48 - UNLEARNING

Studying and learning daily you grow larger.
Following the Way daily you shrink.
You get smaller and smaller.
So you arrive at not doing.
You do nothing and nothing’s not done.

To run things,
don’t fuss with them.
Nobody who fusses
is fit to run things.

UKLG: The word shi in the second stanza, my “fuss,” is troublesome to the translators. Carus’s quite legitimate translation of it is “diplomacy,” which would give a stanza I like very much:

To run things,  
be undiplomatic.  
No diplomat  
is fit to run things.