Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 46 — Knowing Sufficiency
No greater calamity than not knowing sufficiency
When the world has the Tao, horses are returned to manure the fields. When the world lacks the Tao, war-horses are bred in the borderlands. No greater calamity than not knowing sufficiency; no greater fault than wanting to acquire.
Source context
- Theme
- contentment as the boundary between sufficiency and destructive desire
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta / Sanskrit aphorismThe Vedantic concept of santosha (contentment) parallels Chapter 46's teaching that knowing sufficiency (zhi zu) arrests the cycle of craving, with both traditions locating the root of suffering in the unregulated expansion of desire beyond natural limit.
- Stoic philosophyStoic distinction between natural and necessary desires versus unlimited appetites (epithumia) shows cross-tradition congruence with the chapter's contrast between the governance of horses for agriculture and their commandeering for war as an index of social desire-excess.
- Buddhist DhammaThe Second Noble Truth's identification of tanha (craving) as the origin of dukkha structurally parallels Chapter 46's locating of the greatest calamity in not knowing sufficiency, with both traditions treating limitless wanting as the generative cause of collective harm.
Chapter 46
When the Tao prevails in the world, they send back their swift horses to (draw) the dung-carts. When the Tao is disregarded in the world, the war-horses breed in the border lands.
There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one's lot; no fault greater than the wish to be getting. Therefore the sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and unchanging sufficiency.