Zeyang (10)

1 Shaozhi asked Dagong Diao, “What is the meaning of ‘The Words of Community’?” Dagong Diao answered: “Community is a settled residence where a group of people with different surnames or from different kin live and conserve the same customs.

2 To be a whole, they are a community, however, if separates it into many individual units, actually, each of the unit has his own surname and comes from different kin.

3 An animal that is called ‘horse’ is made up of various parts. If you take different part individually, you won’t get a whole horse.

4 Small mud mounds accumulate to form a big mountain. Creeks converges to form a river. A great man gathers the mass to form a group. Petty ego doesn’t insist on its own idea while complies with the common standards around which are taken as codes of their conduct. By this way, a big mountain, a river, a group is formed.

5 The temperatures in four seasons are different, which results from nature’s arrangement and control. The different seasons compose a year.

6 The central government includes many ministries, each of which has its own duty; various officials have their own jobs. The leader of the central government directs them to build an efficient government. If they work cooperatively, policy of government can be carried out smoothly.

7 All creatures consist of various organs. Tao hides behind them to arrange and control them. Tao doesn’t have selfness and doesn’t take sides of a certain organ. Tao is no-self, so even it is the actual controller, we are difficult in naming it.

8 No-self is a necessary quality to be a leader. Once there is a self; there is selfness and selfish mind. If so, you can’t become a leader taking care of all the benefit of the group. If there is no enough cohesion power in a group, it dismisses.

9 Tao itself is of no-self, so it has no its own action and requirement. Thus it becomes a dominator of selflessness.

10 Because of its selflessness, its order can be implemented. Various organs and organizations do the thing that Tao wants to do.

11 In the view of time, the surrounding around us is changing continuously; so is the weather, things, the people we meet, and even the mood we have is different everyday. The world is always changing; something in favors us, we say it is luck, something is averse to us, we say it is unlucky. Actually, the unluckiness and luckiness shift from one to another all the time.

12 Something good seems helpless and even harmful in the beginning; however, with the evolution of time it may become favorable. Some people don’t understand the property of change of the worldly affairs; as soon as he sees something wrong, he feels nervous. He forgot that if review the whole thing in the long term, the result might be totally different from what it is in the beginning.

13 When some people see the development in the first phase, they are eager to make efforts to change it. In the most of time, the aftermath of change makes him to lose a good result.

14 To study Tao, we can refer to the swamp where assorted plants scramble to grow and also refer to the mountain, where various tree stands among the ripraps.

15 The selfless toleration is what you asked the meaning of ‘The Words of Community'.”

16 “For those things we can’t understand, can’t see and can’t touch; however, can sense its existence subtly. Can we generally summarize them as ‘Tao’?” Shaozhi asked Dagong Diao.

7 Dagong Diao replied, “No. The definition is too vague. For example, we say that the nature produces a million of creatures but we know clearly the creatures on earth are more than a million. The total number is so huge so we just use a million to represent the large quantity. Actually, it has nothing to do with the number of million.

18 The space of the earth and heaven is vast; so is the energy of Yin and Yang. But only Tao both its space and energy are incomparable vast.

19 What Tao covers is so abroad that its broadness can’t be described, however, we human got use to give everything a name just like what we call all the creatures in the world-- “a million of creature”, so we describe it ‘vast’. But we should always keep in mind that once we impose a name on anything, the unchanged image occurs in our past experiences, will virtually shrink the field of the object and stiffen its real fact.

20 So, the thing that we try to describe shall not be named as “Tao” simply.

21 We shouldn’t name Tao the way as we name the dog and horse, because we would neglect much once we named it.”