No End Or Beginning
‘There is no end or beginning to the Tao.
Things indeed die and are born,
not reaching a perfect state which can be relied on.
Now there is emptiness, and now fulness;
– they do not continue in one form.
The years cannot be reproduced; time cannot be arrested.
Decay and growth, fulness and emptiness,
when they end, begin again.
It is thus that we describe the method of great righteousness,
and discourse about the principle pervading all things.
The life of things is like the hurrying and galloping along of a horse.
With every movement there is a change;
with every moment there is an alteration.
What should you be doing?
what should you not be doing?
You have only to be allowing
this course of natural transformation
to be going on.’
–Zhuangzi, The Floods of Autumn, by Zhuang Zhou, trans. James Legge
Surely these are among the most poetic expression of metaphysics attempted anywhere, at any time, by those with a philosophical bent of mind. Here we have demonstrated the difference in viewpoint between the East and the West. Inhabitants of cultures situated within the Indian subcontinent, and China share a heritage of noticing the transitions of Nature. We in the West, beneficiaries of a Greco Roman heritage are conditioned to attend to the essence of things. Thus we occidentals are restless, always searching for “home,” a paradise where everything is at rest, situated with exquisite and proportioned fit. Why am I so restless? Because nothing in this world, nature-made or of human artifice, is expressed in a pure, unalloyed state. There are always anomalies, “imperfections.”
Therefore we in the West are interminably seeking for a theoretical ideal state, a stasis of perfection. The West is seated in Plato’s cave, contemplating a shadow-play, produced both by our institutions, as well as by our minds, – layers of illusion. What is real? What version do you mean?
What should I be doing? What should I not be doing?
You have only to relax, comes the reply of Zhuang Zhou.
The rejoinder, that small voice in the back of my mind: Capitulation, fatalism!? What’s the alternative?
One thought on “No End Or Beginning”
The words you offer today are quite profound, having the ring of an ultimate truth. Yet I wonder if there is not some form of give and take, the yin & yang of involvement. The Dalai Lama is an activist, but without being overtly active. He desires harmony to exist in the world around him and works for that goal, though his expectations for success remain muted. We cannot transform the basic nature of others, but we can lead by example, we can attempt to educate, we can offer alternatives to a dysfunctional world. To do that we must intently listen and offer thoughts with neither exceptions nor judgement. Not an easy task.