Do Not Abandon What Is Near for What Is Far

A fresh translation of today’s passage

Original text

Notes on the wording

• Shi (釋)
  To release, put aside, or abandon. The contrast concerns what receives attention first, not an order never to think beyond the immediate.
• Yi (佚)
  Ease or repose. In this passage it describes government that does not wear down ruler, officials, and people through restless demands.
• You zhong (有終)
  To have an end: to carry a matter through to completion instead of spending effort without result.
• Guang de (廣德)
  To broaden or extend virtue. The object is the ruler’s political and moral capacity, not a larger boundary on a map.
• Huang (荒)
  Desolate, neglected, or laid waste. It answers qiang, “strong,” rather than simply meaning “small.”

The passage begins with a problem of sequence

The opening pair is often attractive as a slogan for attending to immediate tasks. Yet its logic is more exact than “think short term.” Both lines contain planning. Both rulers have a near object and a distant object before them. What separates them is which object they release and which they act upon.

The ruler who sets aside nearby duties for a distant scheme accumulates labor but not accomplishment. The reverse ruler does not reject the future. By securing what is close, that ruler creates an ending: an undertaking can be completed because its first conditions have not been neglected.

“Near” can therefore include people, institutions, supplies, and obligations already within reach. The text leaves the noun unstated. That openness prevents us from turning the maxim into a single tactical recipe. It is a standard for judging priority across several kinds of rule.

Completion matters more than visible exertion

The contrast between labor and achievement is severe. Work is not praised simply because it is difficult. A policy may consume wealth, attention, and bodies while failing to bring an affair to a defensible conclusion. The passage asks what the labor finishes.

This is not a defense of inactivity. The second line also describes planning, but it joins ease to completion. Ease comes from ordering effort around conditions that can actually be secured. A government capable of finishing its immediate work may appear less dramatic than one announcing distant enterprises, yet it retains the resources needed for the next decision.

The wording also checks a ruler’s self-image. Grand ambition can make exhaustion look like proof of seriousness. The Three Strategies denies that inference. Wear is evidence of cost, not evidence of success.

How administrative strain becomes political danger

The third line changes scale. The first pair describes what a planner receives: no achievement or a completed end. The next pair describes the people around government: loyal ministers or resentful subjects. Priority has become a political relationship.

A laborious government does more than tire itself. Its repeated demands pass downward. Officials must enforce them, households must supply them, and communities must live with disruption. Resentment is not introduced as a private defect in the people. It arises on the side of burdensome rule.

Conversely, easy government has many loyal ministers. The line does not say that ease purchases flattery. It connects governable demands with the possibility of durable service. An official can remain loyal where policy does not repeatedly convert duty into futile strain.

The number words matter: “many” loyal ministers and “many” resentful people. A style of rule produces a population of responses. The text directs attention away from one admirable or disloyal individual and toward the conditions under which such responses multiply.

Territory and virtue are rival forms of enlargement

The final sentence introduces two objects for the same verb: territory and virtue can both be enlarged. This parallel makes the alternatives harder to confuse. Expansion itself is not condemned. The question is what a ruler chooses to expand.

Territorial enlargement reaches outward. It requires movement beyond what is already governed and risks neglecting the center that supplies it. The earlier warning about abandoning the near now has a concrete political application. Pursuit of more land can make existing land desolate.

Enlarging virtue works differently. It strengthens the qualities by which people are governed and persuaded to cooperate. This is not an ornamental moral achievement added after practical affairs. In the sentence, virtue produces strength. Political capacity grows from the inside outward.

The opposition also blocks a simple equation between size and power. A state may possess more ground and become weaker through the effort of acquiring or holding it. Another may expand no boundary yet become stronger because administration, trust, and support have widened.

What “near” does not mean

Nearness is not identical with selfishness. The line does not advise a ruler to protect personal comfort while ignoring distant suffering. The following sentence measures government through loyal ministers and resentful people, so the near object includes public obligations and the people already subject to policy.

Nor does nearness forbid preparation. Strategy necessarily considers consequences beyond the present moment. The warning applies when distant planning causes nearby foundations to be released. A long horizon built upon secured conditions differs from an ambition that consumes those conditions.

Finally, the text does not make geographic distance the only measure. A neglected office in the capital may be politically “nearer” than a celebrated expedition, even if both are close on a map. The passage orders dependence: deal first with what the distant project requires.

A military classic speaking about government

The Three Strategies belongs to the Seven Military Classics, but these lines contain no formation, weapon, or maneuver. Their subject is the political base from which military action becomes possible. A state exhausted by its ruler’s projects may lack loyal service before an army ever marches.

This breadth is characteristic of the work. Authority, reward, punishment, popular attachment, and the employment of worthy people sit beside questions of force. War cannot be detached from the government that raises, feeds, and directs an army.

The passage therefore reverses a familiar order. It does not begin with conquest and then ask how to administer the gain. It asks whether the pursuit of gain has already damaged administration. The result of a campaign must be measured against the political strength spent to obtain it.

Four balanced lines, one downward chain

The compact style uses repeated grammar to make the chain memorable. Abandon near / abandon far. Labor / ease. Loyal ministers / resentful people. Enlarge territory / enlarge virtue. Each pair sharpens the next.

Read vertically, the four lines describe causation. A preference for distant schemes produces excessive labor. Excessive labor creates resentment. Territorial appetite then leaves the polity desolate. The reverse chain begins with nearby duties, proceeds through sustainable rule and loyalty, and ends in strength.

Because the sequence is compressed, it should not be mistaken for a statistical law. Not every territorial acquisition ruins a state, and ease alone does not guarantee loyal officials. The passage supplies a diagnostic pattern: compare the object sought, the burdens imposed, and the capacity left afterward.

What the passage leaves unmeasured

The excerpt provides no threshold at which distant planning becomes excessive. It does not say how large a state should be, what taxes count as laborious, or how quickly virtue can be enlarged. Those judgments require evidence beyond these lines.

It also does not prove that moral reputation alone defeats military threats. Strength here belongs to a wider argument about government. Armies, defenses, and resources remain material necessities; the maxim asks whether policy preserves or erodes the human order that uses them.

Most importantly, “ease” is not permission for officials to avoid responsibility. The paired term is completion. Government is easy in the favorable sense when it completes necessary work without multiplying pointless burdens.

Strength begins with what is already entrusted to you

The Lower Strategy refuses the glamour of distance. Distant land can be imagined before nearby institutions are repaired. Expansion can be announced before the costs are visible. The passage brings the judgment back to the people and duties already present.

Its test is economical. Does the policy finish anything? Does it produce loyal service or resentment? Does the state become stronger after pursuing its object, or merely larger and more desolate? These questions join moral language to administrative consequence.

To enlarge virtue is not to retreat from power. It is to build the kind of power that does not consume its own base. The nearby task is first because every distant result must pass through it.

Source

Three Strategies (三略), Lower Strategy (下略), the passage beginning 釋近謀遠者. The Chinese was checked against Waseda University Library’s Hyōdai Bukei Shichisho Zenbun, corrected by Wang Huan and printed by Bunkindō in Kōka 3 (1846), call number イ13 00931. The Three Strategies occupies book six; the selected passage appears in book four’s scan sequence, image 70.