In a world that has Dao
Rather than race horses
People use them to haul dirt and dung.
In a world without Dao
Cavalries raise horses 5
Among the sacred mounds of our fields.
No calamity is greater
Than not knowing when you have enough.
No catastrophe is greater
Than always wanting more for yourself. 10
Knowing when enough is enough is always enough!
***
NOTES
line 10: More literally, “Than wanting to obtain.”
COMMENTARY
Through the treatment of animals Laozi draws a distinction between those who follow Dao and those who ignore it. When you follow Dao, domesticated animals are raised and tended to help get work done, but you have no interest in speculating with them or endangering them – speculating with or endangering any resource, for that matter, you let the jade sleep in the mountain rather than mine it. In following Dao a kind of natural innocence takes over (which relates to its rejuvenating capacities); whereas, in a world without Dao, gambling becomes the least of your vices when you have aggressiveness, self-interest, and irreverence leading you far astray. That cannot happen if you know yourself, and as poem 44 asserts, you know yourself by knowing what you don’t need, knowing when to stop. Our films have classic heavies who cannot but want: Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo, the gangster who wants more; John Huston in Chinatown, the patriarch who wants the future. Their insatiable wanting is what makes them ogres, and calamity and catastrophe invariably descend when people want like that. Hence Laozi’s closing admonition, in the so-nice-I’ll-say-it-thrice vein he also uses in poems 1 and 38.
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 