mouse quoted Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin
No other English translation of this greatest of the Chinese classics can match Ursula Le …
To be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear. To take the body seriously is to admit one can suffer.
What does that mean, to be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear? Favor debases: we fear to lose it, fear to win it. So to be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear.
What does that mean, to take the body seriously is to admit one can suffer? I suffer because I'm a body; if I weren't a body, how could I suffer?
— Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin, Laozi (Page 16)
The final stanza relates this to the public good and body politic, but I like these bits on their own as well