Little Knowledge asked Big Common Tune, "What is 'county talk'?"
Big Common Tune said, "Towns and counties collect households and clans into a community. They collect differences into sameness and distribute sameness into differences. You can point to the hundred parts of a horse and still not get "horse" though the horse is tethered right in front of you until you establish that these hundred parts are called a horse.
So hills and mountains pile from low to high, the Yangtze and Yellow collect water and become great, great people collect the privates and become the public. So when things come in from without, they host but don't hold them; when things go out from within, they're straight without requiring a ruler.
The four seasons have different weather, but nature doesn't pick a winner, which rounds out the year. The five offices have different responsibilities; and when the ruler doesn't play favorites, the state is governed. Great people don't pick a winner between books and fists, so powers are complete. The ten thousand things have their different places, but the way is not to play favorites, so there is no word. Nothing said, nothing done; and nothing done, nothing undone.
Seasons begin and end; times change; disaster and prosperity chug along; there's something fitting about the arrival of what repels; self-interred, different-facing, there's something at odds about what is right. Compare the great marsh, planted with a hundred trees; look at the great mountain, an altar of trees and stones. This is 'county talk'."
Little Know said, "Then is it enough if we call this the way?"
Big Common Tune said, "Nope. If we count the number of things, they don't stop at ten thousand. But we agree to refer to everything as "the ten thousand things," using the large number in order to speak of them; so, too, "heaven and earth" for the largeness of size; "yin and yang" for the greatness of weather; "the way" is their commonality. If we're speaking in terms of these greatnesses, this is ok. But, having done that, can't we contrast them? Using this designation would be like assimilating dogs and horses, when they are really far apart!"
Little Know said, "Within the four directions, inside the six dimensions, what's the origin of the source of everything?"
Too Common Tune said, "Dark and light reflect on each other, cap each others, govern each other. The four seasons replace each other, engender each other, kill each other. Then love, hate, attack, and retreat rear up. Then male, female, split and, joined, become the norm. Safety and danger interchange with each other, disaster and prosperity beget each other, relaxed and restrained massage each other, gathering and scattering to fruition.
"These names and things can be recorded, the minutiae can be journaled. The orders of their sequences, the priorities of their transitions—they run out then go home, end then begin. This is what things are, what words exhaust, where knowledge arrives—this is only the limit of things. People who see into the way don't follow what has disappeared, don't source what's arisen. This is where the conversation stops."
Little Knowledge said, "True Season's 'Nothing doing' and Welcome Boy's "Something makes'—which of these two philosophers' theories is right on the essence? And which is biased about the pattern?"
Too Common Tune said, "Roosters crow and dogs bark. Everyone knows this but even the big knowers cannot articulate how they got like this or imagine where they will end up. Analyze like this to the smallest that cannot be discriminated, the largest that cannot be encompassed. If we say nothing acts or something makes, we haven't escaped from 'things' and so still err. If something makes, it's real. If nothing does, it's empty. If we say there are names and substances, we're in the house of things. If we say there are no names or substances, it's empty of things. You can talk and think, but talking only makes you more distant.
"Before being born you cannot decline; after being born you cannot go back. Death and life are not far apart but their proximity cannot be spied. Something's acting or nothing's doing are borrowed from doubt. When I look for their root, it goes without end. When I seek the branch, it continues without stopping. No ending, no stopping—I call them "no"s, but they're in the same neighborhood as things. Something making and nothing doing are at the root of language and begin and end with things.
"You can't say the way is; you can't say the way isn't. Saying a way that is, is borrowed to go. Something making and nothing doing are just on one corner of things; what do they have to do with the great method? If you're satisfied with talking, you can talk all day and exhaust the way. If you're not satisfied with talking, you can talk all day and exhaust things. The way is the limit of things; neither words nor silence can bear it. Neither words nor silence is the limit if the discussion." [1]