Prizing Life
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出生入死。生之徒，十有三；死之徒，十有三；人之生動之死地，十有三。夫何故？以其生生之厚。蓋聞善攝生者，陸行不遇兕虎，入軍不避甲兵；兕無投其角，虎無所措爪，兵無所容其刃。夫何故？以其無死地。
Going out is life; going in is death. The companions of life are ten and three; the companions of death are ten and three; and people’s living moves to the ground of death through ten and three. Now, what is the reason? Because they nourish life too richly. I have heard that one who is good at nourishing life, traveling on land, does not meet rhinos or tigers; going into the army, he does not avoid armor and weapons. The rhino has no place to drive its horn, the tiger has no place to set its claws, weapons have no place to lodge their blades. Now, what is the reason? Because he has no ground of death.
Why some people live out their years and others walk straight into danger.
Read as a statistic, the “ten and three” sorts people into roughly equal shares: those who belong to life, those who belong to death, and those whose very living carries them toward death because they cling to life too hard. The “ground of death” is a vulnerable spot, and the one who truly cares for life has none for death to enter.
Heshang Gong’s body reading grounds the count in physiology: thirteen is the nine bodily openings plus the four limbs. That ties the chapter to the book’s wider interest in caring for the body as much as the state.
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