Dao De Jing 12

Dao De Jing 12

The five colors blind the eye;

The five tones deafen the ear;

The five flavors ruin taste;

Galloping over fields in the hunt make the mind insane;

Rare goods are an impediment along the road.

The sage therefore follows the belly & not the eye,

Putting aside the one in favor of the other.

Laozi, 道德經

Translation by John Hayes

The translation is is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 

Unlike with my original poetry & poetry translations, I don’t asset a copyright claim on my translation of the Dao De Jing. It may be freely used under the terms of the Creative Commons license.

Image links to its source on Wiki Commons:

Musicians. Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD). Shanghai Museum. These two lively musicians play a bamboo flute and a plucked instrument. The figure on the right wears an elaborate headdress with three large flowers.

Photograph by Wiki user G41rn8 (Michael Gunther), who makes it available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0International license.