Chapter 3
By esteeming in excess
Conflict is provoked [in reaction]
Emphasizing what is rare to possess
Creates guilty desire for appropriation
It weakens that which, in things, attracts
And the soul will remain calm
Thus: the True Man acting as leader
Moves without preference and appetites
He weakens his impulses [the man of desire, the physical I], tempers his inner being [his bones]
Without a [exterior] knowing and without desires the guides the ten thousand beings
He confuses those who know
He avoids acting [centered in the Self]
And society will always live free in its order
Commentary
Some translators have rendered the line “the sheng jen without knowing or desiring to guide the people” with “the sheng jen ensures that the people have neither knowledge nor will”. In order to ignore the symbolic valence of the respective characters, in a modern Chinese translation the “without preference or appetites” then becomes “the real man empties his heart and fills his belly”!!! Along the same line, there are among sinologists those who have even interpreted the rule contained in these lines as “stupefying the people” (the 10 thousand beings) on the one hand and, on the other, as “repressing the most nobly human in heart and will (hsin e chih) and coaxing instead the most vulgarly bestial part — belly and bones (fu e ku).”
The internal logic of the whole chapter corroborates instead the lesson here adopted. Non-knowing and non-desiring (in the sense of discursive knowing and the desiring of the individual) are the traits repeatedly attributed to the True Man of the Tao Te Ching which in him are virtues insofar as they would be the opposite in laymen and the common people, that is, insofar as they would be unattainable (if taken in the positive sense, as virtue).
In other chapters it is said, yes to the utility of keeping the people in ignorance that safeguards their original simplicity (something different from “stupefying”). But for now, it alludes instead to a propitiatory desaturation of size and a distancing of tensions and disordered appetites (first lines of the chapter). As was said, one thinks that with his sole presence the True Man acts in such a direction over the environment, nurturing an ordered spontaneity in social life.
Chinese text and literal translation
Chapter 3 (第三章)
|
不尙賢， |
Not to quest for wealth |
“Someone who keeps on going from the shade into the sun and then back into the shade is a fool. A wise man stays permanently in the shade.” Sri Ramana Maharshi