Tao Te Ching — Chapter 27

A good traveler leaves no tracks; a good speaker makes no slips; a good reckoner needs no counting sticks; a good closer uses no bolt, yet what he shuts cannot be opened; a good binder uses no cord, yet what he ties cannot be undone. So the sage is always good at saving people, and therefore abandons no one; always good at saving things, and therefore discards nothing. This is called inheriting the light. Therefore the good person is the teacher of the not-good, and the not-good person is the material of the good. To not value the teacher, or not cherish the material, is to be greatly deluded despite all cleverness. This is called the essential mystery.

James Legge (1891)

The skilful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels or footsteps; the skilful speaker says nothing that can be found fault with or blamed; the skilful reckoner uses no tallies; the skilful closer needs no bolts or bars, while to open what he has shut will be impossible; the skilful binder uses no strings or knots, while to unloose what he has bound will be impossible. In the same way the sage is always skilful at saving men, and so he does not cast away any man; he is always skilful at saving things, and so he does not cast away anything. This is called 'Hiding the light of his procedure.' Therefore the man of skill is a master (to be looked up to) by him who has not the skill; and he who has not the skill is the helper of (the reputation of) him who has the skill. If the one did not honour his master, and the other did not rejoice in his helper, an (observer), though intelligent, might greatly err about them. This is called 'The utmost degree of mystery.'

Dwight Goddard (1919)

Good walkers leave no tracks, good speakers make no errors, good counters need no abacus, good wardens have no need for bolts and locks for no one can get by them. Good binders can dispense with rope and cord, yet none can unloose their hold. Therefore the wise man trusting in goodness always saves men, for there is no outcast to him. Trusting in goodness he saves all things for there is nothing valueless to him. This is recognizing concealed values. Therefore the good man is the instructor of the evil man, and the evil man is the good man's wealth. He who does not esteem his instructors or value his wealth, though he be otherwise intelligent, becomes confused. Herein lies the significance of spirituality.

The chapter opens with five images of consummate skill, all sharing a paradoxical feature: the true master accomplishes the task without the usual apparatus. The good traveler leaves no tracks (no clumsy traces); the good speaker has no flaws to fault; the good counter needs no tally sticks; the perfect lock has no bolt yet cannot be opened; the perfect knot has no cord yet cannot be untied. Mastery, in the Taoist sense, becomes invisible and effortless — it stops relying on visible mechanism and works through a deeper, unforced rightness.

From this, Laozi draws an ethical consequence that is among the most generous lines in the book: the sage "is always good at saving people, and therefore abandons no one; always good at saving things, and therefore discards nothing." Nothing and no one is written off as worthless. This is xí míng — "inheriting (or hiding) the light." The closing passage states a profound reciprocity in moral life: the good person is the teacher of the not-good, but the not-good person is the good person's material or resource (zī) — the occasion through which the good person practices and deepens their goodness. Each needs the other. To despise the bad, or to fail to value what they offer for one's own growth, is to be "greatly deluded despite all cleverness." The very people we are tempted to discard are the ones who school us.

The refusal to discard anyone — "the sage abandons no one" — closely parallels the Gospel image of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to seek the one lost sheep, and the bodhisattva vow in Mahayana Buddhism to save all sentient beings, excluding none. Both traditions, like Laozi, treat the writing-off of any person as a failure of true wisdom.

The teaching that the "not-good" person is the good person's resource — the occasion of their growth — echoes the Buddhist practice of regarding difficult people as teachers of patience, and the Stoic gratitude for the obstacle that strengthens. The very ones we would reject turn out to be necessary to our own deepening.

True skill becomes effortless and leaves no clumsy traces. And true goodness writes off no one: it sees every person and thing as having worth, and recognizes that even those who fail or do wrong are necessary teachers — the people who try us most are often the ones who refine us most.

This chapter offers a powerful frame for teaching, leadership, and relationship: discard no one. The struggling student, the difficult colleague, the person who has gone wrong — each is not a write-off but, in the chapter's terms, "material" through which one's own patience and skill are developed. "To not cherish the material is to be greatly deluded despite all cleverness" is a sharp warning against the intelligent contempt that lets us dismiss people we could either help or learn from. The mark of mastery is to leave no one out.