The ancient ones, wishing to keep themselves alive, did not use elaborate style to express their knowledge. They did not disturb everything in the whole world through their knowledge, nor use knowledge to try and disrupt Virtue. Alone and hermit-like they stayed where they were and looked to restore their innate nature. What more could they do than this? The Tao has no place for pettiness, and nor has Virtue. Pettiness is dangerous to Virtue; petty actions are dangerous to the Tao. It is said, rectify yourself and be done. Happiness which is complete is called the Timeliness of Purpose.
The ancient ones talked of the Timeliness of Purpose, but they did not mean having official carriages and badges of office. They simply meant that it was happiness so complete as to need nothing more. Today what is called Timeliness of Purpose means having official carriages and badges of office. Carriages and badges are of the body, they do not touch the innate nature. From time to time such benefits may come. When this happens, you cannot help it, no more than you can stop them going again. So having carriages and badges of office is no reason for becoming proud and arrogant in our purposes, nor are distress and poverty any reason for becoming vulgar. View both conditions as one and the same, so be free from anxiety and leave it at that. So if loss of what gives happiness causes you distress when it fades, you can now understand that such happiness is worthless. It is said, those who lose themselves in their desire for things also lose their innate nature by being vulgar. They are known as people who turn things upside down.
CHAPTER 17
Season of Autumn Floods
The season of the autumn floods had come and the hundred rivers were pouring into the Yellow River. The waters were churning and so wide that, looking across from one bank to the other, it was impossible to distinguish an ox from a horse. At this the Lord of the Yellow River was decidedly pleased, thinking that the most beautiful thing in the whole world belonged to him. Flowing with the river, he travelled east until he came at last to the North Ocean, where he looked east and could see no end to the waters. He shook his head, the Lord of the Yellow River, and looked out to confront Jo, god of the Ocean, sighing and saying,
‘The folk proverb says, “The person who has heard of the Tao a hundred times thinks he is better than anyone else.” This refers to me. I have heard people mock the scholarship of the Confucians and give scant regard to the righteousness of Po Yi, but I didn’t believe them. Now I have seen your endless vastness. If I had not come to your gate, I would have been in danger, and been mocked by those of the Great Method.’
Jo of the North Ocean replied, ‘A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you. Under Heaven there are no greater waters than the ocean. Ten thousand rivers flow into it, and it has never been known to stop, but it never fills. At Wei Lu the water disappears but the ocean never empties. Spring and autumn bring no changes. It pays no attention to floods or droughts. It is so much more than the waters of the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers, it is impossible to estimate. However, I have never made much of this. I just compare myself with Heaven and Earth and my life-breath I receive from yin and yang. I am just a little stone or a little tree set on a great hill, in comparison to Heaven and Earth. As I perceive my own inferiority, how could I ever be proud?
‘To compare all the space filled by the four oceans, is it not like a pile of stones beside a marsh in comparison with the vastness between Heaven and Earth? To compare China with all the space between the oceans, is it not like one single piece of grain in a granary? When talking of all life, we count them in tens of thousands, and humanity is just one of them. People inhabit the Nine Provinces, but humanity is just one portion of all the life that is sustained by grain, wherever carriages or boats can go. In comparison to all the multitudinous forms of life, isn’t humanity like just a single hair on a horse?
‘What the Five Emperors handed on, the Three Kings60 argued over, the officials have struggled for, and benevolent people worry about, is nothing more than this. Po Yi was considered famous, because he gave up things, Confucius was known as scholarly, because he taught about it. Yet, in acting in such a way, making much of themselves, were they not like you who just now were so proud of yourself because of your flood?’
The Lord of the Yellow River said, ‘Very well, so if I recognize Heaven and Earth as big and a tip of a hair as small, will that do?’
‘No,’ replied Jo of the North Ocean. ‘You cannot define the capacity of things; time never stops; there is nothing constant in fate; beginning and end have no regulation.
‘Great knowledge considers both that which is near and that
