Restraining Desire
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五色令人目盲。五音令人耳聾。五味令人口爽。馳騁田獵令人心發狂。難得之貨令人行妨。是以聖人為腹不為目，故去彼取此。
The five colors make one’s eyes blind. The five tones make one’s ears deaf. The five flavors make one’s mouth lose its taste. Galloping and racing, hunting in the fields, make one’s heart go mad. Goods that are hard to get make one’s conduct go wrong. So the sage cares for the belly, not for the eye, and so he lets go of that and takes this.
A list of sensory excesses (color, sound, taste, the hunt, rare goods) that dull rather than delight, ending in the sage's choice of the belly over the eye.
Overload is the trouble: pushed too far, the senses stop working, and the same happens to the heart and to conduct. In the famous closing line the belly stands for what is needed and the eye for what is merely wanted, so the sage lets go of the wanting to keep the need.
Heshang Gong reads 爽, usually “clear, bright”, as its opposite here, “to lose”: the five flavors numb the palate. It is a small example of how his commentary sometimes glosses a word against its ordinary sense to fit the line's argument.
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