Is Everything Understandable?

jackson fielder
Jul 29, 2017 · 2 min read
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A disciple asked Chuang Tzu one day, “Where did the universe come from? Is there a God? What is the purpose of life? Why is there pain and injustice and suffering? Where do we go after we die?” Chuang Tzu said, “The true master of life does not labor over life. The true master of fate does not question fate. Use understanding to understand what can be understood with understanding and then stop.”

If we don’t understand something, what makes us think that we should; that it’s a right endowed to us?

Not of the mundane things of day-to-day human life, nor those discoveries available to us through intellect and science. They are clearly discernible and rights of passage for each generation.

It’s the great questions such as presented to Chuang Tzu in the opening of this story that have plagued mankind for centuries; such questions even providing people a living despite never producing solid substance for people’s money.

Perhaps it’s the tease of the nature of the questions: emotion rising in response which one sees as manifestation of the potentiality of a substantial answer, and then wanting that, especially as the club that poses as knowing is a small and exclusive one.

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Ego likes small and exclusive clubs for it inflates at the specialism of being one of the few members.

No one has the answer to the questions posed to Master Chuang Tzu. Those who claim to do not. They merely have speculation though it may be so elaborately dressed and presented that it incites emotion which, once again, can mask itself as substance.

In conclusion, let us look at the last line in the Master Chuang Tzu story:

Use understanding to understand what can be understood with understanding and then stop.

Those questions-of-all-time which cannot be comprehended by our human faculty, leave alone. Seems a simple formula.

Just breathe. Live. Go about your daily life not worried about what cannot be understood.

The disciple was instructed not to labor over life nor question fate.

Is to do so not but exercises in futility?

~ Jackson Fielder ~

jackson fielder

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“Writing chooses you, you don’t choose it.” ~ Charles Bukowski

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