{"id":13053,"date":"2020-10-18T14:26:17","date_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=13053"},"modified":"2021-10-17T22:15:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T02:15:23","slug":"principle-and-action-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=13053","title":{"rendered":"Principle and Action 12"},"content":{"rendered":"

← Chapter 11<\/a>  Chapter 13 →<\/a><\/p>\n

Chapter 12<\/h2>\n

The vision of colors blinds men\u2019s eyes
\nThe perception of sounds deafens the ears
\nThe taste of flavors dulls the mouth
\nIdentifying in action darkens the mind
\nPrurient desire destroys the possibility of motion (being tied to the desired object)
\nTherefore: the True Man
\nDoes not lose the I in the not-I
\nHe keeps out of the exterior, he consists in the interior.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aphorisms with possible initiatic significance, in relation to the discipline of avoiding the duress of impressions of the external world (see, also, the \u201cclosing of the gate\u201d) so that to develop a subtle sensibility (that, which in the first lines is said to be muffled or prevented) and to consolidate inner freedom, so that it is equivalent to a gradual movement of the center from the level of the\u00a0p\u2019o<\/em>\u00a0soul to that of the\u00a0hun<\/em>\u00a0soul. It is indeed Taoist teaching that the natural use of the senses can be detrimental, when it is a question of protecting and preserving intact the \u201coriginal simplicity\u201d (p\u2019u<\/em>): the bursting of the multiplicity of sense appearances into the mind.<\/p>\n

As an example of the distance, in the Chinese text, between the literal meaning of the characters and their abstract meaning: literally the penultimate line would sound more or less like this: \u201cThe True Man is for the belly and not for the eye\u201d. If it is that the eye is considered as the gate through which the external world penetrates into the I, it alters it and transports it, muffling the inner senses, while the belly is taken as the \u201cempty\u201d part of the body, therefore, transposing (according to the ideas espoused in the preceding chapter), to symbols of the essential and transcendent part of the human being.<\/p>\n

The preeminence of the belly over the eye therefore signifies that the True Man does not lose himself in the world that is revealed to the eye, i.e., in the outer world, in the not-I. Something generally unknown in the West, obesity, the \u201cgreat belly\u201d with which \u201cImmortals\u201d and Taoist sages, but also certain Chinese and Japanese Buddhas, were often portrayed, has a symbolic character based on the idea just explained: it alludes to the development that has precisely the \u201cempty\u201d principle in such beings, or the dimension of \u201cemptiness\u201d — the immaterial or transcendent element. The lower belly — in Japanese: hara. On its significance of the center in Japanese esoteric schools existing to this day, see K. Durckheim,\u00a0Hara, Vital center of man according to Zen<\/em>\u00a0and its problems that are connected there in our essay: The Japanese Hara-theory in its Relation to East and West (in East and West, number 2, 1958).<\/p>\n

Chinese text and literal translation<\/h2>\n

Chapter 12 (\u7b2c\u5341\u4e8c\u7ae0)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n\u4e94\u8272\u4ee4\u4eba\u76ee\u76f2\uff0c
\n\u4e94\u97f3\u4ee4\u4eba\u8033\u807e\uff0c
\n\u4e94\u5473\u4ee4\u4eba\u53e3\u723d\uff0c
\n\u99b3\u9a01\u754b\u7375\u4ee4\u4eba\u5fc3\u767c\u72c2\uff0c
\n\u96e3\u5f97\u4e4b\u8ca8\u4ee4\u4eba\u884c\u59a8\u3002
\n\u662f\u4ee5\u8056\u4eba\u70ba\u8179\u4e0d\u70ba\u76ee\uff0c
\n\u6545\u53bb\u5f7c\u53d6\u6b64\u3002
\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n
\n
\nThe beautiful colors blind people’s eyes,
\nThe appealing music stun people’s ears
\nThe delicious flavors make people’s mouth numb,
\nTo indulge in hunting makes people’s heart wild,
\nTo pursue rare treasures makes people’s behavior improper.
\nSo, as the sage attends to the inner world, not the outer world,
\nThrow away the latter and adopt the former.\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The preeminence of the belly over the eye signifies that the True Man does not lose himself in the world that is revealed to the eye, i.e., in the outer world, in the not-I. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":227,"featured_media":12826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1266],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tao-te-ching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13053"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15100,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13053\/revisions\/15100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}