Cherishing the Self
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民不畏威，大威至矣。無狹其所居，無厭其所生。夫唯不厭，是以不厭是以聖人自知不自見自愛不自貴，故去彼取此。
When the people do not fear harm, great harm comes. Do not narrow the place where they dwell; do not make them weary of what they live by. Now, only when you do not weary of it does it not weary of you. So the sage knows himself but does not display himself; he loves himself but does not exalt himself. So he lets go of that and takes this.
Advice against a ruler crowding the people, read by Heshang Gong as also being about not wearing out one’s own vital spirit.
Heshang Gong says plainly that the great harm is death, and his cure is care for your own vital spirit. He reads the next lines the same way: the place where the spirit lives is the heart, to be kept broad and soft, not cramped, and what we live by is that spirit, which greed and gluttony wear out.
The usual reading hears advice to a ruler: do not press the people so hard that they stop fearing you, or crowd them until they are weary of their own lives. One word, 厭 (“to weary of, to glut”), carries both readings: only the one who does not glut his spirit keeps it from leaving him.
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