The Plain And Quiet Path
The earl of the Ho said,
‘Well then, may I consider heaven and earth as (the ideal of) what is great,
and the point of a hair as that of what is small?’
Zo of the Northern Sea replied,
‘No.’
The (different) capacities of things are illimitable;
time never stops, (but is always moving on);
man’s lot is ever changing;
the end and the beginning of things
never occur (twice) in the same way.
Therefore men of great wisdom,
looking at things far off or near at hand,
do not think them insignificant for being small,
nor much of them for being great:
knowing how capacities differ illimitably.
They appeal with intelligence to things of ancient and recent occurrence,
without being troubled by the remoteness of the former,
or standing on tiptoe to lay hold of the latter:
knowing that time never stops in its course.
They examine with discrimination
(cases of) fulness and of want,
not overjoyed by success, nor disheartened by failure:
knowing the inconstancy of man’s lot.
They know the plain and quiet path (in which things proceed),
therefore they are not overjoyed to live,
nor count it a calamity to die:
the end and the beginning of things
never occurring (twice) in the same way.
–Zhuangzi, The Floods of Autumn, by Zhuang Zhou, trans. James Legge
A conversation between earl of the Ho, ruler of a river which was at autumnal flood stage, and the ruler of the Northern Sea, Lord Zo. These interlocutors seem to be minor deities. The conversation centers upon the difficulty of determining what is essentially great, and what is essentially small. These lines are the summation of the matter delivered by Zo, the sovereign of the Northern Sea. The question asked is whether it is correct to consider ‘heaven and earth’, in other words the universe itself the definition of what is great. And would the point of a hair be considered small?
The answer forth coming from the spirit-deity of the Northern Sea is simply ‘no’.
This is the crux of our dilemma is it not, the use of language to make comparison and contrast? What you mean depends upon your point of reference.
A further indeterminate is the role played by time. Will a ‘great’ event be a hinge point, or will something ‘small’ that no one would care to notice?
Everything turns upon what circumstance, or what set of circumstances win out in the long run.
Can we ever know? Ever?
What appears big or small, is shuffled, unaccountably arranged by time.
Say it again: great and small arranged by time.
2 thoughts on “The Plain And Quiet Path”
Well, any definition is rooted in the perspective of the speaker. Many humans believe that their pomposity and grand gestures automatically make them someone of great importance. Perhaps within a small (almost infinitesimally tiny) section of the universe they do have an impact on others who exist within their realm of influence. But in the much larger scheme, they are but a speck of dust, as are we all. Any photograph showing the billions upon billions of galaxies that dot the evening sky will tell you everything you need to know about the self-aggrandized blowhole. It seems that it should be so simple to live out our lives in the Peaceable Kingdom, but we don’t seem to have the mental or emotional capacity to truly understand our place within the vastness of the universe. And so we continue to blow each other up in the name of some fictional deity while the rest of everything watches from a distance.
Precisely expressed. But I am not yet prepared to concede that we will never be otherwise, or behave otherwise. I’ll keep saying and showing to everyone within my reach of influence that there is every good reason to treat others well. Especially when we are most inclined to dismiss them as benighted, dangerous… Also, we ought to beware of any religion whose spokespersons draw a sharp line to indicate the god(s) value some human lives more than others. A life is a life is a life.