Mair 12:9

[Marblehead]

The master inquired of Old Longears, saying, "There are men who govern the Way as though they were banishing it.  They affirm what is not affirmable, declare what is not so to be so.  The sophists have a saying, 'One can distinguish "hard" and "white" as clearly as though they were suspended in space.'  Can someone like this be called a sage?"

"Such a person," said Old Longears, "would be like a clerk at his labors or a craftsman tied to his work, toiling his body and vexing his mind.  It is the hunting ability of the pointer and retriever that constrains them, it is the nimbleness of the gibbon and the monkey that brings them out of the mountain forests.  Hillock, I will tell you what you cannot hear and what you cannot speak.  Multitudinous are those who have heads and feet but no minds and no ears, while there is absolutely no one who has a physical form that can coexist with the formless and the shapeless.  Their movement and cessation, life and death, rise and fall, moreover, are beyond their ken, yet their governance lies within man.  To forget things and to forget heaven is called forgetting the self.  The man who forgets himself may be said to have entered heaven."

[Taoist Texts]

In this opaque passage, its is Confucius who is taking a lesson from Lao-zi. Little is comprehensible here save the punch-line

 

 

 

The Master asked Lao Dan, saying, 'Some men regulate the Dao (as by a law), which they have only to follow - (a thing, they say,) is admissible or it is inadmissible; it is so, or it is not so. (They are like) the sophists who say that they can distinguish what is hard and what is white as clearly as if the objects were houses suspended in the sky. Can such men be said to be sages?'

 

The reply was, 'They are like the busy underlings of a court, who toil their bodies and distress their minds with their various artifices - dogs, (employed) to their sorrow to catch the yak, or monkeys that are brought from their forests (for their tricksiness).

 

Qiu, I tell you this - it is what you cannot hear, and what you cannot speak of: Of those who have their heads and feet, and yet have neither minds nor ears, there are multitudes; while of those who have their bodies, and at the same time preserve that which has no bodily form or shape, there are really none. It is not in their movements or stoppages, their dying or living, their falling and rising again, that this is to be found. The regulation of the course lies in (their dealing with) the human element in them.

 

When they have forgotten external things, and have also forgotten the heavenly element in them, they may be named men who have forgotten themselves. The man who has forgotten himself is he of whom it is said that he has become identified with Heaven.'

/Legg/

[Stosh]

Some render the Dao navigable by assigning arbitrary boundaries , and rules , to its scope.

But in reality these boundaries are fabrications and the proper behaviors,

need to fit the circumstance in which one actually is operating.

The proper execution, of the way of heaven, for men ,  is contingent upon the human element , not independent of it. 

 

...its not a rote set of rules, you have to be judicious and feel your way through it. 

Edited November 13, 2017 by Stosh

[dawei]

 

On 11/13/2017 at 1:35 AM, Taoist Texts said:

The Master asked Lao Dan, saying, 'Some men regulate the Dao (as by a law)

 

If I understand the basic argument here...   Laozi vs kongzi vs Mengzi vs Hanfeizi.    This a Daoist vs Confucian vs legalist view.

 

IMO, to regulate the Dao (as by a law) seems legalism or even Confucianism.   They had some alignment to the daoist terms, but so did Zen later.  

 

In daoist terms (and like zen), it mean a more natural interaction with life.   Legalism and Confucianism may of looked at the outcome rather than the present residing moment.