Theme 1.1
Insects that live in water don’t hate having to change ponds
(from Chapter 21)
Animals that eat grass don’t hate having to change pastures.
Insects that live in water don’t hate having to change ponds.
They go along with the small differences and don’t lose the large constant,
so delight and anger, grief and joy, don’t enter some vacancy in their breast.
All under heaven is the that in which the myriad things are one.
Attain this that in which they’re one, and identify with it,
and your four limbs and hundred joints will be but dust and dirt,
and death and birth, end and beginning, will be but day and night,
and none of them able to disturb you, much less the distinctions drawn by gain and loss, misfortune and good fortune!
* * * * *
All under heaven is the world beneath Of a Flock’s wings (Chapter 1.1). It’s the panorama of things here and now spread out before you and existing in your field of consciousness. These myriad different things are one in the way that the images in a mirror are one, or that the images in a painting are one: they are parts of a whole.
Identify with this and that thing and you must suffer when that thing ceases to be, or is not present. But identify with the field in which things exist—your here-and-now field of consciousness—and you are beyond harm. Things come, things go. And you—awareness—are ever-present, undisturbed.
Identify with awareness and you are like a cow that likes grass, a fish that likes water. A patch of seaweed comes, or goes? A hill comes, or goes? Things come, and go? These small differences do not distress you. The large constant (grass—water—awareness) is present. You are fine.