Tao Te Ching Chapter 9

9th Chapter
It’s best to know where to stop rather than continuing to accumulate wealth and power.
When a man tries too hard to develop skills to attack others, it is like the sharpening a knife to the sharpest point, which becomes easier to dull.
The more wealth one possesses, the harder it is to protect.
If a man becomes conceited because of his wealth and power, pride will result in his own harm.
When a man achieves his goal, and he knows to give the opportunity to others without attachment to power and wealth, this is close to Tao.

Implications from the Holy Books

O SON OF MAN!
Thou dost wish for gold and I desire thy freedom from it. Thou thinkest thyself rich in its possession, and I recognize thy wealth in thy sanctity therefrom. By My life! This is My knowledge, and that is thy fancy; how can My way accord with thine? —Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words, Arabic 56

Self-love is a strange trait and the means of the destruction of many important souls in the world. If man be imbued with all good qualities but be selfish, all the other virtues will fade or pass away and eventually he will grow worse. —Abdu’l-Baha
Satan is the insistent self. —Abdu’l-Baha
‘I’ and ‘Me’ and ‘Mine’ would be regarded as profane. —Abdu’l-Baha

Go Back to the List of Chapters

Categories: Uncategorized

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s