Sunday Meditation and Talk with John Tarrant and Friends

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One of my Australian mentors said that if she had a religious preference, she would be a Daoist, because then it was alright to be a house cleaner or a file clerk, a gardener, or someone who just looks after the world in some intimate way.

Kongzi (Confucius) asked Zhuangzi, “This thing called the Way—where does it exist?”

Zhuangzi said, “There’s no place it doesn’t exist.”
“Come,” said Kongzi, “you must be more specific!”
“It is in the ant.”
“As low a thing as that?”
“It is in the panic grass.”
“But that’s lower still!”
“It is in the tiles and shards.”
“How can it be so low?”
“It is in the piss and shit!”
Master Kongzi made no reply.

Zhuangzi said, “Sir, your questions simply don’t get at the substance of the matter.

“Why don’t you try wandering with me to the Palace of Not-Even-Anything—identity and concord will be the basis of our discussions and they will never come to an end, never reach exhaustion. Why not join with me in inaction, in tranquil quietude, in hushed purity, in harmony and leisure? Already my will is vacant and blank.

“I go nowhere and don’t know how far I’ve gotten. I go and come and don’t know where to stop. I’ve already been there and back, and I don’t know when the journey is done. I ramble and relax in unbordered vastness; Great Knowledge enters in, and I don’t know where it will ever end.”

Everything is included.

John Tarrant