Lao Tzu on shamelessness

Eight years ago -- gosh, it's getting on towards nine by now -- I wrote in a poem here that failure is freedom while success means a kind of bondage. 

Recently I found that Lao Tzu had a similarly dim view of success. In the Tao Te Ching, poem 13 reads, in part:

SHAMELESS

To be in favor or disgrace

is to live in fear....

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.

--- from Ursula K. LeGuin's Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, 1997.

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