Thorough Comprehension of Life (9)

1 Confucius toured in the waterfall area of Luliang. The fall was thirty rens (a kind of length unit). The powerful current stirred by the waterfall is forty li in length. The torrent is so strong that even the fish was difficult to live in this river.

2 When Confucius as well as his disciples was charmed by the natural masterpiece, they found a man floating up and down in the river. Thinking that the man committed suicide, Confucius immediately asked his disciples to run along the river for saving him.

3 After running hundreds of steps, they suddenly saw the man with hair disheveled sticking out from the water and swimming back to the bank. Obviously, the man was swimming here, which amazed Confucius.

4 He walked up to asked the swimmer, “You dishevel your hair and swim in such an atrocious river which even the fish scare. At first, I think you are a dead body; to my surprise, you are a living man. You can swim in this flow. Thus your skill of swimming must be supreme. How do you learn it?”

5 The guy said unconcernedly, “It is no more than swim. There is no great theory. I started by doing what I used to, gradually grew accustomed to it, and finally followed the fate. When meeting the whirlpool, I sink down with it. Whirlpool goes the bottom and then spouts out from other direction. I take the time to follow it. As long as you follow the current without resistance to flow, and take it easy, it is easy to swim in the river. If I have to say the way, the said it is.”

6 Confucius asked, “What does the said means? I can’t catch it. Could you make it clearer?”

7 The swimmer answered, “I live on land and accustom myself to the living, which is what I am accustomed to.

8 I grow up by the riverside and stay with water every day. Naturally I have the skill of swimming by practice, which is what I obtain.

9 Living on land and playing in water for years; I just follow my nature and live on the skill of swimming by practice. I never study why I live so, why I swim so, why I marry and have kids, why I bring up kids, why I sit in meditation, why I eat and why I sleep.

10 To all these things, I don’t know why. I just do it in silence and in time. Do my utmost to do it well.

11 In this water, when meeting whirlpool, I follow it to sink down and to float up. Life is so. It is said that there is a best one in every industry. Whatever the environment is and whatever the fortune is, if only I happen to live in them, I am sound, tranquil and peaceful to get along with them. I manage to arrange properly every detail of life, being a good beggar, a good civil servant, a good worker, a good businessman or even a good retired man. I don’t blame why I have the befalling and I don’t complain about the heaven and other people. This is the essence of followed the fate.