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Chinese text
出生入死。
生之徒十有三，死之徒十有三，人之生，动之死地，十有三。
夫何故？
以其生生之厚。
盖闻善摄生者，陆行不遇虎兕，入军不被甲兵。
兕无所投其角，虎无所措其爪，兵无所容其刃。
夫何故？
以其无死地。
Translation
Man passes from life to enter death.
There are thirteen causes of life and thirteen causes of death.
Scarcely is he born than these thirteen causes of death swiftly lead him to his end.
What is the reason for this? It is that he wants to live with excessive intensity.
Now, I have learned that one who knows how to manage his life fears neither the rhinoceros nor the tiger on the road.
If he enters an army, he needs neither armor nor weapons.
The rhinoceros would not know where to strike him with its horn, the tiger where to tear him with its claws, the soldier where to pierce him with his sword.
What is the cause? He is safe from death!
Notes
Life and death are two things that correspond to each other. Death is the consequence of life. As soon as man exits life, he immediately enters death. The ancients said: All men desire only to be delivered from death; they do not know how to be delivered from life.
This passage has received many interpretations. The explanation of 严君平 seems to me the most plausible: there are thirteen causes of life, that is to say, thirteen ways to reach spiritual life, namely: emptiness, attachment to 无 (nothingness), purity, tranquility, love of darkness, poverty, softness, weakness, humility, stripping away, modesty, flexibility, economy. There are thirteen causes of death, which are the opposite of the thirteen states we have just listed, namely: fullness, attachment to beings, impurity, agitation, the desire to shine, richness, hardness, strength, pride, excess of opulence, haughtiness, inflexibility, prodigality.
The author speaks here of worldly men, who are passionately attached to worldly life and who do not know the 道 . The expression 生生 means "seeking to nourish one's life." How is it that in avidly seeking happiness, they find unhappiness? It is because they only think to satisfy their passions and to serve their private interests; they do not know that the more ardently they seek the means to live, the closer they come to death.
Sea monsters find the abysses not deep enough and dig retreats there; vultures and eagles find the mountains too low, and they build their nests even higher; neither the hunter's arrow nor the fisherman's nets can reach them. They seem placed in places inaccessible to death; but the bait of food makes them come out of the abysses and descend from the heights, and they do not delay in perishing. Similarly, the needs of material life and the frenzied taste for pleasures lead man to his downfall.
毕静 : An ancient said: He who loves life may be killed; he who loves purity may be defiled; he who loves glory may be covered with ignominy; he who loves perfection may lose it. But if man remains foreign to bodily life, who can kill him? If he remains foreign to purity, who can defile him? If he remains foreign to glory, who can dishonor him? If he remains foreign to perfection, who can make him lose it? He who understands this can play with life and death.
刘克福 : Why can man be wounded by the horn of the 兕 (rhinoceros), by the claws of the 虎 (tiger), by the soldier's sword? Because he has a body. If he knows how to free himself from his body, inwardly he will no longer see his body; outwardly he will no longer see sensible objects. Death will not be able to reach him in any way.
