Act Without Acting, Manage Without Managing, Taste Without Tasting
Chapter 63 turns wu wei into a concrete method: handle the great while it is still small, and treat every easy task with the same care as a hard one.
The chapter opens with three paired instructions — act without acting, manage without managing, taste without tasting — a formula for engaging fully with a task while withholding the strain and self-assertion normally attached to effort. Laozi grounds this in a practical claim: difficult things in the world all begin as easy, and great things all begin as small, so the sage never attempts what is great and thereby achieves greatness. He also offers a piece of blunt psychological advice rarely associated with mysticism: light promises invite little trust, and treating things as easy guarantees much difficulty, so the sage regards even easy things as difficult and therefore never encounters real difficulty. The chapter's closing instruction, to repay resentment with virtue, extends the same logic of working at the level where a conflict is still small, before it hardens into open enmity.
Act without acting, do without doing, taste without tasting.
Tao Te Ching