{"collection":"Taoism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/tao/mt/mt15.htm","path":"tao/mt/mt15.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/tao/mt/mt15.htm","text":"The Tao Teh King: A Short Study in Comparative Religion, by C. Spurgeon Medhurst, [1905]\nThe five colors blind men's eyes. 1\nThe five tones deafen men's ears. 2\nThe five flavors blunt men's appetites. 3\nGalloping and hunting derange men's minds. 4\nArticles which are rare limit the freedom of men's actions. 5\nOn this account the holy man regards the stomach and not the eye. 6\nHe puts aside the one, that he may take the other in hand. 7\nSaid Thomas \u00e0 Kempis in his \"The Imitation of Christ\": \"Fly the tumult of the world as much as thou canst, for we are quickly defiled and enthralled by vanity.\" The five colors blind men's eyes.\n21:1 viz.: Blue, yellow, white, black, red. Tung-tei-ning notes that the more the eyes see the more they desire. Cf. Eccles. i, 8.\n21:2 \"Straus says that the five sounds in old Chinese were, C, D, E, G, A, and that they were the same with the five notes of old Scotch airs. The notes F and B are avoided.\"\u2014China Review, vol. xiii, p. 12.\n21:3) viz.: Sour, salt, sweet, tart, bitter. Cf. Eccles. vi, 7.\n21:4 \"Desire is limitless and the cause of all trouble,\" says Tung-tei-ning. (Cp. ch. 64.)\n21:5 \"Because,\" says Wang-pi, \"they lead men away from the straight path into byways full of obstacles.\"\n21:6 \"The stomach serves, the eye demands service; therefore, the Sage discards the eye,\" is Wang-pi's explanation.\nWu-ch\u2019eng says that when the spirit becomes dyed with the colors of the physical world, and feels impelled to investigate it, even to its frontiers, it loses its balance. It is because it is the eye that is chiefly the cause of this deflection that the chapter begins and ends with a condemnation of that organ.\nSu-ch\u00eah aptly remarks that while the eye covets more than it retains, the stomach desires no more than it requires.\n21:7 Lit.\u2014He withdraws from this and accepts that. Wang-pi sums up the teaching of this seven-fold chapter thus\u2014\"When the p. 22 ears, eyes, mouth and mind are subservient to the soul, all is well; but when it is otherwise, the spontaneity of man's nature is disturbed.\"\nChuang-tzu says: \"A man who plays for counters will play well. If he stake his girdle (in which he keeps his loose cash), he will be nervous; if yellow gold, he will lose his wits. His skill is the same in each case, but he is distracted by the value of his stake. And everyone who attaches importance to the external becomes internally without resource.\" Chuang Tzu, by H. A. Giles, p. 234.\n\"The teaching of Lau-tsze comes here, and in the 13th chapter very near to that of Buddha.\"\u2014J. Edkins, D. D., China Review, vol. xiii, 12,","title":"The Tao Teh King: A Short Study in Comparative Religion: Chapter XII","type":"page"}