知足 (Zhī zú) — Knowing You Have Enough

Say "jr dzoo." A lock-note: one recurring phrase, one settled rendering, so it stops drifting.

The characters. 知 (zhī) = to know, to recognize. 足 (zú) is a picture of a foot — the lower leg and foot — and its first meaning is exactly that: foot, leg. The very same character also, from very early, means "enough, sufficient, ample." We won't pretend the bridge between the two senses is settled, but the resonance is worth keeping: your foot is what you stand on — your footing, your ground. To have 足 is to have ground enough to stand. So 知足 — "know-enough" — is, almost literally, knowing the ground under you is already enough to stand on. Contentment as sound footing, not as resignation.

The lock. Render 足 as "enough" — plain, concrete, unstuffy — and 知足 as "knowing you have enough." Where a line needs a noun for the inner state, use "contentment." That is the whole rule: the plain verb is enough, the state-noun is contentment, and nothing else. Retire "sufficiency" (stiff), "fulfilled" (drifts — it slipped into Ch 33), and "satisfaction" (too psychological). Two faces of one plain word.

How it reads, locked, across the book:

• Ch 33 — 知足者富 → "Those who know they have enough are rich." (contentment as the only durable wealth)
• Ch 44 — 知足不辱 → "Know when you have enough, and you are never disgraced."
• Ch 46 — 禍莫大於不知足 → "no greater disaster than not knowing when you have enough"; and the triple-足 close, 知足之足常足矣 → "the contentment of knowing you have enough is contentment forever" — the plain verb and the state-noun working together to echo the original's three hammered 足.

Don't confuse it with its sibling. 知足 travels beside 知止 (knowing when to stop, Ch 32 & 44). They rhyme but they are not the same: 知足 is about having — being at peace with what you already hold; 知止 is about *doing — halting the action before it overreaches. *Enough, and stop. Keep them distinct in English, too.