Utmost Joy (6)

1 After dinner, Liezi had a walk on the path of a hill behind his house. He found a skull of more than a hundred years exposing on the lawn.

2 Liezi bent to poke weeds away. He said to the skull, “Common people regard the skull as the symbol of death, but in the viewpoint of all things as a whole, I consider life has never ceased from the beginning until today. It just changes a little of his form.

3 As far as a skull is concerned, you are composed of material. A hundred years ago, you combined with soul, self-nature, Buddha-nature, Qi, calmness and refinement to form a man. Later you parted with them to come back to the field of nature. In this viewpoint, you aren’t the symbol of death at all.

4 You are not dead, nor living, which only you and I know, however, common people don’t know it.

5 Mentioning the combination of soul and material to form all things, may I ask you, Mr. skull, are you staying here to practice and bide your time to form a human?

6 However, once you become a human, are you satisfied?

7 I am a human now, but am I happy?”

8 If not, why do you expect it so much when you are in the world of material? Why do you scramble to come to this world full of hardship?

9 Back from the walk, Liezi restated the feeling of seeing the skull to his disciples. In the meantime, he tried to explain the developing process of life.

10 Liezi said, “Zhong are the basic unit of life. All things in the Nature are composed of them.

11 At first, Zhong developed into microbe in water, such as blue alga and bacteria. These tiny creatures are as thin as silk so they were call Mi.

12 When they developed into the amphibious place, they formed a kind of inferior creatures, such as amoeba, infusorians and fungi and other small groups of protozoa.

13 Later some creatures left water to live on the land. They came to form flat animal, star-shape animal, annelid, arthropod and amniote, such as rabbit, dog, horse, sheep, monkey, orangutan and even human.

14 In the macro view of creature, its life has never disconnected, continuing to today from the beginning three billions years ago. Therefore, there is no death.

15 However, as far as individual is concerned, all creatures consist of material and soul, self-nature, Buddha-nature, Qi, calmness and refinement. Later they are apart. The material still is it used to be, while the others return to Tao or the place called Ji.

16 When life of universe come to the end, all material will return to Ji just like the soul, self-nature, Buddha-nature, Qi, calmness and refinement have gone.”