Tao Te Ching Chapter 70: The Difficulty of Understanding

The loneliest chapter in the book. My words are very easy to know and very easy to practice, Lao Tzu says — yet no one under heaven is able to know them, and no one is able to practice them. The teaching is not obscure; it is unbearable in its simplicity. Yield, soften, stop striving, want less: nothing here needs a commentary, and nearly everyone finds a reason to do otherwise.

My words have an ancestor; my actions have a lord, the chapter continues — the sayings are not opinions but issue from the source itself; people miss the teaching because they miss where it comes from. Then the sentence every unrecognised truth-teller has kept in a pocket: those who understand me are few; those who follow me are precious. The final image gives the whole book its emblem: the sage wears coarse cloth on the outside but carries jade within. Depth does not advertise. The treasure travels in plain clothes — which is exactly why the crowd, scanning for splendour, walks past it.