X (28)
"Fishes forget one another in the rivers and lakes, men forget one
another in the acts of the Tao."
V1. 11.
When one rests in what has been arranged & puts away all
thought of the transformation, he is in unity with the mysterious
heaven.
V1. 12.
In the light of these
and the preceding Merton selections from
Chuang Tzu, this:
Reading Chuang Tzu, I wonder seriously if the wisest
answer (on the human level, apart from the answer of faith) is not
beyond both ethics and politics. It is a hidden answer, it defies
analysis and cannot be embodied in a program. Ethics and politics, of
course: but only in passing, only as a "night's lodging." There is
a time for action, a time for "commitment," but never for total
involvement in the intricacies of a movement. There is a moment of
innocence and kairos, when action makes a great deal of
sense. But who can recognize such moments? Not he who is debauched by
a series of programs. And when all action has become absurd, shall one
continue to act simply because once, a long time ago, it made a great
deal of sense? As if one were always getting somewhere? There is a
time to listen, in the active life as everywhere else, and the better
part of action is waiting, not knowing what next, and not having a
glib answer.
Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander, p. 173.