Tao Te Ching #13: “Favor and disgrace seem alarming”

Favor and disgrace seem alarming;
high status greatly afflicts your person.
What are favor and disgrace?
Favor is the lower:
get it and you’re surprised,
lose it and you’re startled.
This means favor and disgrace are alarming.
Why does high status greatly affect your person?
The reason we have a lot of trouble
is that we have selves.
If we had no selves,
what troubles would we have?
Therefore those who embody nobility
to act for the sake of the world
seem to be able to draw the world to them,
while those who embody love
to act for the sake of the world
seem to be worthy of the trust of the world.

– Thomas Cleary

 

Favor and disgrace come with a warning
honor and disaster come with a body
why do favor and disgrace come with a warning
favor turns into disfavor
gaining it comes with a warning
losing it comes with a warning
thus do favor and disgrace come with a warning
and why do honor and disaster come with a body
the reason we have disaster
is because we have a body
if we didn’t have a body
we wouldn’t have disaster
thus those who honor their body more than the world
can be entrusted with the world
those who cherish their body more than the world
can be encharged with the world

– Red Pine

 

“At favor (as disgrace) take fright:
Honors to the self bring woe.”
“Explain ‘At favor (as disgrace) take fright.’”
“What could be more dire than favor?
Its gain—or lost—betokens danger.
Such is the meaning.”
“Explain ‘Honors to the self bring woe.’”
“Our selves are why we suffer harm;
Without them what harm would there be?
So to the one
Who honors self above the world
Confide its care;
To the one
Who holds the self more dear than it
Entrust its care.”

– Moss Roberts

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#232: Ted Hughes in Alaska – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 6/22/26: Tonight, we hear about the British poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998), and the poem he said he spent the most time on, “The Gulkana.” The poem is named after a river in Alaska, and in this episode, I preface a reading of the poem with excerpts from his letters and biography about Hughes’ love for the outdoors and for fishing. In particular, in the last two decades of his life, Hughes found great solace and intensity visiting his son, Nicholas, a marine biologist, who was then living in Alaska. Only after this introduction do I read “The Gulkana” in full, as well as the poem “That Morning.”Both poems come from his 1983 collection, River; the letters come from those he wrote to the critic and friend Keith Sagar, as well as The Letters of Ted Hughes; the biography I read from is by Jonathan Bate. The other episodes I’ve done on Hughes’ life and poetry can be found here.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
  1. #232: Ted Hughes in Alaska
  2. #231: The mythology of the moon
  3. #230 – The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic
  4. #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture
  5. #228 – What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974
  6. #227 – The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem
  7. #226: The Vitality and terror of cities
  8. #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling
  9. #224: Let's talk about William Blake
  10. #223 – How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens

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