Chapter 13第13章

Favor and disgrace both come as surprises that shake you up. We value great trouble because we have a body. What does it mean that favor and disgrace are equally alarming? Well, when you get a promotion, you're startled. When you lose it, you're startled again. Whether it goes up or down, you're always off balance — that's what 'favor and disgrace bring fear' means. And why do we value our troubles so much? Because we have a self to worry about! If you had no body, no self to protect, what could trouble you? So the one who values the world as their own body can be trusted with the world. The one who loves the world as their own body can be given the world to care for.

Favor and disgrace are equally disturbing. Prize calamity as you prize your own body. And what's really being explored here is the root of anxiety — the having of a self, the identification with a body that can be praised or punished. The reason we have great trouble is that we have a body. If we had no body, what trouble could touch us? This is not an argument for suicide or asceticism — it's a recognition that the ego-body complex is itself the source of all vulnerability. And the conclusion is paradoxical: precisely the one who values the world as their own body — who has dissolved the boundary between self and cosmos — is the one who can be entrusted with governance. Only those who have transcended self-interest can be trusted with power.

Wang Bi unpacks the symmetry beautifully. Receiving favor is alarming; receiving disgrace is equally alarming. Both flavor and disgrace produce the same startle response. If both produce alarm, then neither can be used to bring chaos to the world — because the person who is equally shaken by glory and humiliation is not attached to either. People in their confusion constantly pursue favor and flee disgrace, and this inevitably leads them into mortal danger — hence what is called 'the great calamity.' The great calamity arises because of the body, because of the self. If one values the world as one’s own body, then one can be entrusted with the world. If one loves the world as one’s own body, then one can be given the world to care for. Wang Bi is saying that only the person who has stopped distinguishing between personal fortune and personal disaster — who treats them as the same startling interruption — is fit to carry responsibility for others.

Wang Bi’s analysis here is a phenomenology of attachment. Favor alarms, disgrace alarms — the startle response is symmetrical. If both produce equal disturbance, then the person experiencing them is not differentially attached to either state, and therefore cannot be manipulated through the conferral or withdrawal of status. This is a theory of psychological immunity. People in their confusion, Wang Bi says, constantly chase favor and flee disgrace, and this pursuit inevitably drives them into mortal danger — the 'great calamity.' And the source of the great calamity is having a body, having a self. This is not Buddhist no-self doctrine, though it rhymes with it — it is Wang Bi’s characteristic move of tracing all dysfunction back to the assertion of the particular over the universal. The resolution: the one who values the world as their own body — who has dissolved the boundary between self and cosmos — can be entrusted with governance. Only the one who has nothing personal to lose can be trusted with power over others.