Zhuangzi – Autumn Rains

The time of autumn rains arrives. A hundred streams flood the Yellow River, flowing magnificently; between riverbanks and watery islands: a chasm divides, where one can’t distinguish an ox from a horse. And at this, the river lord laughs, beside himself with joy, for all beauty under heaven becomes exhausted within his own. He follows the current and goes east, arrives at the North Sea, faces east and peers, not seeing the water’s end. And at this, the river lord begins turning his face and eyes about, gazing towards the sea, and sighing says: A folk saying has it that He hears the Way a hundred times, and so he becomes such that nobody seems like himself. It names me. And moreover, my ear has tasted this: the belittling of Zhong Yi I’ve heard, and making light of Bo Yi’s rightness. First I didn’t believe them. Now, I have seen your tumbling limit! Oh, if I hadn’t arrived at your door: how dangerous! I’d have forever seen them laughing at me: every house of the great method.