44

Chaff from the winnowing fan
cancels the eye’s natural vision;
the whine of a mosquito
can keep you awake all night;
trying to be benevolent
makes the mind a tangle of confusion.
If you want the world to stay simple,
you must move with the freedom of the wind.
Why keep making the effort
to figure out right and wrong?
Why all this huffing and puffing
as though you were beating a drum,
searching for a lost child?
The snow goose doesn’t need
a daily bath to stay white,
nor does the crow stay black
by dipping itself in an inkwell.
When the springs dry up
and the fish are left on the shore,
they spew one another with moisture.
But how much better if they could
forget one another and swim off
into the lake’s vast freedom!

The effort to be moral or benevolent is a disruption of our natural virtue. What child would rather pray than play? “Throw away morality,” Lao-tzu says, “and you’ll be doing the world a big favor.” Trying to figure out the right action does no one any good. It’s better to keep moving, till the right action arises by itself.

When it’s genuine, benevolence is the most beautiful quality in the world. But when it has a motive, it feels like fish spittle, not like clear water. We recognize the genuine. It’s what we all want. It’s what we all are, when we see past our own thoughts. Let the others comfort one another with slime: that’s the best they can do under the circumstances. But the instant any fish finds its way back to the lake, it will swim off without a qualm. “Thanks for the benevolence, muchachos, but I’m out of here.”