Today is Aidan's birthday.
He would have been twenty-two.
As I think about his life, and what he gave to me, a passage from Zhuangzi comes to mind. Without him, I would not have the understanding of this passage that I now have. It is his gift to me and, so, I post it here as a birthday present for all.
Sufficient because "sufficient." Insufficient because "insufficient." Traveling the Way makes it Dao. Naming things makes them real. Why real? Real because "real." Why nonreal? Nonreal because "nonreal." So the real is originally there in things, and the sufficient is originally there in things. There's nothing that is not real, and nothing that is not sufficient.
Hence, the blade of grass and the pillar, the leper and the ravishing [beauty], the noble, the sniveling, the disingenuous, the strange - in Dao they all move as one and the same. In difference is the whole; in wholeness is the broken. Once they are neither whole nor broken, all things move freely as one and the same again.
Only one who has seen through things understands moving freely as one and the same. In this way, rather than relying on your own distinctions, you dwell in the ordinary. To be ordinary is to be self-reliant; to be self-reliant is to move freely; to move freely is to arrive. That's almost it, because to arrive is to be complete. But to be complete without understanding how - that is called Dao.
Thank you Sam, for this reminder.
Posted by: Will | October 18, 2013 at 06:09 PM
Beautiful boy.
Posted by: gmoke | October 20, 2013 at 11:44 PM