part0016

You can sleep when you’re dead. Right now, write. Why is ruling a country like cooking a small fish? Christ, it sounds like open mic night at a student union. Well?

I don’t know, it just is.

Use the Tao and evil won’t have power to do harm… The sage will be safe… Where are we going with this ?

And what happened to the little fish?

Yeah, what happened to the little fish? What does a little fish have to do with ruling a country?

I don’t know about the fish, I just said I could go for a little fish and I guess he wrote it down.

I’m just writing down everything he says. I can’t tell the difference between genius and bullshit.

That’s the point, no one can.

He said some stuff about knowing and not knowing. He can’t make up his mind. Knowing is bad, not knowing is good, not knowing you don’t know is bad, something like that.

Why you gotta talk so much shit? Just say the good stuff and you can get outta here.

I said it’s good to know what you don’t know and bad to think you know what you don’t kno w

See? He said it again!

How can we know what we don’t know? You have to make sense. You can’t just do jazzy stream-of-consciousness stuff. You’re writing for soldiers and rice farmers, let’s try to keep it simple.

Listen to this part. When the whole divides into parts the parts need names. There are already too many names.

Oh c’mon, dude! Whadda ya mean there are too many names? Everything’s gotta have a name! You want us to have to go around describing everything all the time because we have too many names?

I just thought it sounded nice, like, let’s not go around giving everything a name all the time. Just let things be what they are. Why be so uptight about labels?

Because we communicate in symbols, maybe?

So we can understand each other, maybe ?

Look, there are like twenty different kinds of pelican, right? Do they all need their own name? An Alsatian Pelican and a Graybeard Pelican and a Speckled Baby-Delivery Pelican… I mean, it’s just a freakin’ pelican. Lighten up!

You got a thing against pelicans now?

So instead of pass the salt, your way I gotta say pass the dried chipmunk skull with the white crystalline substance please?

The salt can still be what it is, right? Just because we’re calling it something doesn’t mean it’s not salt anymore.

But it was never really salt in the first place. Salt is just a word, a sound. It’s the symbol of a thing, not the thing itself. Let’s not mistake symbol for substance, right?

Wow, wisdom is hard!

I’m trying to say, uh, don’t let the name be the thing, don’t let the symbol replace the thingness of the thing. It’s not really salt, right? Salt by any other name still tastes just as, uh, salty. I’m just saying we should see things for what they are and not settle for mere labels.

Because a name is like a finger pointing at the moon, okay? If you focus on the finger, you forget about the moon.

Oh, that was pretty good. Can I put that in?

The moon thing? No, but leave the thing about too many names. You can’t just give away all the best stuff, you have to make people work for it. How many chapters so far?

No good. We need a hundred and eight. Very auspicious number.

I can only do eighty-one. That’s an auspicious number too .

What’s so great about eighty-one?

It’s a magic number. Three times three is nine, nine times nine is eighty-one.

So what? That makes it magic?

Or, three times three is nine, times three is twenty-seven, times three is eighty-one. Eighty-one is the square of nine and the fourth power of three.

And that makes it magic?

Eighty-one is the only number, out of all numbers, in which the digits add up to its own square root. C’mon, that has to count for something.

Fine, it’s not a magic number, it’s just all I can come up with. I tried to get to a hundred and eight but the tank is dry. Seriously, I could cut all this down to half a page .

Oh hell no! We need more , not less .

Don’t start that crap, we need a book, not a pamphlet. We’ll need a preface and a foreword, a bibliography, an epilogue, an index and maybe a concordance to make this thing a book people will pay for. We’ll doublespace the whole thing with wide margins and fatten it up with some pretty illustrations; birds and trees and shit.

Oh, hey! We got one! An illustration! Two fish in a bowl chasing each other in circles!

Oh yeah? Make it three fish, that’s even better.

Wait! What? No! It has to be two fish!

He’s got a real thing about fish.

Maybe four fish. Four is a very auspicious number .

No it’s not! Four is a stupid number! It doesn’t make any sense!

I think he just says whatever sounds backward and we’re supposed to think it’s wise.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick. The perfect square has no corners. A good door needs no lock. Do not tinkle like jade. When the Tao is absent, horses are bred outside the city. One gains by losing and loses by gaining. Knowing others is wisdom, knowing the self is enlightenment.

Wow! That’s really deep!

He wrote it all down wrong. That’s not what I said.

Who cares what you said? It’s not all about you . This is the kind of wisdomy shit we’re looking for .

But knowing the self isn’t enlightenment because there is no self. It’s an illusion!

Listen Maestro, you gotta get with the program here. You gotta give the people what they want, not what you want. You start telling people they don’t even exist, how’re they gonna like that?

Not much is right! You tell them knowing others is wisdom and knowing themself is enlightenment, they’re gonna like that. That’s something they can work with. Gives them hope. Got it?

Yeah, sure, but it’s not true.

You ever wanna get out of here?

Then it’s true enough .

True enough, that’s good, that’s a good thing to aim for.

But this is my legacy we’re talking about! My gift to the world.

The world’s gonna love it. A guy named Venerable Master telling them knowing others is wisdom and knowing themself is enlightenment? Are you kidding me? This stuff is pure gold. We got a bestseller on our hands. Pagodas by the sea for everyone!

I don’t want a pagoda by the sea, I want to go off into the mountains and contemplate, you know, stuff .

So who’s stopping you?

You are! You’re holding me prisoner! You’re torturing me! All you had to do was see an old man on a water buffalo and wave him through, but you’re so bored out here in the middle of nowhere that you decided to treat me like a fly and pull my wings off and make me buzz around in circles !

Good energy. Let’s tap into that.

Can we use any of that?

I don’t know. The sage is like a fly with no wings? He goes nowhere and buzzes around in circles?

That sounds pretty good.

It sounds pretty stupid!

Put a pin in it. Maybe we can spruce it up a bit. Make it a dragonfly or something.