Now arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen, hateful, it may be said, to all creatures.
Therefore they who have the Tao do not like to employ them.
The superior man ordinarily considers the left hand the most honourable place, but in time of war the right hand.
Those sharp weapons are instruments of evil omen, and not the instruments of the superior man;—he uses them only on the compulsion of necessity.
Calm and repose are what he prizes; victory by force of arms is to him undesirable.
To consider this desirable would be to delight in the slaughter of men;
and he who delights in the slaughter of men cannot get his will in the kingdom.
On occasions of festivity to be on the left hand is the prized position; on occasions of mourning, the right hand.
The second in command of the army has his place on the left; the general commanding in chief has his on the right;—his place, that is, is assigned to him as in the rites of mourning.
He who has killed multitudes of men should weep for them with the bitterest grief;
and the victor in battle has his place rightly according to those rites.
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.
Ask About This Verse the Verse Guide is coming
The Institute is preparing the Verse Guide — a careful study companion that will let you ask questions about this verse and explore its characters, its history, and its practice. It is being built slowly and deliberately, with human review at every step, because getting the tradition right matters more to us than shipping fast.
Join the Institute to be among the first invited when it opens.
Join for Early Access
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. The person of the Tao resorts to it only under the compulsion of necessity, never from desire; what he genuinely prizes is calm and repose. To take pleasure in overpowering, to relish a victory won by wounding another, is — the verse says flatly — to delight in harm, and the one who delights in harm has already lost the deeper thing he imagined he was 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 most striking 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.