Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 1779

PT. II. SECT. IV.
THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE.
299
your eyes see nothing, your ears hear nothing, and your mind knows nothing, your spirit will keep your body, and the body will live long. Watch over what is within you, shut up the avenues that connect you with what is external ;-much knowledge is pernicious. I (will) proceed with you to the summit of the Grand Brilliance, where we come to the source of the bright and expanding (element); I will enter with you the gate of the Deepest Obscurity, where we come to the source of the dark and repressing (element). There heaven and earth have their controllers; there the Yin and Yang have their Repositories. Watch over and keep your body, and all things will of themselves give it vigour. I maintain the (original) unity (of these elements), and dwell in the harmony of them. In this way I have cultivated myself for one thousand and two hundred years, and my bodily form has undergone no decay?'
Hwang-Ti twice bowed low with his head to the ground, and said, 'In Kwang Khăng-zze we have an example of what is called Heaven 2.' The other said, . Come, and I will tell you :-(The perfect Tâo) is something inexhaustible, and yet men all think it has an end; it is something unfathomable, and yet men all think its extreme limit can be reached. He who attains to my Tâo, if he be in a high position, will be one of the August ones, and in a low position, will be a king. He who fails in attaining it, in his highest attainment will see the light, but will
1 It seems very clear here that the earliest Taoism taught that the cultivation of the Tâo tended to prolong and preserve the bodily life.
? A remarkable, but not a singular, instance of Kwang-zze's application of the name Heaven.'
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