Favor and disgrace are things that startle.
Great trouble is like one’s body.
What is meant by saying that favor and disgrace are things that startle? Favor when it is bestowed on a subject serves to startle as much as when it is withdrawn. This is what is meant by saying that favor and disgrace are things that startle.
What is meant by saying that great trouble is like one’s body? The reason I have great trouble is that I have a body. When I no longer have a body, what trouble do I have?
Hence she who values her body more than dominion over the empire can be entrusted with the empire. She who loves her body more than dominion over the empire can be given the custody of the empire.
The body rages blue against the fat fact of death. It grows calm. Tepid, indolent, against the rage. Then it is back, tumult and heat, biting life and laughing. Calm again. Rage, laughter, insolence, humiliation, exhaustion. Like reputation, fortune, love—the body jerks and spits, and the people cheer and jeer at its constant spasms.
Who would love this? Who would love this more than dominion over the empire—the perfect end to endless dreams?
The one who loves the troubles of her body, who tends the troubles like a steward, who cares more about this tending than the usual ascendant dreams, who is not startled by the rage and withdrawal but paddles on them … she might be the one who should be given power.
This entitlement reverses the world’s normal proclivities, which bestow the empire on those who love dominion more than their bodies. For there are two followers of nature: the apes with words, who climb the thorny ladders of success—or fall—or envy those who do; and the sage, who reclines on water and allows herself to be drawn along its course. The people are her body and her body the people; they are not something to rule but to absorb. This is the government of the way that slips away from names.
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