment with virtue. Plan for the hard while it is easy; do the great while it is small. The hard tasks of the world always begin in the easy; the great tasks of the world always begin in the small. So the sage, to the end, does not make himself great, and so he can achieve his greatness. Now, a light promise surely earns little trust; treating many things as easy surely brings many troubles. So the sage still treats things as difficult, and so in the end he has no difficulty.
How treating everything, even easy things, as if it mattered is what keeps the sage out of trouble.
The advice runs against instinct throughout, and the same logic reaches even grudges. The sage never makes himself great; Heshang Gong says he stays humble and empty, and that is how the greatness comes.
The close is a small paradox about difficulty itself: treating even small things as hard is what keeps the sage, in the end, out of difficulty. Heshang Gong’s commentary gives one “difficulty” its own reading: in “many troubles” it is a noun, trouble itself, where the rest of the chapter uses the adjective.
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