Dao De Jing 7

Dao De Jing 7

The heavens are everlasting & the earth is long-enduring.

The heavens & the earth endure because they don’t exist for themselves.

Thus, the sage puts himself last & yet is first; he puts himself to the side & yet he thrives.

Is it because he is unconcerned with self that he can achieve his ends?

Laozi, 道德經

Translation by John Hayes

The translation is is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

Unlike with my original poetry & poetry translations, I don’t asset a copyright claim on my translation of the Dao De Jing. It may be freely used under the terms of the Creative Commons license.

Image links to its source at Wiki Commons:

Hua Shan. Photo by Peretz Partensky from San Francisco, USA, who makes the image available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.