A Commonplace Book

Words of wisdom are precise and clear,
Foolish words are petty and mean.

...things become what they are called. ... The usefulness of something defines its use.

All life is one, what need is there for words? Yet I have just said all life is one, so I have already spoken, haven't I?

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu?

The scholar rulers of old saw their success in terms of the people and saw their failures in terms of themselves. They view the people as right and themselves as wrong. Thus, if even one person suffered, they would accept this as being their responsibility and retire. This is certainly not the case today.

Today's rulers hide what should be done and then blame the people when they don't understand. They make the problems greater and punish those who cannot manage. They push people to the limit and execute those who can't make it. When people realize that they simply haven't the energy, they use pretence

When every day there is so much falsehood, how can the scholars and the people not become compromised! When strength is lacking, deceit is used; when knowledge is lacking, deception is used; when material goods are lacking, theft is used. But who realy is to blame for these thefts and robbery?

[Knowing Harmony describes "rich men" to Not Enough]:

They desire power and try to hold on to it all... This is a state of sickness.

Desiring wealth, lusting after profit, they fill their rooms to overflowing and cannot desist. They are unable to escape this lust, they want even more and they ignore all those who advise against this. This is a state of disgrace.

They heap up their wealth beyond anything they could ever use, but cling to it frantically. Even when they know the distress it causes, they want yet more and more. This state is called pathetic.

Behind doors they fear robbers and thieves. Out of doors, they are afraid of being mugged. They fortify themselves at home with towers and moats, and when traveling they dare not walk alone. This is the state of terror.

...[They] seem to have lost the faculty of reason.

[The Old Fisherman addressing Confucius]:

You, Sir, try to distinguish the spheres of benevolence and righteousness, to explore the boundaries between agreement and disagreement, to study changes between rest and movement, to pontificate on giving and receiving, to order what is to be approved of and what disapproved of, to unify the limits of joy and anger, and yet you have barely escaped calamity.

If you were to be serious in your cultivation of your own self, careful to guard the truth and willing to allow others to be as they are, then you could have avoided such problems. However, here you are, unable to cultivate yourself yet determined to improve others. Are you not obsessed with external things?

[The Old Fisherman addressing Confucius]:

The splendour of service doesn't mean just doing the same thing every time. When making your parents content, you don't worry about what to do. In getting jolly at a festival, you don't get worked up about the crockery. In mourning at times of death, you don't get het up over the precision of the rituals. Rituals have emerged from the common needs of the ordinary people. Truth itself comes to us from Heaven: this is how it is and it never changes. So the sage models himself upon Heaven, values truth but does not kowtow to convention. The fool does the opposite. He cannot take his model from Heaven and so is swayed by the mundane. He simply doesn't know the value of truth, but is under the domination of the ordinary people and so is affected by this common crowd and is never at peace. Sadly for you, Sir, you started early in such nonsense and have only recently heard of the great Tao!

Those whom Heaven helps we call the sons of Heaven. Those who would by learning attain to this seek for what they cannot learn. Those who would by doing attain to this seek to do what cannot be done. Those who aim by reasoning to reach it, reason where reasoning has no place. To know to stop where they cannot arrive by means of knowledge is the highest attainment. Those who cannot do this w'ill be destroyed on the lathe of Heaven.

Study is to study what cannot be studied. Undertaking means undertaking what cannot be undertaken. Philosophizing is to philosophize about what cannot be philosophized about. Knowing that knowing is unknowable is true perfection. Those who cannot grasp this will be destroyed by Heaven.