If she bid me die quickly, and I demur, then I am an unfilial son. She can do me no wrong. Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the best arbiter of my death. "Suppose that the boiling metal in a smelting-pot were to bubble up and say, 'Make of me an Excalibur;' I think the caster would reject that metal as uncanny. And if a sinner like myself were to say to God, 'Make of me a man, make of me a man;' I think he too would reject me as uncanny. The universe is the smelting-pot, and God is the caster. I shall go whithersoever I am sent, to wake unconscious of the past, as a man wakes from a dreamless sleep." Tzŭ Sang Hu, Mêng Tzŭ Fan, and Tzŭ Ch'in Chang, were conversing together, when it was asked, "Who can be, and yet not be? Who can do, and yet not do? Who can mount to heaven, and roaming through the clouds, pass beyond the limits of space, oblivious of existence, for ever and ever without end?" The three looked at each other and smiled; and as neither had any misgivings, they became friends accordingly. Shortly afterwards Tzŭ Sang Hu died; whereupon Confucius sent Tzŭ Kung to take part in the mourning. But Tzŭ Kung found that one had composed a song which the other was accompanying on the lute, Tzŭ Kung hurried in and said, "How can you sing alongside of a corpse? Is this decorum?" The two men looked at each other and laughed, saying, "What should this man know of decorum indeed?" Tzŭ Kung went back and told Confucius, asking him, "What manner of men are these? Their object is nothingness and a separation from their corporeal frames. They can sit near a corpse and yet sing, unmoved. There is no class for such. What are they?"

Lying here on my bed, or standing amidst my kin, I must suffer the agonies of dissolution alone. Whence shall I find a kinsman, whence a friend, when ...