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Daoism -> Zhuangzi -> Outer Chapters -> The Full Understanding of Life -> 3

仲尼When Zhongni was on his way to Chu,
as he issued from a forest,
he saw a hunchback receiving cicadas (on the point of a rod),
as if he were picking them up with his hand.
仲尼:「'You are clever!' said he to the man.
Is there any method in it?
:「The hunchback replied, 'There is.
For five or six months,
I practised with two pellets, till they never fell down,
and then I only failed with a small fraction of the cicadas (which I tried to catch).
Having succeeded in the same way with three (pellets),
I missed only one cicada in ten.
Having succeeded with five,
I caught the cicadas as if I were gathering them.
My body is to me no more than the stump of a broken trunk,
and my shoulder no more than the branch of a rotten tree.
Great as heaven and earth are,
and multitudinous as things are,
I take no notice of them, but only of the wings of my cicadas;
neither turning nor inclining to one side.
I would not for them all exchange the wings of my cicadas
!」- how should I not succeed in taking them?'
孔子Confucius looked round, and said to his disciples,
'"Where the will is not diverted from its object,
the spirit is concentrated"
!」- this might have been spoken of this hunchback gentleman.'


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