| Truth Is Harder To See than the Sun |
| From COMPLETE WORKS OF SU TUNGPO |
| Su
Tungpo 1036 - 1101 There was a man born blind. He had never seen the sun and asked about it of people who could see. Someone told him, "The sun's shape is like a brass tray." The blind man struck the brass tray and heard its sound. Later when he heard the sound of a bell, he thought it was the sun. Again someone told him, "The sunlight is like that of the candle," and the blind man felt the candle, and thought that was the sun's shape. Later he felt a [big] key and thought it was the sun. |
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Even if you do your best to explain by analogies and examples, it still appears like the analogy of the brass tray and the candle.
From what is said of the brass tray, one imagines a bell, and from what is said about the candle, one imagines a key. In this way, one gets ever further and further away from the truth.
Those who speak about Tao sometimes give it a name according to what they happen to see, or imagine what it is like without seeing it.
These are mistakes in the effort to understand Tao.
| Footnote: see Between Nothing: A Space Not for Words. It is about a special tree and how it showed me a rare glimpse of the light beyond Lao Tsu's words "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." |