Confucius and Lao-tsu are reported to have been contemporaries. Both are legendary figures in the cultural/moral ethos for many generations living in China. Both figures are larger than life. In this passage one overhears a conversation between the two. Confucius, author of the legal-ethico composite for China asks Lao-tsu to say more, speak more clearly about the tao. Lao-tsu says to him “Let me try and I will offer you this approximation.”

Light emerges from the dark,
the tangible from the intangible,
the spirit from the tao, and the bodily form
from the seminal essence.

All things are produced from their bodily constitutions.
All living beings with nine apertures are born from the womb
and all creatures with eight apertures from eggs.
They come without indication and they leave without a vestige.

There is no door and no place:
they are in a boundless realm reaching in all directions.

Those who are in accordance with this realm
are fortified in their limbs, trustful and penetrating in their thinking,
keen in their hearing and clear in their seeing.
Their minds are not active without growing weary;
they relate to all things without restriction.

Without this,
heaven would not be so high;
Without this,
earth would not be so wide;
the sun and moon would not move,
and nothing would flourish.

This is the tao.

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 21 Tian Zifang

What comes to mind as I read these lines ?

The matter under consideration is ontology.

What we mean by Being with a capital “B”.

Emergence is an additional concept that arises to mind. Do we know even now the starting line of life? Much has been learned since 400 BCE the time of Confucius and Lao-tsu. We know the genome, the underlying code of life. And still we know that life is a hand-off of sorts, and we cannot say where the starting line is located. The starting line is dark to us, intangible…

The thing that we call life, may extend to matter, what we assumed was without any consciousness. A pan-psychism. Everything lives according to its level in the stratified matrix.

Finally you are I are mentioned in this discourse by Lao-tsu.

A true confession – I for one, have a mind that grows weary. An active mind grows weary. I wonder, what about the black pebble picked from the sand of Lake Michigan… Maybe the pebble has a spark of mind, that also grows weary.