Non-Acting and Nothing Left Undone (Daodejing 37)
Annotated translation of ch. 37: the Way's constant non-action, the uncarved block that stills desire, and the world that rights itself.
Chinese text
道常无为而无不为。侯王若能守之，万物将自化。化而欲作，吾将镇之以无名之朴。镇之以无名之朴，夫将不欲。不欲以静，天下将自正。
Pinyin
Dào cháng wúwéi ér wúbùwéi. Hóuwáng ruò néng shǒu zhī, wànwù jiāng zìhuà. Huà ér yù zuò, wú jiāng zhèn zhī yǐ wúmíng zhī pǔ. Zhèn zhī yǐ wúmíng zhī pǔ, fū jiāng bùyù. Bùyù yǐ jìng, tiānxià jiāng zìzhèng.
Literal rendering
The Way is constantly non-acting, and yet nothing is left undone. If lords and kings could keep it, the ten thousand things would transform themselves. Transforming, and desire starting up — I will press it down with the unnamed uncarved block. Pressed down with the unnamed uncarved block, they will come to not desiring. Not desiring — and with stillness, the realm will right itself.
Term-by-term notes
- 无为而无不为 — the book’s central paradox, in its strongest form. Non-action, and nothing left undone: the wuwei concept page carries the term’s full history; this chapter is the formulation that later tradition (and modern scholarship) quotes most, because it compresses the whole doctrine into six characters. The manuscript variant is recorded: the Guodian text has 道恒无为也 without the 而无不为 clause — the earliest witnesses give only the first half. The site’s double-writing discipline applies: both readings documented, neither adjudicated.
- 守之 — keep it. The verb is the shouyi family’s 守: the chapter does not ask rulers to perform non-action but to keep it — possession, not production. This is the same 守 the DDJ10 page anchors for 抱一, and the same grammatical move DDJ48 makes with 损: the practice is custodial.
- 自化 / 自正 — the 自 family. Transform themselves; right themselves. The two 自 verbs are the chapter’s engine: whatever happens, happens from inside the things, not from the ruler. The ziran concept page collects the family — 自然, 自化, 自正, 自朴 — and this chapter supplies two of its four members.
- 无名之朴 — the unnamed uncarved block. 朴 is unworked wood: the image of the not-yet-shaped. The chapter’s remedy for desire is not force but placement — 镇, to press down and steady, applied with the block itself: what stills desire is exposure to the unshaped. The term is the book’s quiet counterpart to ch. 1’s namelessness (无名 appears in both chapters — the only two in the book to use the compound so prominently).
- 不欲以静 — not-desiring, and stillness. The jing concept page records this chapter’s move: stillness is not a technique here but the result of not-desiring — the sequence runs 守 → 自化 → 镇之以朴 → 不欲 → 静 → 自正. Six steps, each one a consequence of the one before; the whole chapter is a chain, not a list.
Where this passage sits
Ch. 37 closes the traditional first half of the book (the “Dao” half, chs. 1–37) — which is why it restates ch. 1’s terms (无名, 欲, 静) in a ruling frame. With ch. 48 (the subtraction program) and ch. 25 (the cosmology), the site’s DDJ spine now covers the book’s three load-bearing formulas: the nameless gate, the non-action paradox, and the self-so order.
Sources
- Daodejing ch. 37, received text, verified against multiple full-text editions. The Guodian manuscript variant is recorded below