The Quail and the Bird called P’eng

Part of a series of stories for liberal religious kids. This story is from the Taoist tradition: adapted from section 1 of Chuang Tzu, from translations by Lin Yu tang, and by Burton Watson. The closing paragraph is derived from a line that may have been lost from the text (see note 5 in Watson).

The Quail and the Bird Called P’eng

Copyright (c) 2006 Dan Harper

Many years ago in ancient China, the Emperor T’ang was speaking with a wise man named Ch’i.

Ch’i was telling the Emperor about the wonders of far off and distant places. Ch’i said:

“If you go far, far to the north, beyond the middle kingdom of China, beyond the lands where our laughing black-haired people live, you will come to the lands where the snow lies on the ground for nine months a year, and where the people speak a barbaric language and eat strange foods.

“And if you travel even farther to the north, you will come to a land where the snow and ice never melts, not even in the summer. In that land, night never comes in the summer time, but in the winter, the sun never appears and the night lasts fro months at a time.

“And if you go still farther to the north, beyond the barren land of ice and snow, you will come to a vast, dark sea. This sea is called the Lake of Heaven. Many marvelous things live in the Lake of Heaven. They say there is a fish called K’un. The fish K’un is thousands of miles wide, and who knows how many miles long.”

“A fish that is thousands of miles long?” said the Emperor. “How amazing!”

“It is even more amazing than it seems at first,” said Ch’i. “For this giant fish can change shape and become a bird called P’eng. This bird is enormous. When it spreads its wings, it is as if clouds cover the sky. Its back is like a huge mountain. When it flaps its wings, typhoons spread out across the vast face of the Lake of Heaven for thousands of miles. The wind from P’eng’s wings lasts for six months. P’eng rises up off the surface of the water, sweeping up into the blue sky. The giant bird wonders, ‘Is blue the real color of the sky, or is the sky blue because it goes on forever?’ And when P’eng looks down, all it sees is blue sky below, with the wind piled beneath him.”

A little gray dove and a little insect, a cicada, sat on the tree and listened to Ch’i tell the Emperor about the bird P’eng. They looked at each other and laughed quietly. The cicada said quietly to the dove, “If we’re lucky, sometimes we can fly up to the top of that tall tree over there. But lots of times, we don’t even make it that high up.”

“Yes,” said the little dove. “If we can’t even make it to the top of the tree, how on earth can that bird P’eng fly that high up in the sky? No one can fly that high.”

Ch’i continued to describe the giant bird P’eng to the Emperor. “Flapping its wings, the bird wheels in flight,” said Ch’i, “and it turns south, flying across the thousands of miles of the vastness of the Lake of Heaven, across the oceans of the Middle Kingdom, heading many thousands of miles towards the great Darkness of the South.”

A quail sat quietly in a bush beside the Emperor and Ch’i. “The bird P’eng can fly all those thousands of miles from the Lake of Heaven in the north across the Middle Kingdom, and into the vast ocean in the south?” said the quail to himself. “Well, I burst up out of the bushes into flight, fly a dozen yards, and settle back down into the bushes again. That’s the best kind of flying. Who cares if some big bird flies ninety thousand miles?”

The Emperor listened to Ch’i, and said, “Do up and down ever have an end? Do the four directions ever come to an end?”

“Up and down never come to an end,” said Ch’i. “The four directions never come to an end.

“That is the difference between a small understanding and a great understanding,” continued Ch’i. “If you have a small understanding, you might think the top of that tree is as high up as you can go. If you have a small understanding, you might think that flying to that bush over there is as far as you can go in that direction. But even beyond the point where up and down and the four directions are without end, there is no end.”

But the quail did not hear, for she had flown a dozen yards away in the bushes. The cicada did not hear because it was trying to fly to the top of a tree. And the little dove did not hear because he, too, was flying to the top of the nearby elm tree.

Revolting

What’s the second best Web-based video online today? Meatrix, by those masters of animation, Free Range Studios. Soon Free Range Studios will release “Meatrix II: Revolting.” Sneak preview now online.

(Best online video, also by Free Range Studios, is here.)

Postmodernism made easy

Professors, students, anyone who’s involved in academia — I have a special gift for you. Next time you need a paper to submit to a peer-reviewed journal, or next time you need a term paper or dissertation proposal, just head on over the the Postmodernism Generator [Link], courtesy the blog “Communications from Elsewhere.” Each time you click on the link above, you’ll get a high-quality academic paper randomly generated with postmodern jargon. Here’s a sample:

If one examines predialectic theory, one is faced with a choice: either reject the textual paradigm of narrative or conclude that sexuality may be used to marginalize the Other. It could be said that if subcultural modernist theory holds, we have to choose between the textual paradigm of narrative and postcultural feminism.

“Sexual identity is intrinsically responsible for hierarchy,” says Derrida. The premise of the neodialectic paradigm of discourse states that the goal of the observer is social comment, given that narrativity is distinct from truth. Thus, Lyotard promotes the use of Marxist capitalism to modify and read society.

Yeah, baby. Sounds good to me. Now that I have access to the Postmodernism Generator, I can go back to grad school and get that Ph.D. in Postnarrative Philosophy.

What would Sun Ra do?

A serious question, prompted by a beautiful graphic in the Febrary, 2006, issue, of the Canadian magazine “The Walrus.”

What would Sun Ra do? Post your answers, if you have any, in the comments sections below.

Update: A mystified reader sends email asking who Sun Ra was. Link

Spring watch

Close to 70 degrees again today, with beautiful sun. Carol has been subletting one of the units in Cambridge Cohousing, and as we ate breakfast we could watch one of the residents disassembling the small ice skating rink in the yard below us: pulling up the stakes, knocking the side boards apart, rolling up the plastic sheet that held the water in. No more skating this season.

We walked over to the supermarket and I heard two Common Grackles, the first I have heard this year. Their harsh cries sounded musical to my ears: spring is coming, spring is here.

And I feel a faint tickle in the back of my throat, a little shortness of breath after I’d been walking for two hours to Central Square and back: tree pollen is out, and hay fever season has fairly begun.

Ice out

Carol and I walked around Fresh Pond in Cambridge this afternoon. It must have been 70 degrees; sunny, too.

The ice is off about half of Fresh Pond. A stiff breeze was blowing across the pond, and on the windward side, you could hear the ice crunching along the edge of the pond. We watched it for a while: the wind pushed the ice sheet against the shore, pushing it up onto land, little pieces of ice breaking off.

Already I’ve noticed there are many fewer ducks and loons on New Bedford harbor than a month ago, for the waterfowl are beginning to move back inland. No waterfowl yet on Fresh Pond, but soon they will move off their wintering grounds along the coast and stop here on their way to their breeding grounds.

Spring watch

The intermittent rain has been working on melting the last of the snow: snow piles left by shoveling and plowing, snow protected from the sun on the north side of buildings, and the snow left in the courtyard of the Whaling Museum across from our front windows.

Two days ago, a woman started working in that courtyard, pushing the snow up towards the main entrance of the museum. As I sat eating my lunch and drinking my tea, I couldn’t figure out what she was doing at first: why bother clearing away all that snow when it was going to melt in a few days anyway? But gradually she piled it up into a definite shape, and when I came back in the late afternoon the woman was gone, but she had left behind a sperm whale fashioned out of snow, with a black beady eye and a jaunty tail that, due to the limitations of the medium in which she worked, had to be a little too small.

This morning I sat at my desk, working my way through the Dhamma-kakka-ppavattana-sutta in preparation for this week’s sermon. I vaguely heard rain begin to patter on the roof and skylights. Barely conscious of it, I thought only that perhaps I’d get wet when I went for a walk today. I read on:

That this was the noble truth concerning sorrow, was not, O Bhikkus, among the doctrines handed down, but there arose within me the eye (to perceive it), there arose the knowledge (of its nature), there arose the understanding (of its cause), there arose the wisdom (to guide in the path of tranquility), there arose the light (to dispel darkness from it).

At last I had to get up and stretch. I wandered around, and looked out our front window to watch the rain coming down. The poor snow whale was being melted by the rain; its tail lay shattered on the ground behind it. Above it, tiny crimson flowers begin to open on the maple just across from our windows. The gray stone of street and courtyard reflect the gray sky. A woman walks by, clutching the hood of her blue coat so it will stay on her head.

Cranky again

Hmm. My evil alter-ego, Mr. Crankypants, is definitely up to something. He has been grinning to himself when he thinks I’m not looking. I have to step out for a minute, and I just know that while I’m gone he’s going to try to post something on this blog. If you don’t like cranky people, best to stop reading right now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(Hah! Thought he’d never leave.)

Mr. Crankypants here, feeling particularly cranky this week. Why so cranky? Well, wouldn’t you be cranky if you started thinking about children and church?

Most religious liberal congregations do not allow children to stay in “adult” worship services. The “little darlings” get sent off to Sunday school, where, presumably, someone educates them into full humanity. What really happens in Sunday school? Most adults don’t know, because they never go near the place; nor do they particularly care.

In “progressive” congregations, children are allowed in with the adults for the first fifteen minutes or so. The children are often put on display, for the amusement of the adults, during “story time.” “Story time” is when the adults pass off dumbed-down religion on the children.

Once the children leave, the adults stay in in the sanctuary. (By the way, what are the adults taking sanctuary from? Mr. Crankypants suspects most of us are taking sanctuary from the children.) The adults sit and listen to highly intellectual sermons. The adults know these sermons must be highly intellectual, because the sermons are too intellectual for children to understand.

For you see, religious liberals are actually pretty much like the Calvinists they claim to have revolted against. Religious liberals, like the Calvinists, feel that children are essentially depraved. Unlike the Calvinists, religious liberals do not feel that children are spiritually depraved. Instead, religious liberals feel that children are intellectually depraved. Because children cannot think as well as adults can, they are not fully human. Because they are not fully human, they cannot listen to sermons. Because they cannot listen to sermons, they must be intellectually depraved. Q.E.D.

Oh, but Mr. Crankypants has it all wrong. It has nothing to do with depravity. It’s just developmental psychology. Hah, hah, hah! silly Mr. Crankypants! It’s not theology, it’s all very scientific!

(Uh, oh. Here he comes, back again. Gotta run…)

What’s all thi– Good grief, what nasty, cranky things Mr. Crankypants has written! I just can’t leave this blog unattended for a minute. Dear, dear. My apologies, dear reader, that you have had to listen to mean old Mr. Crankypants. Tomorrow I’ll have a nice, low-key post on birds to make it up to you.

What do you believe? — part two

In an earlier post [link], I quoted from an old Unitarian Universalist pamphlet by Duncan Howlett, titled “What Do YOU Believe?” In the portion I quoted, Howlett wrote that Unitarian Universalism is not concerned with traditional belief systems. Indeed, Howlett explicitly rejects traditional belief systems (I’ve silently updated gender-specific language):

What then do we tell our friend who asks us what the Unitarian Universalists believe? We tell our friend in the first place that we reject all doctrines and creeds and theologies if they pretend to any finality. We think the fabrication of such systems valuable, but we do not believe one or another of them.

For me, that statement sums up the core of Unitarian Universalism. If you have the so-called “seven principles” posted in your church building, maybe you should take them down and replace them with a poster bearing the above quote. But you might want to add a positive statement about what we stand for (again, language silently updated):

A Unitarian Universalist is not an unbeliever. In fact, a Unitarian Universalist believes a great deal. Our beliefs are of a different order, but they are nonetheless real. The first of them is belief in humanity…. When we say that we believe in humanity we mean that we believe that human beings are endowed with the power to move toward truth. We believe that human beings are endowed with the discrimination by which to tell the difference between truth and falsehood and error. Yet we know human beings are fallible. We know that individuals make mistakes. Thus when we speak of humankind or humanity we mean the interaction of mind upon mind, experience upon experience….

We believe humanity is to be trusted — not each human being, but humankind taken together, with the testimony of each checked against each. We believe that humankind can find truth, know the right, and do good — again, not each individual, but taken together, with each checked against all the rest. We believe human life has meaning, that the high purposes of humanity may be achieved and the spiritual nature of humanity indicates something about humankind and the cosmos as well. In this faith we live, by it we labor, and through it we find the courage to carry on amidst all the tragedy, misery, and stupidity of life.

You could make all that into a poster — or into an “elevator speech,” a short spiel about our faith you could give to someone with whom you happen to be sharing a ten-second elevator ride. Either way, I find Howlett’s statement to be a far more satisfying (and accurate) summation of Unitarian Universalist “beliefs” than the “seven principles.”