Chinese idioms from the Dao De Jing
目迷五色 (mù mí wǔ sè)
Reworked from chapter 12
目迷五色 (mù mí wǔ sè), “the eyes lost among the five colors”, reworks chapter 12 of the Dao De Jing, “Too many colors render people blind”: too much to look at, and you no longer see clearly.
Character by character
| 目 | mù | eyes |
|---|---|---|
| 迷 | mí | lost, astray |
| 五色 | wǔ sè | the five colors |
| 目迷五色 | So many colors, or choices, that the eyes are dazzled and cannot tell things apart. | |
Where it comes from
The idiom is not in the text as such: it reworks the line 五色令人目盲.
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五色令人目盲，
Too many colors render people blind,
How the meaning moved
Chapter 12 opens with a list of excess: “Too many colors render people blind, too many sounds render people deaf, too many flavors dull the palate”, and racing, hunting and hard-to-get goods do the same to the mind and to conduct. The Chinese of the first line is 五色令人目盲, “the five colors make people's eyes blind”. The five colors stand for every color, as the five tones and five flavors stand for every sound and taste. The chapter's answer: “Therefore the sage provides for the soul, not for the senses.”
The four characters 目迷五色 are not in the book. They keep 目, the eyes, and 五色, the five colors, and replace “blind” with 迷, “lost”: the eyes are not blinded but bewildered. Dictionaries trace the idiom to this line of chapter 12; the novel The Scholars (儒林外史, 18th century) already has a character worry that a man, once at court and grading examinations, may again “be lost among the five colors”. Today the idiom describes a dazzling display, or a choice with too many options, where it is hard to see what matters.
Using it today
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商场里的商品琳琅满目，让人目迷五色，不知道该买哪一个。
shāng chǎng lǐ de shāng pǐn lín láng mǎn mù, ràng rén mù mí wǔ sè, bù zhī dào gāi mǎi nǎ yī gè.
The mall is so full of goods that your eyes are dazzled and you don't know which one to buy.
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网上的信息太多，很容易目迷五色，要学会分辨真假。
wǎng shàng de xìn xī tài duō, hěn róng yì mù mí wǔ sè, yào xué huì fēn biàn zhēn jiǎ.
There is so much information online that it is easy to be bewildered: you have to learn to tell true from false.