Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/385

CAP. XXV.] "The unborn creature cannot be kept from life.


 * So powerful is its "will to live."

The dead cannot be tracked. From birth to death is but a span; yet the secret cannot be known. Chance and Predestination are but à priori solutions.

"When I seek for a beginning, I find only time infinite. When I look forward to an end, I see only time infinite. Infinity of time past and to come implies no beginning and is in accordance with the laws of material existences. Predestination and Chance give us a beginning, but one which is compatible only with the existence of matter.


 * And not with the time before matter was.

" cannot be existent. If it were existent, it could not be non-existent. The very name of is only adopted for convenience' sake. Predestination and Chance are limited to material existences. How can they bear upon the infinite?

"Were language adequate, it would take but a day to fully set forth . Not being adequate, it takes that time to explain material existences. is something beyond material existences. It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence. In that state which is neither speech nor silence, its transcendental nature may be apprehended."


 * "With this essay in China," says Lin Hsi Chung, "what need to fetch Buddhist books from the West?"