The Mastery of Life

There is a limit to our life,
but to knowledge there is no limit.
With what is limited
to pursue after what is unlimited is a perilous thing;

and when, knowing this,
we still seek the increase of our knowledge,
the peril cannot be averted.

There should not be the practice of what is good
with any thought of the fame (which it will bring),
nor of what is evil with any approximation to the punishment (which it will incur):

an accordance with the Central Element (of our nature)
is the regular way to preserve the body,
to maintain the life,
to nourish our parents,
and to complete our term of years.

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by James Legge

This is the third of the first seven sections, or the inner books which are attributed to Zhuangzi. There is no getting around the dialectical texture of human experience. Our life is a felt paradox. I have no idea of how it feels to be a tree, a pumpkin, or a fox. I suspect such knowledge is beyond human access. There’s so much in principle untranslatable – even if I learned to “speak” tree…

My life is a paradox. You and I however live in the tension between the knowable. I mean the boundaries of languages agreed upon, (math is a language, – all of the dialects of mathematics, geometry, algebra, tensor calculus, etc.) and those states of body to which I can only point (love, fear, nostalgia, beauty, etc.). Such states are kaleidoscopic in transformation, which I can merely roughly indicate, approximately, metaphorically – describing what I mean.

Does a fox have any sense of paradox, the gap between the limited, and the unlimited? I have no idea. 

Zhuangzi indicates the essential paradox, the mother of all paradoxes is the limitation of our span of years, and the boundless knowledge terrain that remains for discovery. 

Living well means accepting the risk, the hazard of not knowing, that constant sense of “not enough.” “The peril cannot be averted” says the Zhuangzi. I am advised: pedal to the metal, full speed ahead, without instrumental concern, no calculation regarding monetizing my effort… 

Care for my body, cultivating psychological balance, and the payment of the debt that is owed to my parents, to grandparents entails unceasing curiosity, a disposition to learn more.

Such is the Taoist sense of a good life.