Lesser power, clinging to power, lacks true power. Great power, doing nothing, has nothing to do. Lesser power, doing nothing, has an end in view. The good the truly good do has no end in view. The right the very righteous do has an end in view. And those who act in true obedience to law roll up their sleeves and make the disobedient obey. So: when we lose the Way we find power; losing power we find goodness; losing goodness we find righteousness; losing righteousness we’re left with obedience. Obedience to law is the dry husk of loyalty and good faith. Opinion is the barren flower of the Way, the beginning of ignorance. So great-minded people abide in the kernel not the husk, in the fruit not the flower, letting the one go, keeping the other. A vast, dense argument in a minimum of words, this poem lays out the Taoist values in steeply descending order: the Way and its power; goodness (humane feeling); righteousness (morality); and—a very distant last—obedience (law and order). The word I render as “opinion”
