Chuang Tzú

[Deleted]

The three men, Master Sang-hu, Meng Tzú-fan and Master Ch'in-chang, were talking together.
'Which of us can be with where there is no being with, be for where there is no being for? Which of us is able to climb the sky and roam mists go whirling into the infinite, living forgetful of each other for ever and ever?'
The three men looked at each other and smiled and none was reluctant in his heart. So they became friends.

After they had been living quietly for a while Master Sang-hu died. Before he was buried, Confucius heard about it and sent Tzú-kung to assist at the funeral. One of the men was plaiting frames for silkworms, the other strumming a zither, and they sang in unison

'Hey-ho, Sang-hu!
Hey-ho Sang-hu!
You've gone back to being what one truly is,
But we go on being human, O!'

Tzú-kung hurried forward and asked
'May I inquire whether it is in accordance with the rites to sing with the corpse right there at your feet?'
The two men exchanged glances and smiled.
'What does he know about the meaning of the rites?'
Tzú-kung returned and told Confucius

'What men are these? The decencies of conduct are nothing to them, they treat the very bones of their bodies as outside of them. They sing with the corpse right there at their feet, and not a change in the look on their faces. I have no words to name them. What men are these?'

'They are the sort that roams beyond the guidelines,' said Confucius. 'I am the sort that roams within the guidelines. Beyond and within have nothing in common, and to send you to mourn was stupid on my part. They are at the stage of being fellow men with the maker of things and go roaming in the single breath that breathes through heaven and earth. They think of life as an obstinate wart or a dangling wen, of death as bursting the boil or letting the pus. How should such men as that know death from life, before from after? They borrow right-of-way through the things which are different but put up for the night in that body which is the same. Self-forgetful right down to the liver and gall, leaving behind there own ears and eyes, they turn start and end back to front, and know no beginning-point or standard.'

'Heedlessly they go roving beyond the dust and grime, go rambling through the lore in which there's nothing to do. How could they be finicky about the rites of common custom, on watch for the inquisitive eyes and ears of the vulgar?'

'In that case, sir, why depend on guidelines yourself? '
'I am one of those condemned by the sentence of Heaven. However, let us see what we can do together.'
'I venture to ask the secret of it.'

'As fish go on setting directions for each other in the water, men go on setting directions for each other in the Way. For the fish which set directions for each other, you dig a pool and their nurture is provided for. For us who set directions for each other in the Way, if we cease to be busy life fixes it's own course. When the spring dries up and the fish are stranded together on land, they spit moisture at each other and soak each other in the foam, but they would be better off forgetting each other in the Yangtse or the Lake. Rather than praise Yao and condemn tyrant Chieh, we should be better off if we could forget them both and let their Ways enter the transformations. As the saying goes "Fish forget all about each other in the Yangtse and the Lakes, men forget about each other in the lore of the Way" .'

'Extraordinary men are extraordinary in the eyes of men but ordinary to the eyes of Heaven. As the saying goes, "Heaven's knave is man's gentleman, man's gentleman is Heaven's knave".'

[Deleted]

Yen Hui put a question to Confucius.

'Meng-sun Ts'ai wailed when his mother died but did not shed a tear, in his inward heart he did not suffer, conducting the funeral he did not grieve. In spite of these three failings, he is renowned as the best of mourners throughout the state of Lu. Are there really people who win a name for it without possessing the substance? I am utterly amazed at it.'

'That Meng-sun has the whole secret, he has taken the step beyond knowledge. If you merely simplify it you don't succeed, finishing with it altogether does simplify something. Meng-sun does not know what he depended on to be born, does not know what he will depend on to die, does not know how to be nearer to the time before or the time after. If in transforming he has become one thing instead of another, is it required that what he does not know terminated in being transformed? Besides, at the stage of being transformed how would he know about the transformed? Is it just that you and I are the ones who have not yet begun to wake from our dreams?

Moreover he has convulsions of the body without damage to the heart, has abodes for no longer than a morning but no true death. It's just that Meng-sun has come awake. When another man wails he wails too; it is simply that, all the way up from that which they depend upon to be-about-to-be, he is with him in recognising him as "I"?

'You dream that you are a bird and fly away in the sky, dream that you are a fish and plunge into the deep. There's no telling whether the man who speaks now is the waker or the dreamer. Rather than go towards what suits you, laugh: rather than acknowledge it with your laughter, shove it from you. Shove it from you and leave the transformations behind; then you will enter the oneness of the featureless sky.'

[Deleted]

"So mighty!
In a moment it comes forth, in an instant he is moved, and the myriad things follow him! Such a one we call the man of Kingly Power. He goes on gazing into the darkness, listening to the noiseless; within the darkness he alone sees the dawning, within the noiseless he alone hears the harmony. Hence he is able to be the thing in the deepest of the deep, the quintessence in the most daemonic of the daemonic. Therefore in his dealings with the myriad things, from utmost nothingness he supplies their needs, as he gallops with the times he is at the crux within reach of all their one-night stops. The big and the small, the long and the short, he has provision for each of them."

[frustratedwanter]

So whom should I deem "such a wordy fellow!"?
Is it Chuang Tzu or Confucious?
A frog in the depths of a pitch black well
laughs at the thought of creatures that fly.


What?

[Deleted]

www.srds.co.uk/begin/frog-well.htm

[Deleted]

And for the scholarly

www.vaniquotes.org/wiki/The_logic_of_the_frog_in_the_well

[frustratedwanter]

Must have been a short-flying bird laughing at the thought of a long-flying bird.
Whatever it was it was a Taoist story.

[maxdprophet]

Letting go of thoughts



To exercise no-thought and rest in nothing is the first step toward resting in Tao.

To start from nowhere and follow no road is the first step toward attaining Tao.

(22:1, p. 176)



The mind remains undetermined in the great Void.

Here the highest knowledge is unbounded.

That which gives things their thusness cannot be delimited by things.

So when we speak of 'limits', we remain confined to limited things.

The limit of the unlimited is called 'fullness.'

The limitlessness of the limited is called 'emptiness.'

Tao is the source of both.

But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness.

(22:6, pp. 182-183)

via Thomas Merton's The Way of Chuang Tzu

[Deleted]

Those who know do not say;
those who say do not know.
Close the senses,
shut the doors;
blunt the sharpness,
resolve the complications;
harmonize the light,
assimilate to the world.
This is called mysterious sameness,
It cannot be familiar,
yet cannot be estranged;
it cannot be profited,
yet cannot be harmed,
it cannot be valued,
yet cannot be demeaned.
Therefore it is precious for the world.

[Deleted]

The lord of the south sea was Abrupt; the lord of the north sea was Sudden. From time to time Abrupt and Sudden got together in the territory of Primal Unity, and Primal Unity treated them very well.
Abrupt and Sudden planned to repay Primal Unity's kindness.
They said, "People all have seven openings, through which they see, hear, eat, and breathe; Primal Unity alone has none. Let us make openings in Primal Unity."
So every day they gouged out a hole. After seven days, Primal Unity died.

[stardustpilgrim]

[stardustpilgrim]

aphotographicsage.blogspot.com/2014/10/reflections-on-tao-still-point.html