We come into life, we go into death.
About a third are disciples of life
A third are disciples of death
And a third don’t know if they’re dead or alive.
Truly 5
This happens from trying to live life too much.
It is said that those who excel at sustaining life
Travel far and are not harmed by rhinos or tigers
Stride onto battlefields without weapons or armor.
Rhinos find no place in them to thrust their horns. 10
Tigers find no place in them to fix their claws.
Soldiers find no place in them to jab their swords.
Truly
This happens because they have no place in them for death.
***
NOTES
lines 2–4, a third: The original Chinese is ambiguous here: Laozi’s thrice-repeated phrase shi you san can be interpreted as “three in ten” or as “ten plus three” (i.e., thirteen). I have gone with the former interpretation, which seemed more appropriate to this statement of three discipleships (and in keeping with the three types of students described in poem 41), rather than an unexplained insistence on the number thirteen.
line 6, trying to live life too much: This concern also appears, slightly modified, in poem 75.
COMMENTARY
Laozi recommends being serious about death in poem 80; death is also discussed seriously in poems 74, 75, and 76. Here in poem 50, Laozi’s concern is not who lives and who dies, but who serves life and who serves death. Because everyone lives and everyone dies, but not everyone serves life – or serves death either, for that matter; a certain level of awareness is required first, and not everyone is there yet. What’s holding those people back is an eagerness to live life too much – or as poem 9 describes, to flood the cup and strain the bow. In a reference to the longevity and the protection afforded by following Dao, Laozi points out that those who excel at sustaining life have lost their sense of death as non-life – that’s what unity can do for you (see Introduction section IV.8). Death cannot intrude upon them because they no longer carry it within themselves, the way most of us do.
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 