Whoever Would Take the World
The Text
将欲取天下而为之，吾见其不得已。天下神器，不可为也，不可执也。为者败之，执者失之。夫物或行或随；或嘘或吹；或强或羸；或载或隳。是以圣人去甚，去奢，去泰。
Whoever would take the world and shape it — I see it cannot be done. The world is a sacred vessel, not something to be shaped. Shaping it spoils it; grasping it loses it. Things run ahead, or follow; breathe warm, or blow cold; grow strong, or weak; rise, or fall. So the wise avoid excess, avoid extravagance, avoid the extreme.
Reading it
The world is sacred precisely because it is not raw material. Every action on it produces its opposite on contact — the list of pairs is what happens to anything that gets pushed. The three avoidances are just the resulting throttling rule.
天下之为神器，恰在于它不是原材料。每一分用力都在接触面上生出反面——那组成对的词就是任何被推的东西的下场。三个「去」只是由此得出的限速规则。
Take one thing you have been forcing. Ease the force and watch what the forcing was actually breaking.
挑一件你正在硬推的事。松开力，看硬推到底在损坏什么。