He who devotes himself to learning seeks from day to day to increase his knowledge; he who devotes himself to the Dao seeks from day to day to diminish his doing.

He diminishes it and again diminishes it, till he arrives at doing nothing on purpose. Having arrived at this point of non-action, there is nothing which he does not do.

He who gets as his own all under heaven does so by giving himself no trouble with that end. As shown in Chapter 37, the Dao does nothing, yet nothing is left undone — and the world settles of itself.