Knowing Without A How
Yan Hui asked, “What do you mean when you say
that there is no beginning without ending?”
Confucius said, “All things
are undergoing a continuous change
but we do not know who sustains the process
of transformation.
How do we know the ending?
How do we know the beginning?
What we can do is simply to follow
the natural course of transformation.”
Yan Hui asked, “What do you mean when you say
that the human and the heavenly are one and the same?”
Confucius replied, “Man originates from heaven.
Heaven originates from heaven itself.
Man cannot be the origin of heaven
since the nature of man is limited.
The sage participates
in the process of transformation
throughout his life.
Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 20 Tree on the Mountain
A story contained in an exchange between Hui and Confucius is one more example of this particular manner of seeing/engaging reality. How many views of Mt. Fuji* did Hokusai create? Actually he printed 36 views. Others might have been created. Infinite views of life are potential — under the convention of the tao!
Seems trivial enough that any beginning has an end. Not unlike a handful of snapshots, and you could think that each is a beginning and an end of ________ . Life imagined as beginnings and endings clipped, severed, discrete, each for our handling and viewing.
Not so fast offers Confucius. What happens is continuous! Every event is connected to the prior event in time, to become the matrix for what happens next. We have no idea who or what “causes” such a state of things,… To be aware (the most we can do) is to hang on to the course of the change. Ex post facto, our retrospective, rear-view-mirror-view of where we have been!
I think it is hopeful to make a frank admission that our knowledge goes just so far. No human being is a god, with limitless power to create and to destroy, as if anyone of us is outside of the system, exterior to what happens.
Everyone of us is along for the ride, a ride that ends for each when-it’s-over, to allow someone else to take a seat on the roller coaster, what once was our place on the merry-go-round.
Participate as you can, knowing that you and I don’t know much.
* header image, Hokusai – Thunderstorm beneath the Summit
2 thoughts on “Knowing Without A How”
Believing one has the power to obliterate the lives of others does not make that person strong, even when that person kills at random. Eventually a time will come for his/her death as well, though people in these kinds of positions rarely understand their own mortality. Somewhere in them lies the fantasy that if they garner enough power or retain enough wealth, they will be excused from ever facing death. The rest of us wonder what kind of psychosis must rattle around in their brains to have them believe they are gods. They are not gods, they aren’t even very good at being human.
Blood
Everyone bleeds red.
No matter where you have a desk.
Or whether you wear fatigues.