Zhi Travels North (5)

1 Confucius asked Laotse, “Today you are free. Could I consult you about what the great Tao is?”

2 Laotse replied, “At first, you should fast for days to clean your body and heart. And then you throw completely off your thought of sage. Then we discuss it.”

3 After Confucius did what Laotse asked, Laotse said, “Tao is very profound and elusory. It is very difficult to describe Tao. I will give you an outline of its simplest attributes.”

4 Light projects out of darkness. The tangible substance is from the intangible. The vigor of life is from Tao. All creatures come into being due to the combination of Tao and their bodies.

5 All things have evolved to produce various forms. The one whose appearance has nine apertures is viviparous; the one whose appearance has eight apertures is oviparous. Sources of the creatures are unknown and their futures are unfound. They live in the middle phase whose foregoing phase and successive phase are unknown.

6 Tao is dim; however, we can feel its existence clearly in other way. Since the men following Tao, they are strong, agile and sane and can’t be influenced by worry; they can handle affairs around them at ease.

7 Since Tao exists, the heaven is high and earth is broad; the sun and the moon run without mistake; all creatures can grow. We comprehend the existence of Tao by the said phenomenon.

8 I think that not all learned scholars are wise and not all people who are eloquent have intelligence.

9 The sages who indeed obtain Tao desert the worldly knowledge and the intelligence for argument. They only keep Tao that neither can be reduced nor can be increased.

10 Tao is as deep as sea. There always is another start in its end.

11Tao nourishes all things but it is not in shortage. Comparing to the men who obtain Tao, common gentlemen is much worse because they just discuss and study the surface of things.

12 The source of lives is Tao that is enough forever.

13 In one of the middle states, there is a man who stands between heaven and earth, balancing Yin and Yang. His practice is fairly advanced; however, he still has human’s body. Now that he has the body, he inevitably and eventually returns to the original place – dust.

14 In the viewpoint of the origin, life is integration of material and the self-nature, Buddha-nature, Qi, calmness and refinement. The time of integration are different, some long, some short. However, they are nothing, comparing to the life of universe --- thirteen billion years.

15 The life of a man just is transient. Now that it is so, is it worth wasting time to argue about right or wrong of good Yao and bad Jie?

16 Fruit and melon grow in their own way. Also, principles of human relations are complicate but they have their own sequence. The men of perfect practice will not mean to change themselves to cater for conduct standard of others when encountering disputes or censure. They just abide by Tao as the principal without presetting standpoint or strategy. They accommodate themselves to the development of situation around and play to the score.

17 Therefore, virtue is a presentation that shows Tao is used in deeds. As a basic and general principle, Tao is simple but widely used.

18 Emperors rise because of it; kings fall because of it.

19 Life in this world is transient. It flies as fast as a swift horse rushing away, which we see through a cleft.

20 When we see the nature, all creatures are flourishing and vigorous.

21 As we neglect them for a while, they are gone in silence.

22 When a change happens, a new life comes into being. However, next change of the new life is death.

23 Creatures in the world all bemoan the changes of life and death.

24 When body that life relies on ruins, where does soul go?

25 How do our bodies look after deteriorated and rotted which we take considerate care of them every day?

26 Do they slip away? Do they hit the road to home?

27 Every creature is composed of tiny elementary particles. Creatures are assorted and plentiful, they would finally return to the state of elementary particle.

28 The phenomenon is one of topics that most people know and like to discuss. The change of the part of material; however, is not the topic that the men of perfect practice would like to study.

29 They know that in the combination for creatures, there are self-nature, Buddha-nature, Qi, calmness and refinement that are invisible, touchless and out of research. All efforts of research are futile because it is doomed to failure.

30 What eyes can see is no more than a dust that creates all creatures. They are unworthy of being spent too much time and energy to study. As for the self-nature, Buddha-nature, Qi, calmness and refinement normally called them--Tao--; however, nobody is able to figure them out. Hence, the only thing we can do is to acquiesce in its existence. To Tao, research and argue is of no use.

31 Supposed that Sakyamuni now do a great favor to explain Tao for you, I am afraid that you can’t understand it. As the story in Buddha book says: Shariputra, the wisest disciple of Buddha, couldn’t understand a little when he listened in the lecture where Buddha and Maitreya Bodhisattva preach Buddhism theory.

32 Now that it is so, plugging our ears and closing our eyes, let Tao operates in our body without intervention. If so, we may approach closely to the Great Attainment of practice.