The most submissive thing in the world can ride roughshod over the hardest in the world—that which is without substance entering that which has no crevices. That is why I know the benefit of resorting to no action. The teaching that uses no words, the benefit of resorting to no action: these are beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world.
Esoteric knowledge. Those with the distinctive and elite guardianship of truth’s murky core. Artists or warmongers. Spiritualists or madmen. Scientists or martyrs. Certain perspectives, arcane theses, obscure formulae and phrases.
Yet the collectivity of sages crawls only into the perspective of all perspectives, thereby reaching an emptiness that is not a nihilism but an empty fullness, in the manner of mystics and children. Words collapse, not from any despair but from their own emptiness. Action dissolves, not from any futility but from its own weightlessness. Words are used, action happens; but it is not more important than the silence and stillness that precedes and follows. They are equal in volume and effectiveness and while the sage knows both, she teaches from the side of the murky myriad one. This is what makes her a sage.
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