Glory and disgrace, both generate fear.
Honor and distress, both are body issues.
What do I mean by
Glory and disgrace, both generate fear?
You become a slave to whoever can give them to you. 5
Getting them makes you fearful.
Losing them makes you fearful.
That’s what I mean by
Glory and disgrace, both generate fear.
What do I mean by 10
Honor and distress, both are body issues?
I suffer distress because I have a body.
Without a body, what distress could I suffer?
Therefore
If you honor your body 15
The world will know to trust you with the world.
If you love your body
The world will know you can care for the world.
***
NOTES
lines 2 and 11, body issues: More literally, “seem to be the body.”
COMMENTARY
Despite its concerns with the body, the first line of poem 13 points out an equivalency between glory and disgrace. This perception looks directly ahead to our own time more than two thousand years later, when a distinction between fame and notoriety no longer exists. All we have now is celebrity of one form or another, and all its forms generate fear – our celebrities have bodyguards for a reason.
In line 3 Laozi introduces the first person into poem 13, which is entirely appropriate considering his focus on attitudes toward the body – yes, I have one too, the poet is telling you. But while you are addressed in lines 5–7, which answer the question about fear, it is the first person in lines 12 and 13 answering the question about body issues. Along with adding urgency and immediacy, saying “I” also enables Laozi to question himself – What do I mean? – in a manner that recalls the A&Q session of poem 10, here enhanced into A&Q&A.
By raising honor and distress within the greater context of the body, Laozi is making an urgent call for us to get serious about real things, to stop filling the eye and start filling the stomach, as poem 12 tells us Sages do. Because the only people who can be trusted to care for the world are the ones who are serious about real things like their bodies, not poll numbers or media coverage.
Links To:
The Classic of Dao and De by Laozi: Contents
For more on Daoism, see:
Film Dreams: Frank Capra
Music: KALW Radio Show #3, Ancient China in 20th-Century Music
Music: SFCR Radio Show #8, Daoism in Western Music, part 1
Music: SFCR Radio Show #9, Daoism in Western Music, part 2
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 