Trey Smith
Cloud Chief said, "Heavenly Master, it has been hard indeed for me to meet with you - I beg one word of instruction!"What an answer! Silence. It seems so out of step in our busy modern world. And yet, it is only in silence that we can hear the murmur of the Grand Mystery.
"Well, then - mind-nourishment!" said Big Concealment. "You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless. Undo the mind, slough off spirit, be blank and soulless, and the ten thousand things one by one will return to the root - return to the root and not know why. Dark and undifferentiated chaos - to the end of life none will depart from it. But if you try to know it, you have already departed from it. Do not ask what its name is, do not try to observe its form. Things will live naturally and of themselves."
Cloud Chief said, "The Heavenly Master has favored me with this Virtue, instructed me in this Silence. All my life I have been looking for it, and now at last I have it!" He bowed his head twice, stood up, took his leave, and went away.
~ Burton Watson translation ~
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