The Sayings of Laozi

In Laozi's dream life, we would all have a nice modest house, enough food, be peaceful, delight in simple pleasures, keep to ourselves, keep our minds free from unnecessary thoughts and concerns. Everyone is living in harmony and contentment.

True resolution of conflict allows both sides to win. There's no reason for there to be a winner and a loser, as this could create further conflict down the line.

We know that Laozi has a love affair with water. In its manner it comes close to Dao in his thinking. The secret of water's strength is its very softness and malleability. It achieves great things through yielding, persistence and patience.

Laozi believes that it's important – it's the way of Dao – to adjust the inequalities in society. The rich should use some of their wealth to help the poor. In so doing they enrich the world.

For hard and stiff, read impervious and intransigent. For soft and weak, read yielding and vulnerable. Life is full of movement and freshness. Trees can survive the gales if they sway in the wind.

Laozi's message – If you are a king, watch your back. If you are a subject, hold the king to account.

Here, Laozi is saying, if you push people to the limits of their tolerance, then they no longer fear death. Your so called weapon of last resort, death, no longer works. Result: chaos.

The net of Heaven spreads far and wide. In English we sometimes say ‘the long arm of the law,’ meaning punishment is inescapable.

Laozi implores rulers to follow the ways of the Dao. Don't get too comfortable in the hot seat, he chides ... nothing is forever. You ignore the lives and livelihoods of the people at your peril.

True wisdom is knowing that there is so much that you do not know, so much more to learn. Anyone who claims otherwise is self-defeating or misguided, or in Laozi's words, sick.

Whilst he is revered now as a great sage, there may have been few people in his day and age who actually understood enough about him to carry on the message. Like Dao however, Laozi gave his message simply and without expectation.

For Laozi, war and conflict is failure. To get to that point shows that both sides have moved very far away from the principal of Dao, and so there will likely be no winners.

On the surface it may seem as though Laozi is giving advice to warriors, but his words are just as applicable to rulers, leaders, and those in charge generally. More importantly for a good leader, Laozi suggests, is knowing how to best use the people and resources that one has.

The key part of this verse is Laozi's focus on Compassion, Frugality and lack of Ambition – what he describes as his three treasures.

Laozi wants to make the analogy with a sage wishing to show leadership. Not from above or in front, but below and behind… like water weaving its way through difficult terrain, through a valley.

Laozi mentioned that if you overregulated the people then they would use their ingenuity to find ways to subvert your rule. So - in the spirit of Non-doing, wouldn't it be better to govern with openness, simplicity and honesty?

This verse contains one of the best known sayings, if not THE best known saying of Laozi, which most people in the West know as ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

In this verse, Laozi is warning against complacency. He would have made a pretty good project manager or life coach in the 21st century.

Let's remind ourselves that Dao is the ultimate. It is all forgiving and values everything equally – the good and the not so good. It is a sanctuary for all.