Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 24 — Excess
He who tiptoes does not stand firm
Standing on tiptoe one does not stand firm; striding one does not walk. Self-display does not shine; self-justification does not endure. To one who has the Tao, these are unwanted excess.
Source context
- Theme
- self-defeating inflation of ego through straining, self-display, and boastful excess
- Soul-faculty
- Sentient Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Aristotelian ethics (megalopsychia / vanity)Aristotle's analysis of the vain man who claims more than he deserves and thereby undermines genuine virtue offers a structural parallel to the Daoist critique of self-promotion as self-erasure.
- Vedanta (ahamkara)The Vedantic doctrine of ahamkara — the ego-making faculty that inflates identification with separateness — maps structurally onto the chapter's teaching that those who glorify themselves do not endure.
- Sufi ethics (kibr / spiritual pride)In Sufi moral psychology, kibr (pride/arrogance) is identified as the cardinal obstacle to proximity to the Real, paralleling the Daoist principle that self-exaltation produces no lasting achievement.
Chapter 24
He who stands on his tiptoes does not stand firm; he who stretches his legs does not walk (easily). (So), he who displays himself does not shine; he who asserts his own views is not distinguished; he who vaunts himself does not find his merit acknowledged; he who is self- conceited has no superiority allowed to him. Such conditions, viewed from the standpoint of the Tao, are like remnants of food, or a tumour on the body, which all dislike. Hence those who pursue (the course) of the Tao do not adopt and allow them.