Living in the Present Moment - Life Wisdom #63

Zhuangzi tells the story of a man who was so troubled by his own shadow and by the sound of his own footsteps that he decided to get away from them for good.

So he began to run and the faster he ran, the more footsteps he left behind him while his shadow kept pace at his side without the slightest effort.

Convinced he was still too slow, he ran faster and faster, never once stopping to rest until at last his strength gave out and he fell dead on the road.

Wangzi adds a single remark, as though speaking to the man himself.

Had he sat down in the shade of a tree, his shadow would have vanished and his footsteps with it.

I have thought about that man many times, because most of us know something of his running, even if what we are trying to escape is a worry rather than a shadow.

There is another story from the Zen tradition which answers the first one almost perfectly, and it concerns a student who asked his master what his practice consisted of.

The student expected to hear something difficult and secret, whereas the master only told him that when he was hungry, he ate, and when he was tired, he slept.

The student protested that everybody does that, so the master explained that most people, while they eat, are thinking of a thousand other things, and while they sleep, dream of a thousand worries.

This episode is about the distance between those two men, the one who runs and the one who eats, and about a conviction of mine.

The present is almost always lighter than we fear.