the short of it:
Difficult doesn’t solve difficult.
63. The Beginning of Grace.
Act non-action. Be occupied with non-occupation. Taste the tasteless. Find your great in what is little, and your many in the few. Recompense injury with virtue (kindness). Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy. Manage the great things by taking them while they are small.
The difficult things in the world must all originate in what is easy; and the great things in the world must all originate in what is small. Therefore the sage never attempts what is great, and hence [they are] able to accomplish great things. [Those] who lightly [assent] will rarely keep [their] word. [Those who have] many easy things will have many difficulties. Therefore the sage views things as difficult and never has any difficulty.
63. A Consideration of Beginnings.
One should avoid assertion (wu wei) and practice inaction. One should learn to find taste in the tasteless, to enlarge the small things, and multiply the few. [They] should respond to hatred with kindness. [They] should resolve a difficulty while it is easy, and manage a great thing while it is small. Surely all the world’s difficulties arose from slight causes, and all the world’s great affairs had small beginnings.
Therefore teh wise [person] avoids to the end participation in great affairs and by so doing establishes [their] greatness.
Rash promises are lacking in faith and many things that appear easy are full of difficulties. Therefore the wise [person] considers every thing difficult and so to the end [they] have no difficulties.
63. Consider Beginnings.
63.1 Assert non-assertion. Practice non-practice. Taste the tasteless. Make great the small. Make much the little.
63.2 Requite hatred with virtue.
63.3 Contemplate a difficulty when it is easy. Manage a great thing when it is small.
63.4 The world’s most difficult undertakings necessarily originate while easy, and the world’s greatest undertakings necessarily originate while small.
63.5 Therefore the holy [person] to the end does not venture to play the great, and thus [they] can accomplish [their] greatness.
63.6 Rash promises surely lack faith, and many easy things surely involve in many difficulties.
63.7 Therefore, the holy [person] regards everything as difficult, and thus to the end encounters no difficulties.
the long of it:
All complexity comes from a place of simplicity. All difficulty comes from a place of easiness.
If you want to solve complex or difficult things, treat them simply and easy. If you want to keep things simple and easy to begin with, treat the simple as complex and the easy as difficult.
-TB
