More or Less

Scott Bradley

It's curious how more can be less or less can be more. This seems true on many levels. It is a well known aphorism that one who is content with what she has, however little that may be, has more than one who has much more yet is not satisfied. So the need for more, in this case, creates the sense of less. More and less are thus more a function of one's attitude than of the actual accumulation of things.

This also applies to busyness. Two people might be as equally busy with the requirements of life, yet one has too much to do, while the other has neither too much nor too little. One is focused on the overwhelming many, the other on the immediate one. And although the one who sees the many may appear to have the larger view, it is in fact the one who sees the immediate who has truly attained the larger view. When all things are enfolded into a vastness, the worrisome succession of necessary things to do ceases to rule. One has stepped off the moving stair (to use Chen Jen's apparent anachronism). Life unfolds. It need not be forced. Nothing that 'matters' can truly be lost.

But this requires an acceptance of less. Less purpose. Less 'success'. Less esteem. Less 'face'. Less self.

Yet less is so much more. Assuming there is a way of being in the world which is free of the burden of self, no-self, then this is the realization of the most in the least. Vastness, though empty, is more than a universe of clutter could ever be.

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