Tao Te Ching Ch. 13: The Weight of Success and

Lao Tzu

The Weight of Success and Failure

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Summary

Lao Tzu opens with a paradox that unsettles anyone who has ever chased approval. Favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared. Honour and great calamity are to be regarded as personal conditions of the same kind. At first the claim sounds strange: why fear success and failure alike? Lao Tzu is not dismissing achievement. He is naming how tightly status can bind the self.

He explains favour and disgrace first. Disgrace is being in a low position after the enjoyment of favour. Getting that favour leads to apprehension of losing it. Losing it leads to fear of still greater calamity. Then he turns to honour and calamity as personal conditions. What makes one liable to great calamity is having the body which I call myself. Without that rigid self-clinging, what great calamity could come?

Therefore he who would administer the kingdom, honouring it as he honours his own person, may be employed to govern it. He who would administer it with the love he bears to his own person may be entrusted with it. Lao Tzu closes with a test of fit leadership: treat what you govern with the same seriousness you give your own wellbeing, not as a stage for ego.

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Why This Matters

Detecting Identity Traps

Winning favour can cost as much peace as losing it. Lao Tzu says getting favour leads to fear of losing it, losing it leads to fear of greater calamity, and great calamity ties to having the body which I call myself.

When praise or blame lands, ask whether you are protecting your role or clinging to your image.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: The body called myself

Getting favour leads to fear of losing it, but the sharper claim is that great calamity comes from having the body he calls himself. The self is the surface on which disgrace can land. He who would govern must honour the kingdom as he honours that same exposed person.

Continue this thoughtFavour and Disgrace Are One Fear

Coming Up in Chapter 14

We look and do not see it, listen and do not hear it, try to grasp it and cannot hold it. Next Lao Tzu names what escapes every sense the Equable, the Inaudible, the Subtle and blends them into The One.

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Original text

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Chapter 13

The Weight of Success and Failure

13.1. Favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared; honour and great calamity, to be regarded as personal conditions (of the same kind). 2. What is meant by speaking thus of favour and disgrace? Disgrace is being in a low position (after the enjoyment of favour). The getting that (favour) leads to the apprehension (of losing it), and the losing it leads to the fear of (still greater calamity):—this is what is meant by saying that favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared. And what is meant by saying that honour and great calamity are to…

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The Weight of Success and Failure

Summary

Why This Matters