Islamic Theological Themes by Renard John;

Author:Renard, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

The Non-Ultimate and the Great Ultimate

are the taproot of heaven and earth, being and nonbeing.

They are suited to be the seed of the ten thousand things,

but not of this Human who planted the taproot.26

You cannot but know this.

Someone said: When we rely on the principles and infer the details, then the Non-Ultimate is the Great Ultimate, which is the Lord of yin and yang, the five agents, and the ten thousand things.

I said: The utmost principle of the Pure and Real is not apart from this very body. If we speak about the principle as apart from this very body, that would be absurd and without evidence. Why? Because the root human nature has the pattern of the Non-Ultimate, and the root stuff of this body is clear proof of the Great Ultimate. The head is round in the image of heaven, and that which is light and pure ascends above and belongs to yang. The foot is square in the image of earth, and that which is heavy and turbid descends down and belongs to yin. The five viscera correspond to the five agents, and the body as a whole is like the ten thousand things.

Acting and stopping as well as knowledge and awareness depend on the nature and spiritual of the Non-Ultimate, but the one hundred bones certainly emerge from the root stuff of the Great Ultimate. Nonetheless, life and death, success and failure, safety and danger, gain and loss, are not within the ability of one’s own root nature and root substance. Thus we come to know that the Non-Ultimate receives the Real Lord’s mandate to act as His representative in heaven, earth, and the ten thousand things, but the authority to decide life and death, nobility and meanness, certainly does not rely on the independent ability of the Non-Ultimate and the Great Ultimate. This is the utmost great affair amidst heaven and earth. How can the foundation of the True Dao let people conjecture without restraint?

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