14

Look, and it can’t be seen.
Listen, and it can’t be heard.
Reach, and it can’t be grasped.
Above, it isn’t bright.
Below, it isn’t dark.

Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.

Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.
Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.

You can’t know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

A few minutes ago I read a paragraph about about the Corvette ZO 6 engine. While the terms used were familiar English, without the math and engineering background, understanding eluded me. I just couldn’t grasp the stratospheric design. Abstractly I intuited the nature of the description. We’ve all had such instances many times though.

. I ought not to worry a bit, – there’s experience: the core of my body pressed into the seat, slingshot-like down the straight away, acceleration, rocket-like, toward a 670 horsepower apex in three or four heartbeats.

There is a great deal that I do not understand. Perhaps understanding anything at all just illusion, a trick of the mind, nature’s joke on me! Nevertheless I can “be it” can live in wonder and in fascination. And laugh!

Join me?