There is the great Mass of nature—I find the support of my body on it; my life is spent in toil on it; my old age seeks ease on it; at death I find rest in it—what makes my life a good makes my death also a good.
If you hide away a boat in the ravine of a hill, and hide away the hill in a lake, you will say that the boat is secure; but at midnight there shall come a strong man and carry it off on his back, while you in the dark know nothing about it.
You may hide away anything, whether small or great, in the most suitable place, and yet it shall disappear from it.
But if you could hide the world in the world, so that there was nowhere to which it could be removed, this would be the grand reality of the ever-during Thing.
When the body of man comes from its special mould, there is even then occasion for joy; but this body undergoes a myriad transformations, and does not immediately reach its perfection—does it not thus afford occasion for joys incalculable?
Therefore the sagely man enjoys himself in that from which there is no possibility of separation, and by which all things are preserved. He considers early death or old age, his beginning and his ending, all to be good, and in this other men imitate him—how much more will they do so in regard to That Itself on which all things depend, and from which every transformation arises!
IMAGE: Shitao, Outing to Zhang Gong's Grotto (c. 1700)
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