Tao The Pathless Path Vol 2 ~ 05

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event type discourse
date & time 1 Mar 1977 am
location Chuang Tzu Auditorium, Poona
language English
audio Available, duration 1h 53min. Quality: good.
online audio
video Not available
online video
see also
online text find the PDF of this discourse
shorttitle TAO205
notes
synopsis
Reader of the sutra: Sw Ananda Teertha.
The sutra
Mr P'ang of Ch'en had a son who was clever as a child but suffered from an abnormality when he grew up. When he heard singing he thought it was weeping; when he saw white he thought it was black; fragrant smells he thought noisome, sweet tastes he thought bitter, wrong actions he thought right. Whatever came into his mind -- heaven and earth, the four cardinal points, water and fire, heat and cold -- he always turned it upside down.
A certain Mr. Yang told his father: 'The gentlemen of Lu have many arts and skills, perhaps they can cure him. Why not inquire among them?'
The father set out for Lu, but passing through Ch'en he came across Lao Tzu and took the opportunity to tell him about his son's symptoms.
'How do you know that your son is abnormal?' said Lao Tzu. 'Nowadays everyone in the world is deluded about right and wrong and confused about benefit and harm. Because many people share this sickness no one perceives that it is a sickness. Besides, one man's abnormality is not enough to overturn his family; one family's to overturn the neighbourhood: one neighbourhood's to overturn the state; one state's to overturn the world. If the whole world were abnormal how could abnormality overturn it? Supposing the minds of everyone in the world were like your son's, then, on the contrary, it is you who would be abnormal. Joy and sorrow, music and beauty, smells and tastes, right and wrong -- who can straighten them out? I am not even sure that these words of mine are not abnormal let alone those of the gentlemen of Lu who are the most abnormal of all. Who are they to cure other people's abnormality? You had better go straight home instead of wasting your money.'


(source:CD-ROM)


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