The Barrier Keeper Yin,  and
'Duke Dan': True Men of old!

Blank, boundless, and without form;
transforming, changing, never constant.

Do we stand side by side with Heaven and earth?
Do we move in the company of spiritual brightness?

Where are we going?
Where are we headed for?

The ten thousand things
range all around us,

not one of them is worthy
to be singled out as our destination.

There were those in ancient times who believed that
the "art of the Way" lay in these things.

Chuang Chou heard of their views and delighted in them.
He expounded them in odd and outlandish terms,

in brash and bombastic language,
in unbound and unbordered phrases,

abandoning himself to the times without partisanship,
not looking at things from one angle only.

He believed that the world was drowned in turbidness
and that it was impossible to address it in sober language.

So he used 'goblet' words
to pour out endless changes,

repeated words to give a ring of truth, and
imputed words to impart greater breadth.


He came and went alone,
with the pure spirit of Heaven and earth,

yet he did not view the ten thousand things
with arrogant eyes ...

Above he wandered with Creator/the Way.
Below he made friends with those

who have gotten 'outside'

of life and death,

who know nothing
of beginning or end.

As for the Source/the Way,
his grasp of it was broad, expansive,

and penetrating; profound, liberal, and unimpeded.
As for the Ancestor/the Way,

he may be said to have tuned and accommodated himself to it,
and to have risen on it to the greatest 'heights'.

Nevertheless, in responding to change,
and expounding on the world of things,

he set forth principles that will never cease to be valid,
an approach that can never be shuffled off.

Veiled and arcane, he is one,
who has never been completely comprehended.