Tao Te Ching XII

The five colors make man’s eyes blind.

The five notes make his ears deaf.

The five tastes injure his palate.

Riding and hunting make his mind go wild with excitement.

Goods hard to come by serve to hinder his progress.

Hence the sage is for the belly not for the eye.

Therefore she discards the one and takes the other.

Theology, philosophy, religion, art, science, technology, and the industries of knowledge are for the eye.  What is typically most valued and named civilization and culture is attributed to the eye.  The eye looks at nature, dislikes its stranglehold over humanity, objects to death, its myriad tentacles, and attempts, through physical or mental means, to overcome, transcend, or limit nature’s hold:  to become an eye which looks at nature, a disembodied eye—part of no body—that looks critically at nature and analyzes it as if it were something other than itself.

Civilization draws a historical, ontological, and progressive line from the belly to the eye.  It treats the belly cruelly, sentimentally, as if it had no knowledge of it.  But all funds and fame flow to the eye.

The Tao, however, draws a circle from the belly to the eye to the belly.  For the Tao includes the eye, but the eye of nature which does not say no to nature but yes.

The sage is called to have the Tao’s eye.  Most eyes try to destroy nature.  Thus the sage is for the belly for the people—whose eyes are partial, destructive, infantile, and grasping—but she is for the circle for all.