Weapons, however ornamental, are not a source of happiness, but are dreaded by all. Therefore the man of Tao will not abide where such things are.
A respectable man at home sets the place of honour at his left hand; but the warrior on going forth to battle gives honour to the right hand. For weapons are things of ill omen, and the man of enlightenment does not use them except when he cannot help it.
His great desire is peace, and he does not take joy in conquest.
To joy in conquest is to joy in the loss of human life. He who joys in bloodshed is not fit to govern the country.
When affairs are prosperous the left side is preferred, but when things are adverse the right is esteemed. The adjutant-general is therefore on the left side, while the general-in-chief is on the right. This I perceive is the manner also observed at a funeral! He who has occasion to kill many people has cause for deep sorrow and tears. Therefore a victorious army observes the order of a funeral.
Translation: Walter Gorn Old, 1904 (public domain)
Sit With This
When you have had to do harm — set someone back, cause a hurt, even where it felt necessary — can you let it be an occasion for sorrow rather than pride, and treat the weight of it gently?
A Practice
Think of a time you prevailed in a way that cost someone else. Instead of replaying the victory, sit for a moment with the cost — the other person's hurt — and let it be met with sorrow rather than satisfaction. Notice what that softens in you.
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Western Commentary
The verse states it as plainly as the ancient world ever managed to: the instruments of force are things of ill omen, hateful to life itself, and those who have the Tao do not love to use them. Even where force cannot be avoided, it is never something to be celebrated. The whole verse is soaked in reluctance — and that reluctance, more than any rule, is its teaching.
Read past the old setting and it speaks to any use of force or harm in a human life. Force is for necessity only, never for appetite — and to relish a victory won by wounding another is, the verse says flatly, to delight in harm, which means you have already lost the deeper thing you imagined you were winning. There is a part of all of us that can feel a hot flush of triumph at having bested or crushed someone, even someone who had it coming; the verse meets that flush with a quiet, sobering refusal.
Its central move is to place the whole matter within the rites of mourning rather than victory. Even the one who prevails, it says, should stand as he would at a funeral; whoever has caused great harm should weep for it with real grief. That is the opposite of glory. To do harm, even necessary harm, is an occasion for sorrow, not pride. And if you are someone who carries the weight of harm you have done to another — even where you truly believed you had no choice — that grief is not a flaw to be argued away. It is the right and human response, and you were never meant to carry it entirely alone.
This is not weakness, and it is not a naive pretence that force is never compelled; the verse grants plainly that necessity sometimes leaves no other road. What it refuses is the love of force — the glorying, the pride, the appetite for it. The measure of a person here is not whether they can prevail, but whether prevailing, when it costs another, still grieves them. Keep the reluctance; keep the sorrow. The day that doing harm becomes easy is the day something essential has gone quiet in you.