It drifts, it swirls,
yet there is nothing that does not return.
Life is transformation, death is also transformation.
All living creatures are saddened, all humanity mourns.
However, it is simply the releasing of the Heavenly bowstring,
or the emptying of the Heavenly satchel,
a yielding and a changing which release the soul, as the body follows,
back at long last to the great Returning.
That without shape comes from shape,
that with shape returns to the shapeless.
‘All people know this:
those with a perfect understanding do not discuss it,
while everyone argues how to set about achieving it.
Those who have achieved it do not discuss it.
Those who discuss have not achieved it.
Those who eagerly search with their keen eyes will not discern it. Be silent, do not debate.
The Tao cannot be heard, so it is better to close your ears than strive to hear.
This is called the great Achievement.’
Master Tung Kuo asked Chuang Tzu, ‘That which is called the Tao, where is it?’
Chuang Tzu replied, ‘There is nowhere where it is not.’
‘But give me a specific example.’
‘In this ant,’ said Chuang Tzu.
‘Is that its lowest point?’
‘In this panic grass,’ said Chuang Tzu.
‘Can you give me a lower example?’
‘In this common earthenware tile,’ said Chuang Tzu.
‘This must be its lowest point!’
‘It’s in shit and piss too,’ said Chuang Tzu.
Master Tung Kuo had no answer to this. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Sir, your questions miss the point. When Inspector Huo asked the superintendents of the market how best to test the value of a pig by treading down on it with his foot, they told him that the lower down the animal you pressed, the closer you were to finding the truth. So you should not look for the Tao in anything specific. There is nothing without it. The perfect Tao is like this – so it is called the Great. Complete, all embracing, universal: three different words but with the same reality, all referring back to the One.
‘Imagine that we were wandering in the palace of No-Place.
Harmony and unity would be our themes, never ending, never failing!
Join with me in actionless action!
In simplicity and quietude!
In disinterest and purity!
In harmony and ease!
My intentions are now aimless.
I go nowhere and have no idea how I got there;
I go and I come and don’t know why.
I have been, I have gone.
I have no idea when my journey is over.
I wander and rest in limitless vastness.
Great knowledge comes in and I have no idea where it will all end.
‘If you can regard things as simply things, then you do not share the limited nature of things. The limitless arises out of the limited, and the boundless arises out of the restricted.
‘We talk of fullness and emptiness; of withering and decaying. The Tao makes them full or empty but is not defined by fullness or emptiness. It creates withering and decay, but it is not defined by withering or decay. It produces the roots and branches, but it is neither root nor branch. It gathers together and it disperses, but it is neither of these itself.’
Ah Ho Kan and Shen Nung were fellow students of Lao Lung Chi. One midday Shen Nung was sitting on his seat with the door shut and he was fast asleep, when Ah Ho Kan opened the door and came in, saying,
‘Lao Lung is dead.’
Shen Nung leaned forward, grasped his staff and rose to his feet. Then he dropped his staff and burst out laughing, ‘Our Heavenly wise Master, he knew just how cramped and mean, arrogant and wilful I am and this is why he has gone and cast me aside and died. My Master has gone off! He has died without giving me words to control my wildness!’
Yen Kang Tiao heard all this and said, ‘The one who embodies the Tao has noblemen from all over the world coming to him. Now, regarding the Tao, you who haven’t grasped even a tip of the hair of it, not even a ten-thousandth part, nevertheless you still know enough to curb your wild words and to die without uttering them. How much more is this the case with someone who embodies the Tao! You can look for it but it has no shape. You can listen for it, but it has no voice. Those who discuss it call it deeply dark. To talk of the Tao is not to know the Tao.’
Great Purity asked Endless, ‘Sir, do you know the Tao?’
‘I do not know it,’ said Endless.
Then he asked Actionless Action, who replied, ‘I know the Tao.’
‘Sir,’ asked Great Purity, ‘about your knowledge of the Tao, do you have some special hints?’
‘I have.’
‘What are they?’
Actionless Action said, ‘I know that the Tao can elevate and bring low, bind together and separate. These are the hints I would give you to know the Tao.’
With these different answers Great Purity went to No Beginning and said, ‘Between Endless’s statement that he doesn’t know, and Actionless Action’s statement that he does know, I am left wondering which of these is right and which is wrong.’
No Beginning said, ‘Not to know is profound and to know is shallow. To be without knowledge is to be inward, to know is to be outward.’
Then indeed did Great Purity cast his eyes upward and sigh, ‘Not to know is to know and to know is not to know! Who knows about not knowing about knowing?’
No Beginning said:
‘The Tao cannot be heard: what is heard is not the Tao.
The Tao cannot be seen: what can be seen is not the Tao.
The Tao cannot be spoken: what is spoken is not the Tao.
Do we know what form gives form to the formless?
The Tao has no name.’
No Beginning continued:
‘To be questioned about the Tao and to give an answer means that you don’t know the Tao.
‘One who asks about the Tao has never understood anything about the Tao.
‘Do not ask about the Tao, for the asking is not appropriate, nor can the question be answered, because it is like asking those in dire extremity. To answer what cannot be
