A. Singh

This article has been written for the cutter drifting out to deep water in the floating world. This is for gardeners who appreciate that day in the year when the red rose they have cultivated is in full bloom and at the height of its beauty, ready to be cut down and set in a porcelain urn between a miser and his gold, or between two warriors, or between a veera and God.

Which is the more substantial, thicker, and more alive potion: blood or water? The answer to this question is the crux of existence. If blood is the potent vehicle for the living energy, that mysterious force that sustains life, then is it not superior to water? However, water is necessary to life, and without this simple substance there would be no living being, with or without blood in its veins. However, this comparison of qualities appears to lead nowhere, like a spiralling staircase into the abyss. This argument is similar to the comparison of qualities between the man with the knife and the man with the stick. Who has the advantage? If it's the man with the stick, then the man with the knife can always cut a stick for himself, etc.

The power to make use of qualities and attributes is the end of pursuits to develop skill, or cunning or crafts. That such pursuits in themselves are the Way has been the argument of questors throughout the ages. It is submitted that among these questors there is a failure to appreciate a self- evident trigronometric pattern (trigram) of dissimilation and dissolution. Initially, the pursuit is discovered, either by accident or by intent. Then, the pursuit is followed, until the time comes when the pursuit becomes synonymous with the purpose of its establishment or its founder.

As the purpose of the establishment or founder begins to evolve and fragment to suit the prejudices of the practitioners, the purity is lost. The pursuit, attempting to assume the shape-shifting adaptability and level-finding stability of water, sheds its purity. At this point, the qualities and values of water are emulated by the questors in their pursuit, and the pursuit itself changes, the original purpose and method being lost. Therefore the pursuit has reached the natural end of its life, but this will not necessarily be noticed by the questor, who may believe that the altered form is the unadulterated original. This is the characteristic of water, in movement.

Water in movement being the vehicle within the vehicle - but not necessarily the engine - of life, when water is understood to be the principal component of blood, is the only conclusion that may be drawn from the cultivation of any pursuit. Drawing out the implications of this hypothesis, it is possible to conceive a pursuit in which the water attributes itself are the end. If there is any truth in water, then naturally one would not expect water to deceive itself in the practice of such a pursuit. However, before proceeding to explore the possible outcomes our uber-pursuit, it behoves us to ask what the function of movement in water is. Naturally, a living being cannot function if its blood did not move about inside it. Similarly, if the blood inside it is contaminated with some foreign agent, and is not regularly cleaned, the being would die.

From the perspective of a pursuit to cultivate mastery, the necessity of movement is equally apparent with regard to the avoidance of dirt, contamination and filth, and in order to avoid stagnation. For the sake of honouring the original purpose or the founder of such a pursuit, a questor may disdain to interfere with its substance. In such an instance, there is a clear chance of infection being allowed to take hold, introduced by another, for good or ill, who is less inhibited. In those circumstances, where it is too late or not possible to administer preventative medicine, the letting of blood for the purpose of maintaining the purity of the water would appear to be justifiable.

The ultimately pure water is the water that cleanses the water within other pursuits. Therefore, the pursuit that causes injury to an infected cause for the purpose of honouring the water within itself and that other cause, is the true and proper pursuit, for all other pursuits are subject to dissolution.

Extending this principle to questions of morality and ethics, there would appear to be justification for a master-morality that would impose its own morality by force upon other systems of morality and ethics, while conscious not only of the fluidity and changing faces of the other systems, but its own susceptibility to change also. This master school would be too imperious, dynamic and well-intended to present as a form of fascism. Rather, it would have ultimate mastery of and over fascism and all other dogmas.

The understanding behind the questor employing this over-system as a pursuit, would be that ultimately, the blood that falls to the cobblestones is sacred for the intent behind the blade that freed it from its infected host. Thereafter, the water from rains or hose washing the cobblestones clean, while ever present and anticipated in the mind of the cutter even in the initial cutting action, is not the end in itself but is an expression of the purity that has been sought, irrespective of whether the momentary object of purifying the host body has been achieved. Therefore, the action itself, irrespective of whether the object of the moment has been achieved or not, is a true and correct action in pursuit of the Way.

Furthermore, for the reasons already explained, this action would have been in the pursuit of a Way superior to a superficially comparable pursuit involving unloaded cutting, or cutting of bales of hay, or cutting beasts or carcases. The most practicable method of employ, in the transition between the ordinary (if you could call it that) and the superior pursuit, would be to maintain transience between the pursuits ordinarily cultivated by the conscious, and the pursuits of the trigram-conscious.

The driving force behind the motion of the water, sustaining life, is the engine of the blood in the living being. From the perspective of the trigonometric continuum, which is naturally irrefutable and therefore stable (hence being upward-pointing, one side resting on the ground), the driving motion must therefore assume the form of its direct equivalent, opposed exactly in every way, but always unbalanced so that there is motion. Therefore, it must take the form of a triangle approximately equal to the truth of change water triangle already discussed, yet poised unsteadily on the ground - an (almost) equilateral triangle with one of its points and no other part of it being in contact with the ground. This can be taken to be the symbolic representation of the movement in the water, which causes it to adopt a form, fill a space, attain a level, or gain or lose heat.

Naturally, it is inseparable from the water, and yet it is not equal to the water. Were the triangle perfectly equal-sided and not biased in any way, there would be no movement nor change in the state of the water. The bias itself is either be controlled by free will, whether in the host of the blood-carrying unit or in the host of the blood-letting unit, or else it is predestined. This is a matter of one's personal philosophy, and can neither be proved nor disproved. All that can be proved by this model is that the pursuer possessing the master-morality is at complete liberty to control the lives of others as they pursue minor or major aims, by judicious exercise of dissection: prevention and cure (checks and challenges).

The tool of this discrimination emanating from instinct (as discussed already, instinct is the ultimate pursuit of the pursuer of water) as opposed to reason, the use of the dissecting instrument in relation to others is not free from consequence, but is guided by understanding of consequence. Therefore, that knife, wielded in the quest for water, may be used for either life-saving surgery or for war, and the ultimate outcome, irrespective of the motives of the wielder and irrespective whether the intended outcome is achieved not at all or in whole or in part, will be "good".

The inverted triangle, liable to sudden movement one way or the other on account of its precarious stance, is the provider of movement force behind the exerter and expender of power. Therefore, actions to redirect movement, or else to recompense or to adjust, in a blood-carrying being whether animal or human, are actions of a sustainer of order - a disciplinarian.

The inverted triangle representing consumption as well as the giving of force to be expended by the main consciousness (as represented by the original trigram), is a quality or attribute of that which is adaptable and which has no form or quality. This is not a paradox, because water can be disposed of by action, which is itself an expression of the inverted truth of water. Therefore, actions to adjust the course of events, when undertaken by one in the pursuit of water itself, are adjustments to this life-giving force, in order that the purity of water can make itself manifest and the whole being be cured. Therefore, there is a clear benefit to both the wielder of the knife and the person being cut.