(Those who) possessed in a lower degree those attributes (sought how) not to lose them, and therefore they did not possess them (in fullest measure).Continuing with the thought from yesterday's Line by Line post, think of a person trying to shore up holes in a dike. The truly virtuous person focuses their complete attention on the matter at hand and simply plugs up all the known holes and any new ones that burst forth.
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~
Low virtue never loses virtue
Therefore it has no virtue
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~
Other people talk about
how much integrity they have,
when they really don't have much.
If any.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
The fool -- that would be most of us -- plugs up some of the holes, while concurrently writing a blog post or press release about our heroic efforts! While we're busily telling the world how wonderful we are, water keeps spilling through the old and new holes we haven't plugged.
In time, the dike fails. However, the great we are never to blame. It's the government or the boss or our sister-in-law!
To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are unmoderated, so you can write whatever you want.