Now arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen, hateful, it may be said, to all creatures. Therefore they who have the Tao do not like to employ them. The superior man ordinarily considers the left hand the most honourable place, but in time of war the right hand. Those sharp weapons are instruments of evil omen, and not the instruments of the superior man;--he uses them only on the compulsion of necessity. Calm and repose are what he prizes; victory (by force of arms) is to him undesirable. To consider this desirable would be to delight in the slaughter of men; and he who delights in the slaughter of men cannot get his will in the kingdom. On occasions of festivity to be on the left hand is the prized position; on occasions of mourning, the right hand. The second in command of the army has his place on the left; the general commanding in chief has his on the right;--his place, that is, is assigned to him as in the rites of mourning. He who has killed multitudes of men should weep for them with the bitterest grief; and the victor in battle has his place (rightly) according to those rites.
The Tao Te Ching teaches that weapons and violence are always corrosive to the spirit, even when necessary. The superior person—the one aligned with the Tao—uses force only when compelled by circumstance, never with pleasure or pride. When forced to act violently, they should grieve what was lost, treating victory with the solemnity of a funeral rather than celebration. The chapter inverts our usual hierarchy: what we call winning is actually a kind of mourning.
We live in a culture that celebrates strength, victory, and dominance as intrinsic goods. Our conflicts—political, cultural, personal—are framed as battles to be won, enemies to be defeated. This chapter whispers a different diagnosis: that our addiction to winning, to being right, to overpowering others, poisons us at the root. It asks us to notice how often we treat disagreement as warfare, how we've normalized the language of combat in everyday speech. In a time of real violence abroad and inner violence at home, the Tao invites us to ask: What if we grieve what we fight for? What if victory itself is the wound we're trying to heal?
Today, notice where you are reaching for force—of will, of argument, of certainty—when gentleness might work instead. When you must stand firm or speak hard truth, feel it as a burden, not a triumph. Let there be a small funeral in your heart for the conflict itself.