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Tao Te Ching · 13 of 81

Chapter 13

Favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared; honour and great calamity, to be regarded as personal conditions (of the same kind).

What is meant by speaking thus of favour and disgrace? Disgrace is being in a low position (after the enjoyment of favour). The getting that (favour) leads to the apprehension (of losing it), and the losing it leads to the fear of (still greater calamity):—this is what is meant by saying that favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared.

And what is meant by saying that honour and great calamity are to be (similarly) regarded as personal conditions? What makes me liable to great calamity is my having the body (which I call myself); if I had not the body, what great calamity could come to me?

Therefore he who would administer the kingdom, honouring it as he honours his own person, may be employed to govern it, and he who would administer it with the love which he bears to his own person may be entrusted with it.

Asked of Guide

Why does Lao Tzu say favour and disgrace should be equally feared?

Lao Tzu points out that favour contains the seed of disgrace because enjoying favour makes you anxious about losing it, and losing it leads to fear of greater calamity. He treats honour and calamity as conditions tied to having a body: “What makes me liable to great calamity is my having the body (which I call myself).”

That is why a ruler who governs with the same care he gives his own person can be entrusted with the kingdom: concern for the whole flows from concern for the self. This echoes Chuang Tzu’s insistence on limits to description and the unity behind apparent opposites in Taoist thought.

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Echoes elsewhere

Chuang Tzu · Taoismit cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One. 2. Its upper part is not bright, and its lower part is not obscure. Ceaseless in Mysticism, Christian and Buddhist · Buddhismsubtle. No one can measure these three to their ultimate ends, Therefore they are fused to one. It is up, but it is not brightened; It is down, but it is not obscured. It stretches Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought · Esotericexpressed in words is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name.t+ Tao eludes the sense of sight, and is therefore called colorless. It eludes the The Six Books of Proclus on the Theology of Plato · Neoplatonismto it; and we also attempt through the same things to give a name to that which is ineffable. This principle, however, is neither known by beings, nor is effable by any one of all