Bit by Bit - Chapter 2, Part 19

Trey Smith

There is such a thing as completion and injury - Mr. Chao playing the lute is an example. There is such a thing as no completion and no injury - Mr. Chao not playing the lute is an example.

Chao Wen played the lute; Music Master K'uang waved his baton; Hui Tzu leaned on his desk. The knowledge of these three was close to perfection. All were masters, and therefore their names have been handed down to later ages. Only in their likes they were different from him [the true sage]. What they liked, they tried to make clear. What he is not clear about, they tried to make clear, and so they ended in the foolishness of "hard" and "white." Their sons, too, devoted all their lives to their fathers' theories, but til their death never reached any completion. Can these men be said to have attained completion? If so, then so have all the rest of us. Or can they not be said to have attained completion? If so, then neither we nor anything else have ever attained it.
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Close to perfection? Possibly. Perfection itself? Hardly.

As I wrote previously, I think the concept of perfection is suspect. In fact, I think the only conceivable way to attain perfection is to reject the concept outright. As long as we strive for it, it will remain out of reach. If we simply reject the notion, then maybe it will fall in our laps.

Plop.

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