"The people starve because the ruler eats too much tax-grain.
Therefore they starve.
They are difficult to rule because their ruler does too many things.
Therefore they are difficult to rule.
The people take death lightly because their ruler strives for life too vigorously.
Therefore they take death lightly.
It is only those who do not seek after life that excel in making life valuable."
(Tao Te Ching, 75)
Evidently, as we are to examine such text, we can somehow see that things that makes the life of the people unpleasing (starving, difficult to be handle with, acceptance of death, etc.) is the ruler himself. If the ruler consumes too much, the people will be hungry. If the ruler has so many concerns rather than his people, the people will go wild because of the lack of attention given to them by the ruler. If the ruler is so busy living out his life happily, with all the rapture and blissfulness etc., the people will see that they are to embrace death. They are not to look and see the beauty of life anymore, rather they wish to die as a good thing for them to rest and be peaceful.
But the last line turned the table, as it described the ruler, who lives a magnificent life; a life that is "too good to be true", indeed a very great life! is somehow the one who happened to be described as the person "who does not seek after life". It's like the man of a very happy life is actually not looking forward to the life itself; such one doesn't really see the very essence of life. So are we saying that to starve, to be reckless, and to be a death-lover are the things that makes up life? The point is, the people who suffer first will actually look for the good. If one sees he/she is oppressed, such one will sick out for freedom, etc. And in looking for the good, one seeks; such one searches, examines life from every nuke and cranny, seeing that the very purpose of his/her life lies not in attaining what is to be searched, but in searching what is to be attained. And if one, just like the ruler, sees that he/she already attained well enough, he loses the very beauty of life as a search, therefore, is living a worthless life. Yes, they may appear to excel, to succeed for now, but actually they didn't. They thought that they already know it, but actually they didn't. Therefore, in other words, life is inverse, and we must never alter it: For what may appear to us as 'this', is actually 'that'. We perceive such as such, but actually is not.
Therefore, we can say that it is not clearly of the "ruler" character that makes bad, but rather the character, which perhaps most of the rulers have, of not seeing life as what it really is, which lies, not only on mere perfect happiness, but of happiness that is rooted from something that is not to be happy about. As how Vince Lombardi said: "The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall".
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