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This page groups scripture portions by the core teaching they carry. Wikipedia notes that religious texts "are often regarded as sacred or holy, representing the core teachings and principles that their followers strive to uphold." Browsing by theme lets a visitor find every portion built around the same core teaching.

Facts

A four-stage account of how anything comes to be what it is

A list of paradoxes, and laughter offered as evidence

A ranking of rulers in which invisibility is best

A survey of interventions and their opposite results

A victory treated as a funeral

Blandness as the mark of what is inexhaustible

The clearest political indictment in the book

Diplomacy conducted from the low ground

Emptiness as an inexhaustible source, older than the gods

The evidence of corpses, used as an argument for softness

Excellence that looks like its opposite

Greatness accomplished by refusing to be great

Knowledge that does not require going anywhere

The low position as the source of the high one

Martial excellence defined entirely by what it does not do

Non-action as the closing statement of the first part

Rulers who name themselves by words of loss

Scale: dealing with a thing while it is still small

Self-display as the exact thing that defeats itself

Self-interest served by setting the self aside

Skill that leaves no trace, and nobody written off

Small sight and soft holding named as the strong positions

Softness entering where there is no opening

Something real inside what cannot be pinned down

Stimulation as a form of impairment

Subtraction as a discipline, set against accumulation

Three questions about what a life is being spent on

Two kinds of courage, and a net that nothing escapes

War fought defensively, and grief as the deciding factor

The way as a refuge that does not exclude the guilty

Weight and stillness as the ground of authority

What happens to a population that has stopped being afraid