When carrying on your head your perplexed bodily soul can you embrace in your arms the One and not let go?
In concentrating your breath can you become as supple as a babe?
Can you polish your mysterious mirror and leave no blemish?
Can you love the people and govern the state without resorting to action?
When the gates of heaven open and shut are you capable of keeping to the role of the female?
When your discernment penetrates the four quarters are you capable of not knowing anything?
It gives them life and rears them.
It gives them life yet claims no possession.
It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude.
It is the steward yet exercises no authority.
Such is called the mysterious virtue.
Imagine a Cosmopolitan quiz entitled, “Are You Really a Sage?”, with the above six questions comprising the inquiry. Who would answer Yes? What criteria could be applied for verification? What constitutes a pass? Where is the governing body that adjudicates disputes? How many would receive scholarships to Sage University and become professors of Quantum Suppleness or Postcolonial Perplexed Bodily Souls? Would you take the quiz? Would you post your results on some social network service? Would you quantify the soul or even—yes—the body? When would be the reckoning that resolves egregious methodological and historical injustices? Why, in an age of knowledge and precision, would one even remotely care about a virtue or wisdom that had no definition?
As you approach Question One, might you think—“The bodily soul is given to perplexity, especially when carried on the head. The bodily soul definitively feels as if it knows what to do some of the time but this feeling is no good guide to consequence. And when it doesn’t know what to do, this also is no good guide. What One is there that I might hold tightly that might guide me through the continual perplexity of my having a body? Might it be the sum of all feelings of definiteness and ignorance plus the sum of all feelings? Might it be a sum that I don’t know but is beyond perplexity?”?
As you approach Question Two, might you think—“To be supple as a babe: is not this the opposite of nature, which dictates that one becomes specialized, that life is linear and cumulative? But a babe!—does not a babe disregard convention? defecate in unruly places? relate strangely to language? depend unnaturally on others? drop and bounce more readily than adults? accept her surrounding circumstances such that what is her reality is indistinguishable from what her reality ought to be? laugh when she needs to laugh and cry when she needs to cry and sleep when she needs to sleep? Should I become like this when I’ve devoted so much effort to becoming not like this?”?
As you approach Question Three, might you think, “Surely it is good to have a clean mirror” … and leave it at that?
As you approach Question Four, might you think, “If I am to treat the people as straw dogs, how can I love them? If I am to govern the state, how can order be established and maintained if I do nothing? Don’t the people need a model and is not that model I?”?
As you approach Question Five, might you think, “Am I some actor that I should keep to a role and, if so, where is the script of the female hidden that I might read it? When all hell breaks loose and passion trumps reason and birth and death permeate the air, am I still—even then—to maintain the play? Is not this the ultimate artifice?”?
As you approach Question Six, might you think, “Is the shift from can to are you capable significant?”?
As you complete the quiz, might you think, “My birthday approaches and my children shall celebrate it with me”?
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