Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
Stretch a bow to the very full,
And you will wish you had stopped in time;
Temper a sword-edge to its very sharpest,
And you will find it soon grows dull.
When bronze and jade fill your hall.
It can no longer be guarded.
Wealth and place breed insolence.
That brings ruin in its train.
When your work is done, then withdraw!
Such is Heaven's Way.
Why? Because there is no "security" or "prisoner" in the original. And "serenity" is a far-fetched interpretation for "Heaven's Way", which is just the name of the daoist "Doctrine".
I'm always amazed on how much wisdom is in such old texts. People from hundreds or even thousands of years ago were still ... just humans. The same as we are. They had the same problems and desires as we have. Even tough their world looked radically different their life didn't by far as much.
