The Five Colors Blind the Eye

answered by Tao Te Ching, ch.12

기원전 6~4세기

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Death in Venice (1971)

dir. Luchino Visconti · Italy

Seized by a seemingly perfect beauty, a person becomes fixed on beholding it, forgetting the approaching danger and even themselves. It asks whether a heart blinded to fading beauty elevates life or leads to ruin, and how such an obsession is to be mastered.

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Where does a heart seized by fading beauty carry a person?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

五色令人目盲，五音令人耳聾

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

The five colors blind the eye; the five tones deafen the ear.

💡 TL;DR

Laozi said the five colors blind the eye, warning against being seized by the splendor of the senses.

📝The Classic Answers

Laozi said the five colors blind the eye, warning against being seized by the splendor of the senses. I read this as the danger of clinging to beauty. One blinded by perfect beauty who chases only that comes to see neither themselves nor the danger drawing near. And since even that beauty fades before time, the more one tries to hold it, the more all that remains in hand is one's own sickened, wasted self. What Laozi cautioned against was not beauty itself but losing life's balance by being blinded to it. Rather than surrendering my whole heart to the dazzling, I choose to behold it yet keep the distance that does not lose myself.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

When something so captures your heart that you see nothing else, look away a moment and ask, 'is there anything I am missing, blinded by this?'

📖 Classic Source: Tao Te Ching, ch.12. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.