There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition;For me, the taproot of the four passages above is selfishness. When we want things for ourselves at the exclusion of anyone else, we set ourselves up to play the role of a god. In our own minds, we are the hub of the wheel of life.
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~
There is no greater sin than desire,
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~
There is no crime greater than greed
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~
Nothing is more insidious than possession.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.
As "Line 5" you seem to have conflated three actual lines which talk about the sin of desire, the misfortune of discontent and the fault of greed, although certainly selfishness, or as my teacher would say, the "False Heart," is at play in all of them.
ReplyDeleteAnd continuing in my compulsive copy editing mode, it actually looks line there are really only four lines in this verse anyway.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone interested, here's a nice pinyin concordance with characters:
http://www.wuwei.org/Taoism/taochinese.html
Sometimes I find it frustrating because some of the romanized versions (like Star's) use the old Wade-Giles method.