Chapter 32, Part 1A - Chuang Tzu

Lieh Yu-K'ou was going to Ch'i, but halfway there he turned around and came home. By chance he met Po-hun Wu-jen. "What made you turn around and come back?" asked Po-hun Wu-jen.

"I was scared."

"Why were you scared?"

"I stopped to eat at ten soup stalls along the way, and at five of them they served me soup ahead of everybody else!"

"What was so scary about that?" said Po-hun Wu-jen.

"If you can't dispel the sincerity inside you, it oozes out of the body and forms a radiance that, once outside, overpowers men's minds and makes them careless of how they treat their own superiors and old people. And it's from this kind of confusion that trouble comes.

"The soup sellers have nothing but their broths to peddle and their margin of gain can't be very large. If people with such skimpy profits and so little power still treat me like this, then what would it be like with the ruler of Ch'i, the lord of a state of ten thousand chariots? Body wearied by the burden of such a state, wisdom exhausted in its administration, he would want to shift his affairs onto me and make me work out some solution - that was what scared me!"

"You sized it up very well," said Po-hun Wu-jen. "But even if you stay at home, people are going to flock around you."
~ Burton Watson translation via Terebess Asia Online ~

Go here to read the introductory post to the chapters of the Book of Chuang Tzu.