The understanding of the little man never gets beyond gifts and wrappings, letters and calling cards. He wastes his spirit on the shallow and trivial, and yet wants to be the savior of both the world and the Way, to blend both form and emptiness in the Great Unity. Such a man will blunder and go astray in time and space; his body entangled, he will never come to know the Great Beginning.Go here to read the introductory post to the chapters of the Book of Chuang Tzu.
But he who is a Perfect Man lets his spirit return to the Beginningless, to lie down in pleasant slumber in the Village of Not-Anything-At-All; like water he flows through the Formless, or trickles forth from the Great Purity. How pitiful - you whose understanding can be encompassed in a hair-tip, who know nothing of the Great Tranquility!
~ Burton Watson translation via Terebess Asia Online ~
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Chapter 32, Part 7 - Chuang Tzu
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This is beautiful, but also reveals how little I understand of Taoism. What is it to "return to the Beginingless?"
ReplyDeleteI understand this in terms of meditation and internal alchemy (neidan), returning to the original shen (spirit), original qi that preceded yin and yang, integrating those energies (kan and li-fire and water) to achieve the primordial state of wuji--what is prior to taiji (yin and yang). It is esoteric.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Martin Palmer's translation will sound a little less esoteric:
ReplyDelete"The perfect man, in contrast, concentrates his spirit upon that which was before the beginning and rests in the strangeness of being in the fields of nothingness. Like water he flows without form, or pours out into the great purity. How pathetic you are! Those of you whose understanding is no greater than the tip of a hair, and who do not understand the great peacefulness."