Knowing Yourself Is Light
You can tell, within a minute, what is wrong with a friend's plan.
Your own, you have been looking at for a year.
知人者智，
zhī rén zhě zhì,
Knowing others is cleverness;
自知者明。
zì zhī zhě míng.
knowing yourself is light.
勝人者有力，
shèng rén zhě yǒu lì,
Overcoming others takes force;
自勝者強。
zì shèng zhě qiáng.
overcoming yourself is strength.
知足者富。
zhī zú zhě fù.
Knowing what is enough is wealth.
強行者有志。
qiáng xíng zhě yǒu zhì.
Keeping on walking is having a purpose.
不失其所者久。
bù shī qí suǒ zhě jiǔ.
Not losing your place is lasting.
死而不亡者壽。
sǐ ér bù wáng zhě shòu.
To die and not be lost is to live long.
The words
bright, clear; light that lets you see
The sun (日) and the moon (月) side by side: all the light there is. Not the light of a lamp pointed at something else, but the clearness in which you can see, including yourself. Zhì (智), cleverness, looks outward. Míng lights the one who is looking.
strong; also, to force
The book is wary of this word. Elsewhere it is the stiffness of what is dead, and the forcing that breaks things. Here, for once, it is praised, because it is turned the other way: not strength over others, but over yourself.
a place; where something belongs
"Not losing your suǒ": your place, the ground you stand on, the centre you act from. A tree that keeps its roots can bend in any wind.
Sitting with it
The chapter is built in pairs, and each pair turns from out there to in here.
Knowing others is cleverness. It is useful. You need it to cross a road, to trust the right people, to see a lie coming. But it is light thrown outward, like a torch. The one holding the torch stays in the dark.
Knowing yourself is a different light. Not a torch, but the dawn. It shows you your own hands: what you really want, what you are afraid of, why you said the sharp thing yesterday. It is slower to come, and harder to bear. The book calls it by its best word for light, the one it saves for seeing truly.
The second pair is the same turn. You can win against other people with force: a louder voice, a better argument, more money. To win against your own anger, your own hurry, your own wish to be right, needs something else. Here the book calls that strength.
Then the lines come one by one, each short, like stones put down on a path. Knowing what is enough is wealth: the rich person is the one who has stopped needing more. Keeping on walking is purpose. Not losing your place is what lasts.
And the last line, which has been read for two thousand years without being settled. To die and not be lost is to live long. Some hear in it a life whose good goes on after it. Some hear something deeper: that what you most truly are was never the thing that dies. The book doesn't choose for you. It just sets the line down, last, where you will remember it.
A practice
Tonight, before sleep, think back over one moment today when you judged someone else: their choice, their tone, their mistake.
Then ask, gently: where do I do the same?
Don't scold yourself. Just look. That looking is the light the chapter means.
To carry
自知者明
zì zhī zhě míng
Knowing yourself is light.