Translation
The five colors make people’s eyes blind,
The five sounds make people’s ears deaf,
The five taste make people’s mouths brittle,
Rushed hunting make people’s hearts go crazy.
Goods hard to come by make people behave harmfully.
Because of this, the wise person acts for the belly, not the eye,
Hence, he leaves that and takes this.
1) five color (look; expression) command (order; make; cause) human (man; people) eye (item; look) blind, 五色令人目盲，(wŭ sè lìng rén mù máng,)
2) five sound (news; tidings; tone) command (order; make; cause) human (man; people) ear (on both sides) deaf, 五音令人耳聋，(wŭ yīn lìng rén ĕr long,)
3) five taste (flavor; smell) command (order; make; cause) human (man; people) mouth (opening; entrance) bright (clear; brittle, frank), 五味令人口爽，(wŭ wèi lìng rén kŏu shuăng,)
4) gallop to hunt (cultivate land) hunt command (order; make; cause) human (man; people) heart (mind; feeling; intention; core) issue (deliver) go crazy, 驰骋畋猎令人心发狂，(chí chĕng tián liè lìng rén xīn fā kuáng,)
5) hard to come by (rare) of goods (commodity; money) command (order; make; cause) human (man; people) go (prevail;; circulate; do) hinder (harm). 难得之货令人行妨。(nán dé zhī huò lìng rén xíng fang.)
6) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) sage (holy; sacred) human (man; people), do (act; serve as; become; be) belly (abdomen; stomach) no (not) do (act; serve as; become; be) eye (item; look), 是以圣人，为腹不为目，(shì yĭ shèng rén, wéi fù bù wéi mù,)
7) incident (happening; reason; hence) go (leave; remove) that (those; the other; another) take (get; seek; adopt) this. 故去彼取此。(gù qù bĭ qŭ cĭ.)
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
Corrections?
None this time.
Reflections:
The five colors make people’s eyes blind.
The five sounds make people’s ears deaf.
The five tastes make people’s mouths brittle.
The end of the previous chapter [11], Hence, of having what is thought favorable, of the nothing think as the useful, supports the deaf and blind concern addressed here. When we focus on a narrow set of ‘favorables’, it blinds and deafens us to what lies beyond those favorites. Think of the horse fitted with blinders, i.e, Blinkers. Our ‘favorables’ become our ‘blinkers’.
The end of chapter 16 speaks to this bias of focus issue.
Impartial therefore whole, whole therefore natural,
Natural therefore the way.
The way therefore long enduring, nearly rising beyond oneself.
You can’t “nearly rise beyond oneself” when your self is cleaving tightly to its preferred things. This takes us back to Buddha’s Second Noble Truth, which says in part, “The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things”. This hints at the difficulty of freeing oneself from one’s “cleaving” to favorites.
Rushed hunting makes people’s hearts go crazy.
Goods hard to come by make people behave harmfully.
Buddha’s Second Truth also shows why we eagerly pursue Goods hard to come by. Such valuables bolster our need to preserve or enhance the illusion of self. Possessing goods hard to come by imparts the illusion that “I” the self, the ego, is particularly real and important. Oh, and by the way, goods hard to come by are both physical and mental.
It is all part of the hierarchical framework we now exist under, yet from which we desperately wish to free ourselves. The difficulty of cleaving less, or letting go of goods hard to come by, is that it comes down to feeling like virtual suicide. Simply put, cleaving less diminishes the illusion of self. We can’t just let go because Self insists on being – it’s the primal survival imperative. So we compromise and let go in ways in which we are able: charity, helping others, exercise, for example. We make ‘sacrifices’ where we can. (See The Tradeoff for more on the hierarchical framework we now exist under)
Because of this, the wise person acts for the belly, not the eye. This line points out the clear difference between practical survival need (belly) and desires (eye)… Need + thought = desire. Naturally, this brings to mind the problem chapter 71 points out… The disease of not realizing we don’t know. Thoughts feel so real, and we trust them implicitly from the moment we are able to form them. We believe what we think, think what we believe, and thus we easily ‘act for the eye, not the belly’.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this. For me that means, leave my trust in thought and take (accept) the organic need. More than anything else, that helps me act for the belly, not the eye.
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
I added an ‘s’ to taste, make, and heart on line 3 and 4, and changed some commas to periods.
Commentary:
The first three lines of this chapter parallel Buddha’s 2nd Truth where he points out, “…The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things. The desire to live for the enjoyment of self entangles us in a net of sorrows. Pleasures are the bait and the result is pain“. By “cleaving” to our personal aesthetic preferences(1) (color, music, food), we boost the illusion of self. This boomerangs… in that what we possess, possesses us in return. Narrowing the senses to prefer only what is pleasurable soon locks us into that pleasure… “and the result is pain”.
Naturally, all this only makes sense if you truly know what Buddha is saying. If not, then this chapter must surely falls on deaf ears. I mean, who doesn’t want goods hard to come by, or rushed hunting—or rather, in the modern context: shopping, eating, browsing the Internet.
In reading D.C. Lau’s translation, this good hard to come by serve to hinder his progress part stood out. What is the progress we “hinder”? To answer that, I have to ask myself what is my life’s core purpose. I’d say my ideal destination, from a Taoist point of view, is contentment… Being content is wealth and Knowing contentment, never dishonorable. Now, this doesn’t sound very virtuous at first, until you realize that finding contentment is the core biological imperative of all living things. We just err in its execution.
Much of youth is spent ‘hunting and gathering’, often rushed hunting (often felt as having fun), to find contentment. Views offered in scripture, like this one, originate ‘in the final analysis’ of countless generations of folk approaching the end of life. Nevertheless, youth cannot just flip some internal bio-switch and act for the belly, not the eye. Nor can they be truly taught, much to our chagrin. It evolves in a natural process alluded to in chapter 36,
Wisdom and graced are not learned, they are earned through suffering that “living for the enjoyment of self” inevitably brings. We can understand that this is true—that is the learning part. But, we earn the ‘gut’ knowing through our failure find happiness through pleasure, i.e., We only truly understand what we ‘gut’ know.
Acting for the belly, not the eye is finding in the present moment what others spend their lives hunting for. Acting for the eye is very much a function of our imagination, which often leads to difficulty, i.e., Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is dis-ease.
Suggested Revision:
The five colors make people’s eyes blind.
The five sounds make people’s ears deaf.
The five tastes make people’s mouths brittle.
Rushed hunting makes people’s hearts go crazy.
Goods hard to come by make people behave harmfully.
Because of this, the wise person acts for the belly, not the eye.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this.
(1) Clinging to aesthetic preferences runs counter to impartiality. Naturally, basic biology guarantees we will feel preferences in most every aspect of life… to a degree! It is in the degree that this comes back to bite us. Greater impartiality helps avoid that nasty boomerang effect of our actions.
Note: Rash actions and rushed hunting have much in common.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
Our mind’s eye gives us a superior ability to solve problems. Ironically, the source of some of our greatest problems originates in our mind’s eye! Our expectations channel what we expect to see; our expectations drive what we think we see. Like a horse wearing blinders to avoid being spooked by things moving in its peripheral vision, conforming to cultural norms helps us avoid being spooked by what exists ‘outside the box’.
This is no accident. Cultural ‘blinders’ are vital for large populations of people to maintain group identity, a sense of shared cultural connection. All the blind, deaf, hobbled and crazy effects are the price we pay (the tradeoff , the unintended consequences). Of course, this results in some ‘positive’ feedback. In other words, the blind, deaf, hobbled and crazy effects we feel often narrow our cultural blinders even further. We become neurotic. To undo that damage, the wise person acts for the belly, not the eye.
Acting for the belly, however, need not mean renouncing those tastes, colors, sounds, goods hard to come by, etc. These are actually symptoms rather than causes. Why we desire the tastes, colors, sounds, goods hard to come by is the deeper question.
Again, we feel safer in the solidarity shared norms make possible. This physiological culture fortress keeps the wilderness at bay, initially. The downside of any fortress is that it also serves as an excellent prison. The final irony: The more we want to escape its walls, the higher the walls become. Bottom line: it is having too many desires for the safety and comfort that these five promise, that become the prison. Escape is simple: Therefore the sage desires not to desire, And does not value goods which are hard to come by.
Now, this begs the question, how? As they say, nature abhors a vacuum. You can’t just rid yourself of desires, now can you? You must replace the five tastes, colors, sounds, goods hard to come by with ‘something else’. Alas, only by letting go of what we cling to, can make room for that ‘something else’ for which we yearn. Usually our life’s circumstances bring about the weakness and the loss required to make room. In the meantime there is always this: I do my utmost to attain emptiness.