[MD] The Nature of the Ten Thousand Things

[John Carl]

In the time of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, the Chinese--particularly the
Taoists--employed a phrase intended to designate all the noteworthy objects,
substances and creatures in Creation:  "The ten Thousand Things."  Anyone
who has given the works of either Tzu a modicum of thought can have no doubt
that these were two wise men; it cannot be doubted that such men possessed
sufficient intelligence to realize that there were a great deal more than
"ten thousand things" located between heaven and earth; it cannot be doubted
that both men's mathematical prowess allowed them to perceive the
possibility of counting "things" from dawn to dark for aeons and never
arriving at a digit sufficiently sumptuous to include all the objects,
substances and creatures under the Sun.

 But the phrase "the Ten Thousand Things" was the product of minds incapable
of counting and cataloguing every particular variety of creature and
substance, and this incapability sprang not from an inability to count or
catalogue, but from a lack of the stupidity requisite to such numerical
undertakings.  One's brief sojourn between Heaven and Earth was recognized
as being so precious, and one's goal (called "*Tao", *though it was
Nameless) was seen as being so worthy of all one's thought and endeavor,
that "Ten Thousand Things" were considered a sufficient number to
familiarize the pilgrim with the Nature of things.  "Ten Thousand Things" is
no childish synonym for "lots and lots of things": it is a phrase that
implies horizontal limits to man's comprehension; it is a phrase that
implies that these horizontal limits should be self-imposed, and that Tao
must be sought through vertical, transrational leaps; it is a phrase that
implies that one cannot seek while forever counting; it is a phrase that
implies that Tao will finally be found in the *nature* and not in the *
number* of things.

David James Duncan, The River Why