Texts of Taoism (SBE 40): Book XVIII. Kih Lo, or 'Perfect Enjoyment'
1. Under the sky is perfect enjoyment to be found or not? Are there any who can preserve themselves alive or not? If there be, what do they do? What do they maintain? What do they avoid? What do they attend to? Where do they resort to? Where do they keep from? What do they delight in? What do they dislike? What the world honours is riches, dignities, longevity, and being deemed able. What it delights in is rest for the body, rich flavours, fine garments, beautiful colours, and pleasant music. What it looks down on are poverty and mean condition, short life and being deemed feeble 2. What men consider bitter experiences are that their bodies do not get rest and case, that their mouths do not get food of rich flavour, that their persons are not finely clothed, that their eyes do not see beautiful colours, and that their ears do not listen to pleasant music. If they do not
2. When Kwang-dze's wife died, Hui-dze went to condole with him, and, finding him squatted on the ground, drumming on the basin 2, and singing, said to him, 'When a wife has lived with her husband, and brought up children, and then dies in her old age, not to wail for her is enough. When you go on to drum on this basin and sing, is it not an excessive (and strange) demonstration?' Kwang-dze replied, 'It is not so. When she first died, was it possible for me to be singular and not affected by the event? But I reflected on the commencement of her being 3. She had not yet been born to life; not only had she no life, but she had no bodily form; not only bad she no bodily form, but she had no breath. During the intermingling of the waste and dark chaos 3, there ensued a change, and there was breath; another change, and there was the bodily form; another change, and there came birth
3. Mr. Deformed 3 and Mr. One-foot 3 were looking at the mound-graves of the departed in the wild of Khwän-lun, where Hwang-Tî had entered into his rest. Suddenly a tumour began to grow on their left wrists, which made them look distressed as if they disliked it. The former said to the other, 'Do
5. When Yen Yüan went eastwards to Khî, Confucius wore a look of sorrow 2. Dze-kung left his mat, and asked him, saying, 'Your humble disciple ventures to ask how it is that the going eastwards of Hui to Khî has given you such a look of sadness.' Confucius said, 'Your question is good. Formerly Kwan-dze 3 used words of which I very much approve. He said, "A small bag cannot be made to contain what is large; a short rope cannot be used to draw water from a deep well 3." So it is, and man's appointed lot is definitely determined, and his body is adapted for definite ends, so that neither the one nor the other can be augmented or diminished. I am afraid that Hui will talk with the marquis of Khî about the ways of Hwang-Tî, Yâo, and Shun, and go on to relate the words of Sui-zän and Shän Näng. The marquis will seek (for the correspondence of what he is told) in himself; and, not finding
'The marquis was trying to nourish the bird with what he used for himself, and not with the nourishment proper for a bird. They who would nourish birds as they ought to be nourished should let them perch in the deep forests, or roam over sandy plains; float on the rivers and lakes; feed on the eels and small fish; wing their flight in regular order and then stop; and be free and at ease in their resting-places. It was a distress to that bird to hear men speak; what did it care for all the noise and hubbub made about it? If the music of the Kiû-shâo 3 or the Hsien-khih 4 were performed in the wild of the Thung-thing 4 lake, birds would fly away, and beasts would run off when they heard it, and fishes would dive down to the bottom of the water; while men, when they hear it, would come all round together,
1:1 See vol. xxxix, pp. 149, 150. 1:2 Of riches, dignities, longevity, and their opposites, enough is said, while the other two qualities are lightly passed over, and referred to only in connexion with 'meritorious officers.' I can only understand them as in the translation. 2:1 If they did not do so, they would be content when they had enough. 2:2 Wishing to attach it more closely to them. 2:3 Wû Dze-hsü, the scourge of Khû; and who perished miserably at last, when the king of Wû would no longer listen to his remonstrances;--in about B.C. 475. 3:1 This is the secret of the Tâo. 3:2 The last member of this sentence is the reading adopted by Wû Khäng towards the conclusion of the thirty-ninth chapter of the Tâo Teh King, instead of the common
4:1 Compare similar statements in the Tâo Teh King, ch. 48, et al. 4:2 The basin or tub, not 'a basin.' The reference is, no doubt, to the basin of ice put down near or under the couch on which the body was laid. I suppose that Kwang-dze was squatting so as to have this between his legs. 4:3 Is the writer referring to the primal creation as we may call it, or development of things out of the chaos, or to some analogous process at the birth of his wife? However that be, birth and death appear to him to be merely changes of the same kind in the perpetual process of evolution. 5:1 Between heaven and earth. 5:2 Was it necessary he should fall singing to his drumming on the basin? But I subjoin a note here, suggested by the paragraph, which might have found, perhaps, a more appropriate place in the notice of this Book in vol. xxxix, pp. 149, 150. In Sir John F. Davis' 'Description of the Empire of China and its Inhabitants (edition of 1857),' vol. ii, pp. 74-90, we have the amusing story of 'The Philosopher and his Wife.' The philosopher is Kwang-dze, who plays the part of a magician; and of his wife it might be said, 'Frailty, thy name is woman!' Sir John Davis says, 'The story was translated into French by Père d'Entrecolles, and supplied the materials of Voltaire's Zadig.' I have not met in Chinese with Father d'Entrecolles' original. All of Zadig which can be supposed to have been borrowed from his translator is only a few sentences. The whole story is inconsistent with the account in paragraph 2 of the death of Kwang-dze's wife, and with all which we learn from his writings of his character. 5:3 We know nothing of these parties but what we are told here. They are called Shû, meaning 'uncle,' often equivalent in China to our 'Mr.' The lesson taught by them is that of submission to pain and death as merely phenomena in the sphere of change. For the phraseology of their names, see Bk. III, par. 3, and Bk. IV, par. 8. 7:1 I suppose the Tâo; but none of the commentators, so far as I have seen, say anything about the expression. 7:2 Compare the long discourse of Confucius with Yen Hui, on the latter's proposing to go to Wei, in Bk. IV. 7:3 Kwan Î-wû or Kwan Kung, the chief minister of duke Hwan of Khî, whom he is supposed to have in view in his 'small bag and short rope.' 8:1 Perhaps another and more ridiculous version of the story told in 'the Narratives of the States,' II, i, art. 7. 8:2 The name of Shun's music;--see the Shû (in vol. iii), par. 2. 8:3 Called also Tâ Shâo, in Book XXXIII, par. 2. 8:4 Hwang-Tî's music;--see Bk. XIV, par. 3--But the genuineness of the whole paragraph is called in question. 10:1 A much larger paragraph from which this must have been abbreviated, or which must have been enlarged from this, is found in the first Book of Lieh-dze's works (pp. 4, 5). In no Buddhist treatise is the transrotation of births more fully, and, I must add, absurdly stated.BOOK XVIII.
PART II. SECTION XI.
Kih Lo, or 'Perfect Enjoyment 1'
Footnotes
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