CHAPTER XXIII.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Zhuangzi and Giles, Herbert Allen
Nan Yung begged to be allowed to remain, and set to work to cultivate the good and eliminate the evil within him. At the expiration of ten days, with sorrow in his heart, he again sought Lao Tzŭ.
"Have you thoroughly cleansed yourself?" said Lao Tzŭ. "But this grieved look.... There is some evil obstruction yet.
"If the disturbances are external,
Sc. sensual.
do not be always combating them, but close the channels to the mind. If the disturbances are internal, do not strive to oppose them, but close all entrance from without.
And the mind will recover itself.
If the disturbances are both internal and external, then you will not even be able to hold fast to Tao, still less practise it."
"If a rustic is sick," said Nan Yung, "and another rustic goes to see him; and if the sick man can say what is the matter with him,—then he is not seriously ill. Yet my search after Tao is like swallowing drugs which only increase the malady.
Although really not so very far from Tao (sc. health) as evidenced by my being able to describe my complaint, which a man sick of some serious disease is scarcely able to do.
I beg therefore merely to ask the art of preserving life."
"The art of preserving life," replied Lao Tzŭ, "consists in being able to keep all in One,
Sc. Body and soul. See the Tao-Tê-Ching, ch. x, where this idea has been reproduced.
to lose nothing, to estimate good and evil without divination,
To know that each is bound up in the other.
to know when to stop, and how much is enough, to leave others alone and attend to oneself, to be without cares and without knowledge,—to be in fact as a child. A child will cry all day and not become hoarse, because of the perfection of its constitutional harmony.
Also reproduced in the Tao-Tê-Ching, ch. lv.
It will keep its fist tightly closed all day and not open it, because of the concentration of its virtue. It will gaze all day without taking off its eyes, because its sight is not attracted by externals. In motion, it knows not whither it is bound; at rest, it is not conscious of doing anything; but unconsciously adapts itself to the exigencies of its environment. This is the art of preserving life."
"Is this then the virtue of the perfect man?" cried Nan Yung.
"Not so," said Lao Tzŭ. "I am, as it were, but breaking the ice.
"The perfect man shares the food of this earth, but the happiness of God. He does not incur trouble either from men or things. He does not join in censuring, in plotting, in toadying. Free from care he comes, and unconscious he goes;—this is the art of preserving life."
"This then is perfection?" inquired Nan Yung.
"Not yet," said Lao Tzŭ. "I specially asked if you could be as a child. A child acts without knowing what it does; moves without knowing whither. Its body is like a dry branch; its heart like dead ashes. Thus, good and evil fortune find no lodgment therein; and there where good and evil fortune are not, how can the troubles of mortality be?
"Those whose hearts are in a state of repose give forth a divine radiance, by the light of which they see themselves as they are. And only by cultivating such repose can man attain to the constant.
"Those who are constant are sought after by men and assisted by God. Those who are sought after by men are the people of God; those who are assisted by God are his chosen children.
The stuff of which rulers are made.
"To study this is to study what cannot be learnt. To practise this is to practise what cannot be accomplished. To discuss this is to discuss what can never be proved. Let knowledge stop at the unknowable. That is perfection. And for those who do not follow this, God will destroy them!
"Knowledge," says Emerson in his Montaigne, or the Sceptic, "is the knowing that we cannot know."
"With such defences for the body, ever prepared for the unexpected, deferential to the rights of others,—if then calamities overtake you, these are from God, not from man. Let them not disturb what you have already achieved. Let them not penetrate into the soul's abode. For there resides the Will. And if the will knows not what to will, it will not be able to will.
Inability to exercise the functions of will is Tao.
"Whatsoever is not said in all sincerity, is wrongly said. And not to be able to rid oneself of this vice is only to sink deeper towards perdition.
"Those who do evil in the open light of day,—men will punish them. Those who do evil in secret,—God will punish them. Who fears both man and God, he is fit to walk alone.
The term here used for "God" means strictly those "spirits" which are the avenging emissaries of the Deity.
Those who are devoted to the internal,
To self-culture.
in practice acquire no reputation. Those who are devoted to the external, strive for pre-eminence among their fellows. Practice without reputation throws a halo around the meanest. But he who strives for pre-eminence among his fellows, he is as a huckster whose weariness all perceive though he himself puts on an air of gaiety.
"He who is naturally in sympathy with man, to him all men come. But he who forcedly adapts, has no room even for himself, still less for others. And he who has no room for others, has no ties. It is all over with him.
"There is no weapon so deadly as man's will. Excalibur is second to it. There is no bandit so powerful as Nature.
The interaction of the Positive and Negative principles, which produces the visible universe.
In the whole universe there is no escape from it. Yet it is not Nature which does the injury. It is man's own heart.
"Tao informs its own subdivisions, their successes and their failures. What is feared in subdivision is separation.