The Simple Way, Part 49

The Simple Way
The Life & Teachings of Zhouzi
by Scott Bradley

The Master entered the hall and asked, “Upon what does perfection depend?” Before anyone could answer, he left the hall.

At the next day’s assembly the Master stood before the hall and again asked, “Upon what does perfection depend?”

Monks stood, spoke and sat.

“Perfection depends on nothing. This is its perfection.”

“Since all is perfection, ‘perfection’ means nothing.”

“If not-two, what is there to compare and upon what could anything depend?”

After these, and many similar answers, Zhouzi stood and asked, “Upon what does your perfection depend?”

At the next assembly he asked the same.

Many monks stood, spoke and sat, yet their answers were essentially the same: “What is true of Reality is true also of us; it is so perfectly what is that ‘perfection’ does not apply. If Is is perfection, upon what could it depend?”

“Then are all of you content and just what you would be?” asked Zhouzi before leaving the hall.

At the next assembly he said, “So what of your experience, do you wander in the Unknowable One? And if your life is truly a realization of the perfection of all, perhaps it is time for you to move on and surrender your place in the hall.”

One monk summed up what the others had said: “Master, though my not-one is One and in this I know joy, still I fail to express it with all that I am. And though I have joy in the ‘just as I am’, still I think often of the ‘how I would be.’”

“When first I came here,” replied Zhouzi, “I planted the courtyard tree, and from that day to this it has been truly a tree. Yet how great it has grown and how sweet is its shade without ever once fretting about what it would be.”

If you're interested in reading more from this series by Scott Bradley, go here. To check out more of Scott's writings, please visit TRT's shadow blog and look in the Table of Contents in the left sidebar.