dao de jing xiii

favour and disgrace are like being startled

honour is a great trouble like your body

what is meant by saying that favour and disgrace are like being startled?

favour being that which when bestowed on a subject serves to startle as much as when withdrawn

this is what is meant by saying that favour and disgrace are like being startled

what is meant by saying that honour is a great trouble like your 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 one who values putting its person in order more than putting the empire in order can be given the custody of the empire

one who grudges using its person for putting the empire in order can be entrusted with the empire.

dear thirteens,

this is the initial wellness that we ran away from for a false wellness. neither spa nor gym, personal fitness coach nor metime advocate. not to support a career or lifestyle or advancement or relationship

these cycles of winners and losers, ruling and being ruled are for a humanity that only knows how to abuse its gifts, destroy its value, exterminate life, treat death lightly. another humanity hides in this one and in this age when a warring and consumptive destruction pervades normalized societal structures and rituals, who would uncover itself?

this putting its person in order is of a different order than the orders given us in our homes and schools and workplaces and medias and bedrooms. but hardly one absent from the world – it is most present if we would stop and listen to our myriad peers (few of them human) in life – yet one we have violently suppressed to serve our appetites for extinction

oh human who cannot be entrusted with the empire. oh human who lusts after influence, who believes its voice is innately and rationally superior. oh human who has senses and consciousness and does not use them except for its own extension and comfort and obesity. what are you doing on earth and why are you asserting your rights when you have not shown yourself worthy of honour or your body or the empire or trust or life?