(This is from Thomas Cleary's translation of the Lieh Tzu, included in Tales of Inner Meaning)
Once a man held a huge banquet with a thousand guests. When someone presented a gift of fish and fowl, the host said appreciatively, "Heaven is generous to the poeople indeed, planting cereals and creating fish and fowl for our use." The huge crowd of guests echoed this sentiment.
A youth about twelve years old, however, who had been sitting in the most remote corner of the banquet hall, now came foreward and said to the host, "It is not as you say, sir. All beings in the universe are living creatures on a par with us. No species is higher or lower in rank than another, it's just that they control each other by ifferences in their intelligence and power; they eat each other, but that does not mean they were produced for each other. People take what they can eat and eat it, but does that mean that heaven produced that for people? If so, then since mosquitoes bite skin and tigers and wolves eat flesh, does that not mean that heaven made humans for the mosquitoes and created flesh for tigers and wolves?"
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One point of major annoyance for me is modern society's assumption that humans are superior to all other creatures. Yes, we can do things that other creatures cannot. We can build machines that emulate much of what other creatures do. But there is so much we cannot do that is done everyday by some other creature without effort. And even those things that we can do are forced. They do not come of themselves, but only after great effort. A bird spreads its wings and flies when it is ready. We have to dig materials out of the earth, build factories, design and plan and plot... and we call ourselves clever and powerful for exerting massive effort to do something that a bird does without effort. *sighs*
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I'm not sure what this blog stands for any more. It died once and I'm working on bringing it back to life, one post at a time.
6 comments:
Humankind is the only creature I know of that must contemplate and make a concerted effort to practice wu wei. For all other creatures, it's part and parcel of who they are.
I dont know trey, ever see a dog waiting for the human to go for a walk ?... I swear some dogs have become too human at times
I have to disagree that one must make an effort to practic wu-wei. I think one must let go of effort to get there. And now I must quote Yoda: "Do, or do not. There is no try." ;^D
I should have qualified my statement as so-called "civilized" and "socialized" humankind.
People are the most-onery species and the most destructive. But among the millions of species on this planet, they still rate in my Top Ten.
People are the most-interesting species, capable of doing lovely and amazing things. No mosquito has ever written a sonnet; nor a fish ridden a bicycle; nor a bassett hound constructed a kite.
Humans feel things deeply -- no other species comes close to their lovely depth of feeling -- and for this they make things important and are important.
For all this and much more, I rank them 8th.
I have often grappled with the question of humans being superior to all other life forms but I have to ask, if we are so superior why are with the only ones who not only have the possibility but also a pretty good probability of exterminating ourselves in the near future. Would see to indicate that we may just think we are a lot more advanced than we really are.
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