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Chapter 7, read aloud

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Tao Te Ching · 7 of 81

Chapter 7

Heaven is long-enduring and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves. This is how they are able to continue and endure.

Therefore the sage puts his own person last, and yet it is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved. Is it not because he has no personal and private ends, that therefore such ends are realised?

Echoes elsewhere

Chuang Tzu · Taoism8. 1. The highest excellence is like (that of) water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving (to the contrary), the loThe Mahabharata · Hinduism(viz., Religion, Profit, and Pleasure), has been declared by the wise to be supreme excellence. Abstention from sinful acts, constancy of righteous disposition, good behaviour towaThe Sayings of Lao Tzu · TaoismBY many words wit is exhausted; it is better to preserve a mean. The excellence of a dwelling is its site; the excellence of a mind is its profundity; the excellence of giving is c