The Preservation of Life
Human life is limited, but knowledge is limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless is fatal; and to presume that one really knows is fatal indeed!
In doing good, avoid fame. In doing bad, avoid disgrace. Pursue a middle course as your principle. Thus you will guard your body from harm, preserve your life, fulfil your duties by your parents, and live your allotted span of life.
Prince Hueis cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every thrust of his knee, every whshh of rent flesh, every chhk of the chopper, was in perfect rhythm, --like the dance of the Mulberry Grove, like the harmonious chords of g Shou.
"Well done!" cried the Prince. "Yours is skill indeed!"
"Sire," replied the cook laying down his chopper, "I have always devoted myself to Tao, which is higher than mere skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me whole bullocks. After three years practice, I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. My mind works along without the trol of the senses. Falling back upoernal principles, I glide through such great joints or cavities as there may be, acc to the natural stitution of the animal. I do not even touch the volutions of muscle and tendon, still less attempt to cut through large bones.
"A good cook ges his chopper once a year, -- because he cuts. An ordinary cook, one a month, -- because he hacks. But I have had this chopper een years, and although I have cut up many thousand bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always iices, and the edge of a chopper being without thiess, it remains only to ihat which is without thiess into su iice. Ihere is plenty of room for the blade to move about. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for een years as though fresh from the whetstone.
"heless, when I e upon a knotty part which is difficult to tackle, I am all caution. Fixing my eye on it, I stay my hand, aly apply my blade, until with a hwah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I take out my chopper and stand up, and look around, and pause with an air of triumph. Then wiping my chopper, I put it carefully away."
"Bravo!" cried the Prince. "From the words of this cook I have learned how to take care of my life."
When Hsien, of the Kungwen family, beheld a certain official, he was horrified, and said, "Who is that man? How came he to lose a leg? Is this the work of God, or of man?"
"Why, of course, it is the work of God, and not of man," was the reply. "God made this man one-legged. The appearanen is always balanced. From this it is clear that God and not man made him what he is."
A pheasant of the marshes may have to go teo get a peck, a huo get a drink. Yet pheasants do not want to be fed in a cage. For although they might have less worries, they would not like it. When Laotse died, Yi went to the funeral. He uttered three yells aed. A disciple asked him saying, "Were you not our Masters friend?"
"I was," replied Yi.
"And if so, do you sider that a suffit expression of grief at his death?" added the disciple.
"I do," said Yi. "I had thought he was a (mortal) man, but now I know that he was not. When I went in to mourn, I found old persons weeping as if for their children, young ones wailing as if for their mothers. When these p