Chapter 12: The Senses
The Tao Te Ching: Warnings and Invitations
The five colors blind the eyes of man;
The five musical notes deafen the ears of man;
The five flavors dull the taste of man;
Horse-racing, hunting and chasing madden the minds of man;
Rare, valuable goods keep their owners awake at night.Therefore the Sage:
Provides for the belly and not for the eye.
Hence, he rejects the one and accepts the other.
There is a difference between being fed and being nourished. Most of us stopped noticing when the two came apart.
The belly Laotse is speaking of is not the stomach. Lin Yutang is precise about this. The belly is the inner self. The instinctive. The original nature that arrived before the categories did. The eye is the external self. The part that was shaped to want what the culture displays, to see what the culture points at, to hear what the culture values, to hunger for what the culture has placed before it.
We have been feeding the eye since birth. We did not choose this. The colors were handed to us before we could see. The notes entered us before we could hear. The flavors shaped us before we could taste. The things worth wanting were placed before us before we understood what wanting was. When beauty was defined ugliness stepped into existence alongside it. Defined for us by someone else. The categories arrived and direct experiences disappeared behind them.
