What That Something Else Is
What the world thinks
the most valuable exhibition of the Tao
is to be found in books.
But books are only a collection of words.
Words have what is valuable in them;
– what is valuable in words is the ideas they convey.
But those ideas are a sequence of something else;
– and what that something else is cannot be conveyed by words.
When the world,
because of the value which it attaches to words,
commits them to books,
that for which it so values them may not deserve to be valued;
– because that which it values is not what is really valuable.
Thus it is
that what we look at and can see is (only) the outward form and colour,
and what we listen to and can hear is (only) names and sounds.
Alas!
that men of the world should think that form and colour,
name and sound, should be sufficient to give them the real nature of the Tao.
The form and color, the name and sound,
are certainly not sufficient to convey its real nature;
and so it is
that ‘the wise do not speak
and those who do speak are not wise.
—Zhuangzi, The Way of Heaven, by Zhuang Zhou, trans. James Legge
I own many books. Still books will take one only so far. The ideas transmitted by words, mind to mind, indicate something else. That something is/are possibilities which are inexpressable. What cannot be said is like the strike of steel to a piece of flint – sparks which burn for a moment. Inspiration happens. I am addressed, and I am speechless.
