← The Dao De Jing
Chapter 5
Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane
天地不仁
The Text
天地不仁，以万物为刍狗；圣人不仁，以百姓为刍狗。天地之间，其犹橐龠乎？虚而不屈，动而愈出。多言数穷，不如守中。
Heaven and earth are not humane; they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs. The wise are not humane either; they treat the people as straw dogs. Between heaven and earth is a bellows — empty, yet never exhausted. The more it works, the more comes out. Talking about it only wears you down; better to hold to the middle.
Reading it
Straw dogs were honoured for the ceremony and burned after. The point is not cruelty but scale: the world does not operate on partiality. The bellows works by emptiness, not by speech.
刍狗以时恭敬、以时焚弃——要点不是残忍而是尺度：世界不按偏爱运转。橐龠因虚而有用，因动而愈出；言语只会把它耗尽。
Practice for the week
Do one useful thing this week without explaining, defending, or narrating it.
这周做一件有用的事，不解释、不辩护、不叙述。