A teacher from the Eastern Suburbs asked Chuang Tzu:
-Where is the so-called path?
“Everywhere,” answered Chuang Tzu.
- Give an example, then only I will be able to understand.
- In an ant.
- And even lower?
- In a doll.
- And even lower?
- In the tiles.
- And the lowest?
- In urine and feces.
The teacher from the Eastern Suburbs remained silent.
“Your questions, teacher, of course, were not worthy of substance,” said Chuang Tzu. “To comprehend the path, you ask, like an overseer at the market, how one kicks a pig, finding out how fat it is: the lower, the clearer.” But you don’t have to give an example - there is no thing that can avoid the path. This is the true path, and these are the words about the great. There are three words: Zhou, Bian, Xian. They sound different, but the essence is the same, they mean one thing - “everywhere.” Let’s try to wander together through the palace of “Nowhere”, and there will be no end or limit to judgments about the unity of common things. Let us try, together with Inaction, to become simple and calm, dispassionate and pure, harmonious and idle! My thought would be distracted from everything, no matter where it went, it would not know the limit, it would leave, return and would not know where to stop. And I would leave and return, not knowing where it would end, I would wander through vast spaces, I would enter the realm of great knowledge and would not know how to exhaust it. The substance in things is not delimited from things, but things have a limit, the so-called boundary of a thing. The limit of the infinite is the infinity of the finite. We talk about the full and the empty, about decay and death. For the path, what is filled is not full, and what is empty is not empty. The beginning and the end are not the beginning and the end for him; accumulation and disintegration are not accumulation and disintegration for him.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru