Ancient China, as with Indigenous populations the world over going forward have always looked to the sky for answers that they felt were beyond their own knowledge and wisdom. To the continuity, discipline, and structure, they saw every day in the sun and moon, and looking to the stars. How nature responded to how this truism reflected everything they saw and lived through in their own environment. This connection would give meaning to their lives and what they saw would help to keep them safe and alive.
In earlier entries, I’ve mentioned that following the natural flow of life keeps us in harmony with the Tao. As Chuang Tzu advises, steering clear of actions that go against nature helps us maintain balance with the world and opens the door to success. I appreciate the opening question in the entry below: “What can be limitless and inexhaustible?” I see this as a fundamental truth of the universe. This is a universal question, and I enjoy reflecting on what historical figures have said, especially considering ancient Greece with Aristotle and Plato, and moving through the dark ages in Europe when universities in France and Germany explored spirit and their visions of God as depicted in the Bible.
All things found in nature are created in the spirit of God and the Tao. There is no separation between the two. This idea was central to Emerson’s view of nature and that which could be inherently seen in the divinity found in both heaven and earth and all things in-between.
We often forget the timeless wisdom of Indigenous peoples, who remind us of our boundless and infinite spirit. Many feel that our true home is intricately tied to the cosmos and the stars, echoing what Kublai Khan told Marco Polo about his grandfather Genghis Khan’s references to the eternal blue sky. The Mongol belief in spirit holds historical significance. Many people may not realize that the earliest form of Tibetan Buddhism emerged when the Dalai Lama came from Mongolia, during the time when the Mongols overtook China.
In the future, we’ll discuss Kublai and Genghis Khan, along with Marco Polo. Their roles are essential to the story and how Buddhism, Confucius, and Lao Tzu influenced China’s development and prosperity. When we begin to look and act beyond our perceived personal interests, the boundless universe and memories we know but may have forgotten begins to reveal itself.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Five – The Questions of T’ang
73. What can be limitless or inexhaustible
Who can say which came first, day or night, spring or autumn, birth or death. Who 
can argue the beginning and ending of things? If at one time there was nothing, how can there be something now? And in the future can one argue or not about something that may have existed in the present?
If there are no absolute beginnings and endings, if there is no limit from which things come into being, then is not the start of one thing the end of another and the end simply the beginning of something else? Can it matter which came first?
If nothing is limitless and as something becomes inexhaustible, then is not results the signature of all things that occur that have ever been. Is that not the crux of it? What makes for this need to try to interpret something (or nothing) present in the void where everything must exist or vanish in the end?
If, as Hui Shih says:
“You daily take away half of a stick a foot long, you will not come to the end of it for ten thousand generations, then has not infinity been established as there must always be a portion, however small, to subtract from?”
If there is nothing limitless outside what is limitless and nothing exhaustible within 
all which is inexhaustible, and all remains the same it is on the outside or looking in, then who can question when something is to begin and end and what could have come first?
Again, Hui Shih reminds us:
“If the absolutely large has no outside; and is called the largest one and the absolutely small has no inside and therefore must be called the smallest one,” then it must be as Chi of Hsia says: “There is no limit, but neither is there anything limitless. There is no exhausting; but neither is there anything inexhaustible. That is why I know that they are limitless and inexhaustible, yet do not know whether they may be limited and exhaustible.” 4/14/95
Number seventy-three of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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