Translation: Tao Te King – Chapter 13. Stopping from falling to low places

#buythebook #ISBN 951-8995-01-X
#buythebook #ISBN 951-8995-01-X

Chapter 13. Stopping from falling to low places

Honor and shame are equally frightening.
Happiness and unhappiness are to do with the bodily personality.
This is what is said of honor and shame: Shame is humiliation that is feared be it near or far.
Thus honor and shame cannot be separated from the fear that they both evoke.
This is what is said of happiness and unhappiness: they deal only with the bodily personality and only through it they are manifested.
For how could I without a body suffer unhappiness or it’s opposite?
This is why with good luck may man rule the world for a while.

But with the power of love he may rule the world forever.


This translation is kindly authorized by the rights holders, Ruusu-Ristin Kirjallisuusseura Association, to Pekka Ervast’s 1925 translation to Finnish from western sources readable to him. All the English versions I have seen are not much good so I took the task to translate Pekka’s translation.

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