Translation
Name and body, which is intimate.
Body and goods, which is excessive.
Gain and loss, which is defective.
For this reason, the more we love, the greater the cost.
The more we hold on, the deeper the loss.
Knowing contentment, never dishonorable.
Knowing when to stop, never dangerous.
Then you can long endure.
1) name (fame; reputation) take part in (give; offer; grant; support > and; together with) body (life; oneself; personally) who (which; what) parent (close; intimate; oneself). 名与身孰亲。(míng yú shēn shú qīn.)
2) body (life; oneself; personally) take part in (give; offer; grant; support > and; together with) goods (commodity; money; idiot) who (which; what) many (more; excessive). 身与货孰多。(shēn yú huò shú duō.)
3) get (obtain, gain <frml> satisfied, complacent) take part in (give; offer; grant; support > and; together with) flee (lose; be gone; die; subjugate) who (which; what) ill (sick; fault; defect). 得与亡孰病。(dé yú wáng shú bìng.)
4) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) incident (reason; cause; hence) very (extremely; more than) love (like; treasure) certainly (must) big (great) fee (dues; expenses; cost; wasteful). 是故甚爱必大费。(shì gù shén ài bì dà fèi.)
5) much (more; too many; excessive) storing place (hide; conceal; store) certainly (must) thick (deep; kind; large; generous; rich or strong in flavor) flee (lose; be gone; die; subjugate). 多藏必厚亡。(duō cáng bì hòu wáng.)
6) be content with one’s lot no (not) disgrace (dishonor; bring humiliation to; insult). 知足不辱。(zhī zú bù rŭ.)
7) know (realize; tell) stop (to; till; only) no (not) danger (nearly almost). 知止不殆。(zhī zhĭ bù dài.)
8) can (may, pretty good) older (develop_ long; of long duration; regularly; strong point) for a long time (long; of a specified duration). 可以长久。(kĕ yĭ cháng jiŭ.)
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/IkBX1RFojuo is the link to the complete video recording of our monthly Sunday meeting. For the nicely edited version, go to Kirk Garber’s YouTube channel. The edited version comes in two parts: The first and shorter Commentary part begins with a chapter reading followed by attendees’ commentary, if any. The second and longer Open Discussion part offers attendees’ observations on how the chapter relates to their personal experience.
Corrections?
None this time
Reflections
Name and body, which is intimate.
This first line puts forth a straightforward question. Oddly, we certainly have an emotional urge to protect our Name and reputation even as we take our body for granted. Yet for me, body is intimate. I mean, nothing is closer to home to me than my body. Without that, mind has no home. It is my vehicle through life, which is one key motivation behind eating well and daily exercise. At 77, that turns out to be the wisest things I do. (See Giving Your Life a Gift) Fortunately, yoga and taichi have no age limit! See Hatha Yoga: Testing ‘Will’ and T’ai Chi: Flowing Mindfulness if you have yet to find a way to give the gift your precious body needs. Chapter 13 ends with this guidance…
Body and goods, which is excessive.
Despite my earnest attempt to be moderate, goods is certainly excessive. I mean compared to my natural animal state, how could it be otherwise? Realizing the hidden cost of goods, to which line 5 — The more we hold on, the deeper the loss — speaks, helps me think more than twice about any addition to that side of the equation.
Jesus hit the nail on the head when he pointed out, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”. The last sentence here aligns particularly well with Buddha’s 2nd Noble Truth’s The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things.
Note: To appreciate the point Jesus makes here fully may require expanding your interpretation of the word heaven. Heaven is referred to numerous times in the Tao Te Ching… 天 (tiān) sky; heaven; overhead; day; a period of time in a day; season; weather; nature; God; Heaven. For me, the heaven Jesus refers to is nature and sky.
Similarly, the Tao Te Ching sees the problem inherent to goods… especially excessive goods. And in the circumstance modern humans find ourselves, excessive goods describes most every facet of life compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. For more details on our ancestors, see Kung. Chapter 53 offers this all too common and obviously worst case situation…
Naturally, as animals, people are fond of paths. The problem lies in our ability to ‘stock up’ without restraint. Given the chance, we inevitably gorge ourselves way passed the point of natural balance. Chapter 64 offers a way to mitigate the imbalances resulting from excessive goods as well as the issues raised later in lines 3 to 5…
Taking this, the wise person desires non desire,
And does not value difficult to obtain goods.
Naturally, this is more aspirational than realistic in that these pressures arise from the deepest biology of emotion that is outside our rational control (see Free Will: Fact or Wishful Thinking?). Nevertheless, I find that merely being deeply aware of these factors offers me a heads-up in life.
Gain and loss, which is defective.
When reading this line this morning, I found myself seeing both sides of this coin. Consider the various meanings for this line’s characters: 得与亡孰病 (dé yú wáng shú bìn.)
get (obtain, gain, <frml> satisfied, complacent) take part in (give; offer; grant; support > and; together with) flee (lose; be gone; die; subjugate) who (which; what) ill (sick; fault; defect).
Taking the literal meaning of the Chinese, defective swings both ways. First and most obvious, Loss is defective, i.e., flee (lose; be gone; die; subjugate) and ill (sick; fault; defect).
On the other hand, Gain is defective too, i.e., get (obtain, gain, <frml> satisfied, complacent) and ill (sick; fault; defect). Gain is especially defective when considered in the context of line 2 and 5. All in all, circumstances determine which, gain or loss, is defective. Nonetheless, in the wild natural state without civilization, loss is by far the real defective. Only in civilization does gain turn out to have a significant defective side.
Therefore, the more we love, the greater the cost.
The more we hold on, the deeper the loss.
These lines, 4 and 5, call to mind Buddha’s The desire to live for the enjoyment of self entangles us in the net of sorrows. Pleasures are the bait and the result is pain. Of course, knowing The more we hold on, the deeper the loss doesn’t directly allow us to snap our fingers and let go. Ahhhh… if only we had free will 🙂 However, bravely facing up to this truth helps me avoid spending my life seeking out scapegoats for my costs and losses. Knowing the source of my suffering allows me to take more, if not total, responsibility for my life. In that, I find contentment and a deeper sense of when to stop.
Knowing contentment, never dishonorable.
Knowing when to stop, never dangerous.
The idea of Knowing both contentment and when to stop connects directly to the notion of free will. The knowing hinted at here lies viscerally, intuitively, deeper than any intellectual version of the word knowing holds. Chapter 47 and 56 suggest the depth and breadth of a knowing that a sense of profound sameness touches.
It is only from this depth of knowing that doing without doing (wéi wú wéi –为无为 ) takes place, i.e., Doing without doing, following without exception rules.
Then you can long endure.
Yes, I can long endure, when I more closely match the conditions described in the lines above. However, the long endure (长久) feels more like a return to the original self living the eternal moment. Time is no longer the tick tock of a clock, or the dates on a calendar. Long endure is living the flowing moment. Naturally, that is only possible when emotions are calm enough to allow me to, as chapter 16 says, Devote effort to emptiness, sincerely watch stillness. Knowing this is the cheap price I must pay helps. Here are a few chapters that help me remember the stakes …
Meritorious deeds that satisfy oneself recede; This is the way of nature.#9
The way therefore long enduring, nearly rising beyond oneself. #16
He does not see his self for he is honest; he does not exist for he is clear; #22
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/Di8vKoxV3RE
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
Line 1-3: Achieving a bottom-line understanding of the first three lines requires more digging than it may seem at first. These lines compare contrasting things and invite us to evaluate. If you come to this with a preconceived sense of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, it may be easy to pick a winner. Otherwise, it helps to see some of the related synonyms of name, body, and goods.
Name and body, which is intimate.
Míng (名) name; fame; reputation.
Shēn (身) body; life; oneself; personally.
Body and goods, which is excessive.
Shēn (身) body; life; oneself; personally.
Huò (貨) goods; commodity; money; idiot.
Gain and loss, which is defective.
dé (得) get, obtain, gain; result in; <formal> satisfied, <informal> be ready.
wáng (亡) flee; run away; lose; be gone; die; perish; deceased; conquer; subjugate.
Line 4: Today I changed For this reason to the simpler Therefore. Why use three words when one can serve just as well?
Commentary:
First, Name and body, which is intimate, makes a bit more sense than D.C. Lau’s, Your name or your person, Which is dearer? However, it could just be having other word for person and dearer was the key. It helped loosen and broaden context. Anyway, I’ve always interpreted name as meaning the same throughout all the Tao Te Ching chapters, beginning with chapter 1’s The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name.
“…Runs counter to the constant name” makes choosing which is intimate perplexing. Name and body, which is intimate, as seen in the tribal sense simplifies the matter. If name corresponds to tribal group identity and patriotism, then the interpretation can take on a much deeper meaning. In this case, name is intimate, dearer. For example: The spontaneous, instinctive sacrifice a parent will make for a child, a solder in war for buddy—the stuff of heros—is testament to the deep seated intimate characteristic of name, or rather what the word name attempts to symbolize. The social instincts that name (and family) symbolizes play a major role in gossip, shame, and ‘saving face’ emotions.
On the other hand, the Tao Te Ching is very contrarian as chapter 20, shows us:
Also, if name merely refers to one’s ego identity, (i.e., …the illusion of self that originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things) then I see body as more intimate. What is more intimate than our biological reality… were the rubber hits the road. In the end, it all rests upon one’s interpretation.
Therefore, the more we love, the greater the cost, The more we hold on, the deeper the loss parallels Buddha’s Second Truth, the cause of suffering. That to which we cling tightly sews the seeds for our future suffering.
Gain and loss, which is defective is an interesting question. I’ve noticed how wealth (gain) can really have adverse consequences upon the quality life. In the wild, no living creature has wealth for more that a fleeting few seasons. The fundamental purpose of civilization is the natural and understandable urge to maximize comfort and security. Gaining and accumulating wealth plays to central role in that quest. Being a hierarchical social species make any equitable distribution of successful gain far from ‘natural’. This makes our unique human ability to accumulate wealth often maladaptive. We simple don’t have the corresponding ‘wisdom’ to handle the inevitable downside risks.
Just because we are able to accumulate doesn’t mean it is healthy. We don’t have sufficient wisdom to handle the power we have over nature. As Jesus said, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Among other things, wealth often fosters a neurotic mentality, making contentment increasingly difficult to settle into. From a symptoms point of view, the excesses we see in those with wealth make total sense—too much of a good thing, as they say. And more of us than we think count among the wealthy.
Of course, the opposite extremes of poverty and depravation are no picnic either. Humanity occupies both extremes; indeed, doesn’t one create the other. How much is enough? Who can answer that honestly? Biology impels us to pursue more than we need. In the wild, that invariably ends up balanced; the wild pushes back on any natural ‘more is better’ instincts we harbor. Humanity has succeeded in circumventing natural limits. We have also ‘unlearned’ how to exist in the wild. We can’t return to primordial ‘man’, nor have we adapted yet to live in balance with our gains. Humanity is a work in progress. (For other aspects of all this, see Feeding the Worry Gene: Civilization Optimizes Comfort and Security.)
Knowing when to stop, never dangerous… Ah yes, if only. Well, it does get better with age!
Suggested Revision:
Name and body, which is intimate.
Body and goods, which is excessive.
Gain and loss, which is defective.
Therefore, the more we love, the greater the cost.
The more we hold on, the deeper the loss.
Knowing contentment, never dishonorable.
Knowing when to stop, never dangerous.
Then you can long endure.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
For the past 50 years I’ve interpreted this as generally asking me to choose between which of two I prefer. D.C. Lau’s translation may have encouraged that a little. For example, gain or loss, which is a greater bane? That just goes to show how once we begin thinking a certain way, the tendency to continue thinking that way is awfully strong. Thoughts (e.g., ideas, beliefs, opinions, facts, etc.) are just another thing upon which to cleave and cling.
Buddha said, the illusion of self originates and manifests itself in cleaving to things. After that, the survival of our ‘illusion of self’ (ego) gives us an ongoing incentive to cleave to what we think. That sounds like a vicious circle to me. By the way, doesn’t the result of cleaving to what we think construe “I think therefore I am” to mean just the opposite to what Descartes had in mind? Hmm…
Today I saw the light… maybe. Today, anyway, I may be finding a more balanced view of this chapter. The key suggestion being, knowing when to stop. The more we favor either, name or body, body or goods, gain and loss, the more we are setting ourselves up for danger and loss as the fifth line plainly states, The more we hold on, the deeper the loss.
Come to think of it, perhaps the only ‘light’ I see here is this: the loss we suffer is proportional to the degree we hang on. Rather than blame the circumstances that bring about the losses we morn, perhaps it is wiser to acknowledge the actual source of the pain – the more we love, the more we hold on, the deeper the loss. Pain is just the price we pay for pleasure.
The meaning of love and pleasure often co-mingle, as we see here. Love is a word that dances with many meanings. A meaning of love, free from the reproductions stated in this chapter, is easily found through correlations. This ‘truer’ love correlates to: giving, accepting, being patient… and impartiality, stillness, emptiness… the mysterious female… mysterious sameness… contentment… Nothing.