Preparing for a class on the Zhuangzi in the midst of a more than usually frazzling week was, I admit it, impossible. So I started today's class asking a student, who'd missed the last class, to share his reflections on a fun little dialogue:
The penumbra said to the shadow, "First you were walking, then you were standing still. First you were sitting, then you were upright. Why can't you decide on a single course of action?"
The shadow said, "Do I depend on something to make me as I am? Does what I depend on depend on something else? Do I depend on it as a snake does on its skin, or a cicada on its shell? How would I know why I am so or not so?" (Ziporyn 20-21)
Things took their own course from there, from shadows and penumbras (the edges of shadows, which we decided must have penumbra of their own, and...) to dreams (and dreams in dreams, and...) to the "piping of the earth" as the "belching" of the "Great Clump" blows through landscapes and a symphony of sounds arise (or through our seven orifices, producing joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, plans and regrets, transformations and stagnations, unguarded abandonment and deliberate posturing) to the wisdom of loutish one-footed ex-cons and the dream teachings of huge ancient trees and finally to the power of one Huzi to confound a shaman whose ability to read destinies in faces makes people flee in terror, but runs for his life after seeing just a few of the aspects of the cosmic "reservoir" in Huzi.
The penumbra said to the shadow, "First you were walking, then you were standing still. First you were sitting, then you were upright. Why can't you decide on a single course of action?"
The shadow said, "Do I depend on something to make me as I am? Does what I depend on depend on something else? Do I depend on it as a snake does on its skin, or a cicada on its shell? How would I know why I am so or not so?" (Ziporyn 20-21)
Things took their own course from there, from shadows and penumbras (the edges of shadows, which we decided must have penumbra of their own, and...) to dreams (and dreams in dreams, and...) to the "piping of the earth" as the "belching" of the "Great Clump" blows through landscapes and a symphony of sounds arise (or through our seven orifices, producing joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, plans and regrets, transformations and stagnations, unguarded abandonment and deliberate posturing) to the wisdom of loutish one-footed ex-cons and the dream teachings of huge ancient trees and finally to the power of one Huzi to confound a shaman whose ability to read destinies in faces makes people flee in terror, but runs for his life after seeing just a few of the aspects of the cosmic "reservoir" in Huzi.
