The Way of Chuang Tzu

The Breath of Nature

When great Nature sighs, we hear the winds

Which, noiseless in themselves,

Awaken voices from other beings,

Blowing on them.

From every opening
Loud voices sound. Have you not heard
This rush of tones?

There stands the overhanging wood
On the steep mountain:
Old trees with holes and cracks
Like snouts, maws, and ears,
Like beam-sockets, like goblets,
Grooves in the wood, hollows full of water:
You hear mooing and roaring, whistling,
Shouts of command, grumblings,
Deep drones, sad flutes.
One call awakens another in dialogue.

Gentle winds sing timidly,

Strong ones blast on without restraint.
Then the wind dies down. The openings
Empty out their last sound.
Have you not observed how all then trembles and subsides?

Yu replied: I understand:
The music of earth sings through a thousand holes.
The music of man is made on flutes and instruments.
What makes the music of heaven?

Master Ki said:
Something is blowing on a thousand different holes.
Some power stands behind all this and makes

the sounds die down.

What is this power?

In My End Is My Beginning

In the Beginning of Beginnings was Void of Void, the Nameless.

And in the Nameless was the One, without body, without form.

This One --- this Being in whom all find power to exist ---

Is the Living.

From the Living comes the Formless, the Undivided.

From the act of this Formless comes the Existents,

Each according to its inner principle.

This is Form. Here body embraces and cherishes spirit.

The two work together as one, blending and manifesting

Their characters. And this is Nature.

But he who obeys Nature returns through Form and Formless

To the Living.

And in the Living

Joins the unbegun Beginning.

The joining is Sameness. The Sameness is Void.

The Void is infinite.

The bird opens its beak and sings its note

And then the beak comes together again in Silence.

So Nature and the Living meet together in Void.

Like the closing of the bird's beak

After its song.

Heaven and Earth come together in the Unbegun,

And all is foolishness, all is unknown,

All is like the lights of an idiot, all is without mind!

To obey is to close the beak and fall into Unbeginning.

From: The Way Of Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton