A Journey of a Thousand Li Begins Under the Foot (Daodejing 64)
Annotated translation of ch. 64: the four early stages, the three staircases, the finish-line warning, and the chapter that ends the book's practice doctrine — with the disputed couplet registered, not adjudicated.
Chinese text
其安易持，其未兆易谋；其脆易泮，其微易散。为之于未有，治之于未乱。合抱之木，生于毫末；九层之台，起于累土；千里之行，始于足下。为者败之，执者失之。是以圣人无为故无败，无执故无失。民之从事，常于几成而败之。慎终如始，则无败事。是以圣人欲不欲，不贵难得之货，学不学，复众人之所过，以辅万物之自然而不敢为。
Pinyin
Qí ān yì chí, qí wèi zhào yì móu; qí cuì yì pàn, qí wēi yì sàn. Wéi zhī yú wèi yǒu, zhì zhī yú wèi luàn. Hé bào zhī mù, shēng yú háo mò; jiǔ céng zhī tái, qǐ yú lěi tǔ; qiān lǐ zhī xíng, shǐ yú zú xià. Wéi zhě bài zhī, zhí zhě shī zhī. Shì yǐ shèng rén wú wéi gù wú bài, wú zhí gù wú shī. Mín zhī cóng shì, cháng yú jǐ chéng ér bài zhī. Shèn zhōng rú shǐ, zé wú bài shì. Shì yǐ shèng rén yù bù yù, bù guì nán dé zhī huò, xué bù xué, fù zhòng rén zhī suǒ guò, yǐ fǔ wàn wù zhī zìrán ér bù gǎn wéi.
Literal rendering
What is at peace is easy to hold; what has not yet shown its omen is easy to plan for; what is brittle is easy to split; what is minuscule is easy to scatter. Deal with it before it exists; govern it before it is disordered. A tree that takes both arms to embrace is born from a downy tip; a terrace nine layers high rises from baskets of earth; a journey of a thousand li begins under the foot. The doer ruins it; the grasper loses it. Therefore the sage does not do, and so does not ruin; does not grasp, and so does not lose. People, in their affairs, always ruin them at the point of near-completion. Be as careful at the end as at the start, and there are no ruined affairs. Therefore the sage desires the not-desired, does not prize goods hard to come by, studies the not-studied, and turns back the crowd’s overshoot — helping the ten thousand things be of-themselves, and not daring to act.
Term-by-term notes
- The four early stages. 安 (at peace), 未兆 (omen not yet shown), 脆 (brittle), 微 (minuscule) — the chapter’s opening is the book’s doctrine of the early: everything is manageable before it is manifest. 为之于未有，治之于未乱 — act on it before it exists, govern before disorder — is the ch. 63 translation’s own program (图难于其易: the difficult is a late stage) stated as law. The site keeps the two chapters as the book’s matched pair on timing: ch. 63 says start with the easy; ch. 64 says start before there is one.
- The three staircases. 合抱之木，生于毫末；九层之台，起于累土；千里之行，始于足下 — tree from downy tip, terrace from earth-baskets, thousand-li journey from under the foot. The book’s accumulation grammar, in three registers: plant, building, road. The last line is the tradition’s most portable proverb (it survives intact in modern Chinese, with its own encyclopedia entry the site verified), and the site’s practice pages read it as their own founding sentence: the day-count caveat and the feel-nothing question both answer to it — a practice is not built by intensity but by baskets, one sitting after another, each one a step from under the foot.
- The finish-line warning. 民之从事，常于几成而败之 — people ruin their affairs at near-completion. The chapter’s middle is its sharpest practice sentence, and the site keeps it against the modern habit of quitting when results fail to arrive: the dangerous point is not the start (everything is easy to start) but the near-end (everything is easy to ruin there). 慎终如始 — be as careful at the end as at the start — is the chapter’s one-line cure, the stillness family’s evenness applied to time.
- The disputed couplet. 为者败之，执者失之 — the doer ruins, the grasper loses. The edition the site verified records the tradition’s own doubt: one line of scholarship holds this couplet (and the closing 而不敢为) to be misplaced strips from ch. 29 — the site registers the doubt without adjudicating, per its edition discipline. Whatever its home, the couplet is the wuwei doctrine’s negative arithmetic: non-doing is not passivity but the refusal to ruin — and the closing 以辅万物之自然而不敢为 (help things be of-themselves and not dare to act) is the ziran concept’s own chapter-ending: the sage’s entire curriculum is the removal of the overshoot (复众人之所过 — turn back the crowd’s overshooting).
- 欲不欲，学不学 — the double negation. The chapter’s last pair is the book’s grammar of subtraction in desire and study alike: desire what is not desired, study what is not studied. The site holds it against both readings — asceticism (want nothing) and anti-learning (study nothing) — because the grammar is plain: the sage’s wanting and studying are redirected, toward the not-wanted and the not-studied, which is exactly what the practice pages call the emptying.
Where this passage sits
With ch. 63 (the early, the easy, the small) and ch. 48 (the daily lessening), ch. 64 completes the book’s practice trilogy: start early, work small, hold to the end — and the whole doctrine is the accumulation the three staircases name.
Sources
- Daodejing ch. 64, received text, verified against three independent reproductions that agree (the Taiji Shuguan edition with running notes, which records that the 为者败之，执者失之 couplet and the closing 而不敢为 are said by one tradition to be misplaced strips from ch. 29; the Wikipedia entry on the idiom 千里之行始于足下 quoting the full chapter; and the Kekenet bilingual edition with translation); the Dudianji bilingual edition agrees throughout