Creation (64 page)

The pavilion was made of yellow brick with a steep tile roof. Moss grew in every fissure, and bats hung from beams wreathed in cobwebs. The old servant who prepared our meal treated Master Li as an equal; and ignored us. We did not care. Hungrily we devoured fresh fish to the soothing sound of fast water striking rocks.

As we knelt on rustic mats, Master Li discussed the meaning—or a meaning—of Tao. “Literally,” he said, “Tao means a road or a way. Like a highway. Or a
low
way.” I noticed that Master Li’s hands looked as if they were made of fragile alabaster, and I realized then how much older he was than I had first thought. Later I learned that he was more than a century old.

“Where,” I asked, “does the way—
your
way, that is—begin?”

“
My
way would begin with me. But I don’t have a way. I am part of the Way.”

“Which is what?”

The duke of Sheh began to hum contentedly, and pick his teeth. He enjoyed this sort of discourse.

“Which is what is. The primal unity of all creation. The first step that a man can take along the Way is to be in harmony with the laws of the universe, with what we call the always-so.”

“How is this done?”

“Think of the Way as water. Water always takes the low ground, and permeates all things.” I had the uneasy sense that I was again in the Gangetic plain, where complex things are expressed so simply that they become utterly mysterious.

To my astonishment, Master Li saw into my mind. “My dear barbarian, you think me deliberately obscure. But I can’t help myself. After all, the doctrine of the Way is known as the
wordless
doctrine. Therefore, whatever I say is pointless. You can no more know what I know to be the Way than I can feel the pain in your left knee, which you keep shifting on the mat because you are not yet used to our way of sitting.”

“But you perceive my discomfort without actually feeling it. So perhaps I can perceive the Way without following it, as you do.”

“Very good,” said the duke, and belched to show his satisfaction not only with the meal but with us. The Cathayans regard the belch as the mind-stomach’s sincerest utterance.

“Then think of the Way as a condition in which there are no opposites or differences. Nothing is hot. Nothing is cold. Nothing is long. Nothing is short. Such concepts are meaningless except in regard to other things. To the Way, they are all one.”

“But to us they are many.”

“So they seem. Yes, there are no
real
differences between things. In essence, there is only the dust that makes us up, a dust which takes temporary forms, yet never ceases to be dust. It is important to know this. Just as it is important to know that it is not possible to rebel against the fact of nature. Life and death are the same. Without the one, there cannot be the other. And without the other, there cannot be the one. But, finally, neither exists except in relationship to the other. There is nothing but the always-so.”

Although I found this conception of a primal unity acceptable, I could not overlook those differences which Master Li so blithely drowned in his sea of the always-so. “But surely,” I said, “a man must be judged for his actions. There are good actions and bad. The Truth and the Lie ...” I spoke as the grandson of Zoroaster. When I had finished, Master Li answered me with a curious parable.

“You speak wisely.” The old man bowed his head courteously. “Naturally, in the relative conduct of a given life there are seemly actions and unseemly ones, and I am sure that we would agree as to what is proper and what is not. But the Way transcends such things. Let me give you an example. Suppose you were a maker of bronze—”

“Actually, he is a smelter of iron, Master Li, a useful art which the barbarians have mastered.” The duke looked at me as if he himself had invented me, out of primal unified dust.

Master Li ignored the duke’s aside. “You are a maker of bronze. You want to cast a bell, and you have prepared a crucible for the molten metal. But when you pour out the fiery metal, the bronze refuses to flow. It says, ‘No, I don’t want to be a bell. I want to be a sword, like the flawless sword of Wu.” As a bronzemaker, you would be most distressed with this naughty metal, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. But metal may not choose its mold. The smelter has that choice.”

“No.” The softly spoken no was as chilling in its effect as Gosala’s thrown string. “You may not rebel against the Way, any more than your hand can rebel against your arm or the metal against the mold. All things are a part of the universe, which is the always-so.”

“What are the fundamental laws? And who was their creator?”

“The universe is the unity of all things, and to accept the Way is to accept the fact of this unity. Alive or dead, you are forever a part of the always-so, whose laws are simply the laws of becoming. When life comes, it is time. When life goes, this is natural, too. To accept with tranquillity whatever happens is to put oneself beyond sorrow or joy. That is how you follow the Way, by achieving wu-wei.”

I was again puzzled by that phrase, which means, literally, do nothing.

“But how is our world to function if one is entirely passive? Someone must cast bronze so that we may have bells, swords.”

“When we say do nothing, we mean do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous. You are an archer?”

“Yes. I was trained as a warrior.”

“So was I.” Master Li looked as unlike a warrior as it is possible to look. “Have you noticed how easy it is to hit the mark when you are idly practicing on your own?”

“Yes.”

“But when you are in a contest with others, when there is a golden prize, don’t you find it more difficult to hit the mark than when you are alone or not in competition?”

“Yes.”

“When you try too hard, you become tense. When you are tense, you are not at your best. Well, to avoid that sort of tension is what we mean by wu-wei. Or to put it another way, cease to be self-conscious in what you do. Be natural. Have you ever cut up an animal for food?”

“Yes.”

“Do you find it difficult to separate the parts of the body?”

“Yes. But I’m not a butcher or a Magian—I mean a priest.”

“Neither am I. But I’ve observed butchers at work. They are always swift, always accurate. What is hard for us to do is simple for them. Why? Well, I once asked the lonely one’s chief butcher how it was that he could dismember an ox in the time it would take me to clean a small fish. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘My senses seem to stand still, and my spirit—or whatever—takes over.’ That’s what we mean by wu wei. Do nothing that is not natural, that is not in harmony with the principles of nature. The four seasons come and go without anxiety because they follow the Way. The wise man contemplates this order, and begins to understand the harmony implicit in the universe.”

“I agree that it is wise to accept the natural world. But even the wisest man must do all he can to support what is good and to defy what is evil ...”

“Oh, my dear barbarian, this idea of doing is what makes all the trouble. Don’t
do
!
That’s the best doing. Rest in the position of doing nothing. Cast yourself into the ocean of existence. Forget what you take to be good, evil. Since neither exists except in relation to the other, forget the relationship. Let things take care of themselves. Free your own spirit. Make yourself as serene as a flower, as a tree. Because all true things return to their root, without knowing that they do so. Those things—that butterfly, that tree—which lack knowledge never leave the state of primal simplicity. But should they become conscious, like us, they would lose their naturalness. They would lose the Way. For a man, perfection is possible only in the womb. Then he is like the uncarved block before the sculptor shapes him, and in so doing spoils the block. In this life, he who needs others is forever shackled. He who is needed by others is forever sad.”

But I could not accept the passivity of Master Li’s doctrine of the Way any more than I could comprehend the desirability of the Buddha’s nirvana.

I asked Master Li about the real world—or the world of things since the word real is apt to inspire the Taoist sage to pose a series of self-satisfied questions as to the nature of the real. “What you say, I understand. Or
begin
to understand,” I added hastily. “I may not follow the Way, but you have given me a glimpse of it. I am in your debt. Now let us speak practically. States must be governed. How is this to be done if the ruler practices wu-wei?”

“Is there such a perfect ruler?” Master Li sighed, “The busy-ness of the world of things tends to preclude absorption with the Way.”

“We dukes may only glimpse the road that you wise men take.” The duke of Sheh looked very pleased with himself, and somewhat drowsy. “Yet we honor your journey. Deplore our own high busy place. Wait for you to tell us how to govern our people.”

“Ideally, Lord Duke, the prince-sage who governs ought to empty the minds of the people while filling their bellies. He must weaken their will while strengthening their bones. If the people lack knowledge, they will lack desire. If they lack desire, they will do nothing but what is natural for men to do. Then good will be universal.”

As statecraft, this did not differ too much from the precepts of the brutal Huan. “But”—I was most respectful—“if a man should acquire knowledge and if he should then desire to change his lot—or even change the state itself—how would the prince-sage respond to such a man?”

“Oh, the prince should kill him.” Master Li smiled. Between two long incisors, there was only dark gum. He suddenly resembled one of the sleeping bats overhead.

“Then those who follow the Way have no feeling against taking human life?”

“Why should they? Death is as natural as life. Besides, the one who dies is not lost. No. Quite the contrary. Once gone, he is beyond all harm.”

“Will his spirit be born again?”

“The dust will reassemble, certainly. But that is not, perhaps, what you mean by rebirth.”

“When the spirits of the dead go to the Yellow Springs,” I asked, “what happens?” In Cathay, when someone dies, the common people say that he has gone to the Yellow Springs. But should you ask them where and what that place is, answers tend to be confusing. From what I could gather, the notion of the Yellow Springs is very old; it seems to be a kind of eternal limbo, like the Greek Hades. There is no day of judgment. The good and the bad share the same fate.

“It would seem to me that the Yellow Springs are everywhere.” Master Li stroked his right hand with his left. A magical gesture? “If they are everywhere, then no one can go there, since he is already there. But, of course, man is born, lives, dies. Although he is a part of the whole, the fact of his brief existence inclines him to resist wholeness. Well, we follow the Way in order not to resist the whole. Now, it is plain to all, or nearly all”—he bowed to me—“that when the body decomposes, the mind”—he patted his stomach—“vanishes with the body. Those who have not experienced the Way find this deplorable, even frightening. We are not frightened. Since we identify with the cosmic process, we do not resist the always-so. In the face of both life and death, the perfect man does nothing, just as the true sage originates nothing. He merely contemplates the universe until he becomes the universe. This is what we call the mysterious absorption.”

“To do nothing—” I began.

“—is an immense spiritual labor,” ended Master Li. “The wise man has no ambitions. Therefore, he has no failures. He who never fails always succeeds. And he who always succeeds is all-powerful.”

“There is,” I said, “no answer to that, Master Li.” I was already used to the circular argument which is to the Athenians what the wheel of the doctrine is to Buddhists.

To my surprise, the duke challenged Master Li on the subject of how best to govern. “Surely,” he said, “those who follow the Way have always opposed the death penalty on the ground that no man has the right to pronounce such an awful judgment upon another. To do so is the very opposite of wu-wei.”

“Many followers of the Way agree with you, Lord Duke. Personally, I find the matter of no consequence. After all, nature is ruthless. Floods drown us. Famine starves us. Pestilence kills us. Nature is indifferent. Should man be unlike nature? Of course not. Nevertheless, I find sympathetic the notion that it might be better to let our world go its own way and not try to govern it at all, since truly good government is not possible. Everyone knows that the more good laws the ruler makes, the more thieves and bandits will be created in order to break those laws. And everyone knows that when the ruler takes too much for himself in taxes, the people will starve. Yet he always does; and they always do. So let us live in perfect harmony with the universe. Let us make no laws of any kind, and be happy.”

“Without law, there can be no happiness.” I was firm.

“Probably not.” Master Li was blithe.

“I am sure that there must be a right way to govern,” I said. “Certainly, we are well acquainted with all the wrong ways.”

“No doubt. But, finally, who knows?” He bent like a reed to every argument.

I was growing impatient. “What,” I asked, “
can
a man know?”

The answer was swift. “He can know that to be at one with the Way is to be like heaven, and so impenetrable. He can know that if he possesses the Way, though his body ceases to exist, he is not destroyed. The Way is like a cup which is never empty, which never needs to be filled. All complexities are reduced to simplicity. All opposites are blended, all contrasts harmonized. The Way is as calm as eternity itself.
Only cling to the unity
.” Master Li stopped. That was that.

The duke sat very straight, head held high; he was sound asleep and snoring softly. Below us the water sounded like a seashell held close to the ear.

“Tell me, Master Li,” I asked, “who created the Way?”

The old man looked down at his now folded hands. “I do not know whose child it is.”

I WAS NEVER PRESENTED TO THE SON of heaven. Apparently there was no protocol for the reception of a barbarian ambassador who was also a slave. I did watch several ceremonies at which the duke of Chou presided. Since he always gave the appearance of divinity, he looked perfectly suited to his symbolic role. A good thing, according to my master, “because he is less intelligent than most people.”