韜 (sheath) 光 (light) 養 (nurture) 晦 (dark) This is a concept prized in the East. Sometimes you wonder if the West, especially America, has ever heard of it. "Hiding your light under a bushel" merely suggests timidity.
Often, it doesn't hurt to appear dim in order to get to where you want. Deng Xiaoping knew how to dim his lights. It was his foreign policy mantra, something along the line of "hide your full capacity, bide your time..." It worked, don't you think?
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I detect an unlikely parallel between this pioneering Chinese market socialist and Barack Obama. Coming from opposite directions, from entirely different circumstances, yet heading to a similiar goal.
If Obama is planning to loosen environmental controls to the point that we can no longer breathe without medical masks and do away with minimum wage laws then, yes, I would say he is doing a terrific job of "hiding his light under a bushel."
ReplyDeleteThis is roughly the equivalent English idiom (though a little dated, I suppose), and I'm guessing comes from Tyndale, since it's his translation of something Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew 5:15, though Tyndale, and the King James following him, have "neither do men light a candle and hide it under a bushel."
Jesus says this just after his enumeration of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, of which you will remember the fourth Beatitude being, "Blessed are the party officials for they know what is best for the workers."
Dear Mark,
ReplyDeleteThe party officials would not bother with a Christianity reference, not to mention a Falun Gong reference. Both laughably overrated... perhaps overzealous elite philanthropists don't quite realize that.
I'm not sure I understand what you've written in your comment, but I never meant to imply the Chinese phrase had Christian origins. I was only offering what I thought might be a roughly (very roughly) equivalent English phrase. Just as the rough equivalent for 錦上添花 (which you posted earlier) might be "gild the lily."
ReplyDeleteBest,
Mark
Thank you. I didn't use "gild the lily" because the phrase seems to emphasize superfluousness, whereas 錦上添花 implies actual improvement, if that's possible. But, fair enough, close enough. I did change it, I appreciate your input.
ReplyDeleteAs for "neither do men light a candle and hide it under a bushel.", whatever it means, it does not meet my word count requirement. Phew.
...and... who's Jesus again?