ReVISIONS (14 page)

Fire is light. And fire, it burns. Burns the dark.

Fan the flames!

 

(Thus have I heard from the Buddha, the Enlightened One.)

My disciples, all is emptiness! All that lives, all that dies, the stones of the field, the waters of the stream, all, all is emptiness.

What is emptiness? Emptiness is the quality of a thing being nothing in and of itself, but being composed of smaller parts and having no existence except in relation to other things.

What is an example of emptiness? A cart. It is made of components: the wheels, the axle, the box, the hitch. Point to a cart, then look where your finger is truly directed. Behold, you are not pointing to something you would call a cart; your finger points only to a wheel or the box or the hitch. You cannot point to the cart itself—there is no cart, there are only pieces. The cart is a mental concept we impose upon an aggregation of components. At most, it is a sum of fractions.

Yet the fractions, too, are emptiness. The hitch, for example, is made of wood pieces and leather bindings. The wood (when viewed closely) is made of smaller strands we might call slivers. Slivers can be split into smaller slivers . . . and who is to say how small one can go, components breaking into components, fractions breaking into fractions, emptiness into emptiness? An infinite regress of smaller and smaller fragments.

What does it mean, to have no existence except in relation to other things? A cart is useless unless it is drawn by an ox or by some other being; and a cart has no purpose except insofar as it may carry loads in its box. A cart makes no sense without an ox and a load. A cart also makes no sense except when a people's way of life requires heavy burdens to be borne from one place to another. Yet again, the cart makes no sense unless there are roads that connect starting points to destinations. Is there not a dependence between the cart's existence and the existence of many other things? Indeed, is a cart's function not a dependency on many variable aspects of the world?

So, my disciples, meditate on these truths: aggregation, fractions, functional dependencies. All these things are what is meant by “emptiness.”

And what is the symbol of emptiness? Visualize a hole . . . an unfilled circle . . . a mark one can use instead of blankness, but a mark that means blankness.

That mark, the empty circle, is the beginning of all wisdom.

 

 

The road that looks like a road is not the true road.

The truth put into words is not true enough.

The numbers known to be numbers are not the fullness of numbers.

For though the sage of Persia taught of positive and negative . . . though the sage of the Dharma taught the Noble Truth of Zero and of fractions beyond fractions, even unto degrees deemed irrational . . . despite such wisdom, their teachings fell short of completion. They had no answers for the greatest mystery of all: what number multiplied by itself yields -1?

That number is the Tao.

And from the Tao has sprung the ten thousand things.

 

The arrogant man says the Tao is imaginary. Scholars say the Tao is complex.

I say the Tao exists and is simple. Like water, it flows where it wills. It also commutes.

 

The ten thousand things of this world . . . what are they?

Each has a worldly part—call it A.

Each has a part that is Tao—call it B Tao.

So each of the ten thousand things is A + B Tao.

When summed, the worldly adds to the worldly, the Tao to the Tao. Therefore A + B Tao plus C + D Tao equals (A+C) + (B+D) Tao. Again, there is a worldly part and a part that is Tao. As the worldly adds, so does the Tao. The one is not without the other.

So, too, with the ten thousand things as they couple together and multiply:

(A + B Tao)(C + D Tao) = (AC-BD) + (AD+BC) Tao

A worldly part and a part that is Tao. Thus will it be for all ten thousand things.

Subtraction and division are left as exercises for the acolyte.

How can one picture the Tao?

As a grassy field. As an open plain. As an arrow that points to the truth beyond words. As a map that is into and onto.

 

You can't hold the Tao in your hand.

You can't close it up in a jar.

Yet the Tao encompasses all the roots of unity.

Those who know don't talk.

Those who talk don't know.

 

A crow nearly dying with thirst saw a pitcher. But the pitcher contained so little water, the crow couldn't get at it. He tried everything he could think of to reach the water, but all in vain. At last he collected as many stones as he could and dropped them one by one into the pitcher, until he brought the water within his reach and thus saved his life.

A crane watched the crow fill the pitcher with stones. She noticed that some of the stones were black while others were white. The crane had three children who liked pretty things, so she decided to bring them each a stone. To avoid quarrels, the crane knew all three children should get the same color of stone, though it didn't matter whether the three stones were black or white. When the crane stuck her beak into the pitcher, she could not see what color of stone she was picking up . . . so how many stones did she have to remove to ensure she got three of the same color?

A stork watched the crane and decided his three children would also like stones. However, because storks are white, the stork-children would want white stones. The stork asked the crane how many stones he would have to remove from the pitcher to ensure the procurement of three white stones. The crane replied that if the stork was unlucky, he might have to remove all the black stones first before getting any white stones. The stork decided that would be too much work and flew away without trying . . . but the crane knew the stork was foolish. If the stork had been clever, he would have looked into the pitcher and determined the proportions of white to black to see how likely it was to pick three white stones at random in a small number of tries.

When the stork got home, his children wept because their father had brought no gifts. The stork was forced to go back to the pitcher, where he found a monkey at play. The monkey had agile hands and excellent vision; she could easily pluck three white stones from the pitcher. But the monkey was also mischievous. She got two white stones and gave them to the stork, but when she seized a third white stone, she said she would not give it away unless the stork played a game. The monkey would hide the stone under one of three walnut shells, and the stork would have to guess where the stone was hidden. If the stork guessed correctly, he would get the stone; but if the stork guessed wrong, he must fly to the forest and bring back a ripe banana for the monkey to eat. The foolish stork agreed to this wager . . . and ended up flying to the forest many times until the monkey had eaten her fill.

As the stork was flying yet again to the forest, he passed a lion. The lion said, “Friend stork, you seem tired. Perhaps you should land beside me and rest.” “I am not that foolish,” the crane replied, “but I am tired. The monkey is playing tricks on me, and will not give me what I wish unless I bring her bananas.” “Where is this monkey?” the lion asked. The stork gave the lion detailed directions. This time, when the stork returned from the forest, he found the monkey gone, the lion walking away well-fed, and a white stone lying among the walnut shells.

When the stork finally returned to his unattended children, they'd all been eaten by ferrets.

The end!

 

Now it came to pass in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar that the king dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled and his sleep broke from him. Then the king commanded to call the court mathematicians for to show the king his dreams.

When they came, they asked the nature of the dreams, but the king could not say for the memory had gone from him. Yet still he demanded they give their interpretations, on pain of death. The mathematicians answered him, saying, No man upon the earth can show the king's matter; none can but the gods, whose dwelling is not with the flesh.

Yet in the king's household lived Daniel, a son of Judah and a righteous man whom God had given understanding of dreams. He came before Nebuchadnezzar and said, “The Lord God of Israel has revealed thy dream's secrets unto me—not for mine own sake, but that thou shouldst know the wisdom of the Ancient of Days.

“Thou, O king, sawest, and beheld a great image. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Four great chains ran up from the ground to the head, that the fiercest gale should not topple the image. And thou stood beneath the southernmost chain in such manner that thine own head but touched a single link. Each link of the chain was a cubit in length, and the link at thy head was the tenth from the ground.

“As thou watched, a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them. Only the chains remained; and thou sawest the southernmost chain had four hundred links, which had run from the ground to the image's top, but now lay flat on the plain.

“This was the dream; and I will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.

“Thou stood at the tenth link of the chain, which was like unto a hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle whereof the farthest leg was the graven image itself (if we but ignore the sag in the chain, which was drawn very tight, thereby making the variance negligible). The chain was four hundred links long, which is two score tens. Therefore, O king, since thy head just touched the chain, by divine similarity of ratios, the image was two score times thine own height. Though the image and its feet of clay were sore destroyed, the wisdom of the Lord yet enables thee to take the image's measure.”

Then Nebuchadnezzar said unto Daniel, “I care not the image's height, but rather its portent. Is there some meaning to these ratios? The height of the image to the length of the chain?”

“Verily,” said Daniel, “that ratio foretells what is to come, for surely it is a sine. . . .”

 

The Master said:

 

Piety toward one's ancestors and submission to one's prince: are these not the origin of all benevolent actions?

The superior man measures himself with respect to this origin. He charts his piety and submission on two perpendicular axes.

 

Positive piety and positive submission lead upward to the rising sun, while negative piety and negative submission lead downward to hell.

Positive piety without submission rises straight toward heaven, but does not spread outward to the people.

Positive submission without piety lies flat and does not rise.

When piety equals submission, the superior man's life passes through the origin and rises with balanced harmony.

(Those who would rise more quickly must appeal to a higher power.)

 

The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.

However, the superior man studies diligently, that he may comprehend all paths—even those of exponential difficulty.

He also learns to factor polynomials.

 

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

The degree of divergence at any point depends on the slope of the tangent.

 

What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the inferior man seeks is in others.

The difference between the two is the square root of (Δp)
²
+ (Δs)
²
.

 

Many of the Master's sayings generalize to higher dimensions.

 

Without recognizing the geometry of Heaven, it is impossible to be a superior man.