Can I Ride Upon A Cloud?
August 15, 2025
After the meal the superintendent explained that the Heavenly Teacher had acquired the Tao and since he travelled on clouds, they never knew where he might be.
I’ve book-learned my way into a lot of information, and chair-sat my way into plenty of ideas. I’ve philosophized and theorized and even hypothesized. I’ve analyzed! I’ve devised, derived, perused, and mused. I’ve been deluded and eluded and confounded, and sometimes my ideas are unfounded. I’ve been confused and bemused. Sometimes, I achieve breakthroughs, and sometimes, I take thorough breaks.
This is the type of life I’ve been living for a while now.
Two people in the world think of me as a go-getter. This is a misunderstanding on their part. They came to this conclusion based on incomplete information. But there’s a certain truth to their judgment, because I do occasionally go-get. In fact, I’ve go-gotten in their presence, which is how they were so misled. But this go-getting was a result of circumstance; I will only go-get if there’s nothing better to do.
Truthfully, go-getting is not that appealing to me. There’s value in working hard, but you don’t have to do it all the time. The most important thing is to take one’s work seriously. In fact, it’s probably best to take one’s whole life seriously. The problem is that the most serious facts about our lives often sound like jokes.
For example: is the following a joke, or is it a serious truth?
Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the bridge over the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, “The minnows swim about so freely, following the openings wherever they take them. Such is the happiness of fish.”
Huizi said, “You are not a fish, so whence do you know the happiness of fish?”
Zhuangzi said, “You are not I, so whence do you know I don’t know the happiness of fish?”
We then think that for every name that exists there must also exist some substantial reality…
Assuming the reality of things is one of the greatest mistakes one can make. We have a word called “love,” so we go searching for a concrete concept also called “love.” In order to make this concept real, we start attaching predicates. The concept gathers predicates like a snowball rolling down a hill, until it’s twice its size. Then, we bring it back to the world, and start trying to apply it to emotions and situations. And lo! it no longer fits! It’s too big and too small and too wide and too narrow.
The beauty of ideas is that they’re not real. When you turn an idea into a concept, you are attempting to give it reality. This is like turning water into ice, so you can eat it instead of drinking it. It’s like blending a burger into a smoothie, so you can drink it instead of eating it. Food & drink work well together because they contrast; they don’t get in each other’s way. Ideas are useful because they can exist apart from reality. They’re somewhere else. The interchange between ideas and reality is necessarily wonky. It’s like translating to a different language; you’re never going to get out exactly what you put in.
Socrates asked people, What is beauty? What is justice? People tried to answer, and so he made fun of them. The tradition that trails behind Socrates is a response to this bullying. If you don’t have a good answer, Socrates will make you look silly. However, Socrates never has a good answer either. The truth is that there’s no answer to any question good enough to escape Socratic heckling. And so, perhaps the smartest Athenians were those who said, “I don’t have time for this,” and walked away.
This Socratic obsession with words and arguments turns philosophers into lawyers. Whether you like lawyers or dislike lawyers, you can’t ignore that they are very annoying. Even if they are trying to be helpful, they are forced to do it in a very annoying way. It never feels like they’re actually getting to the heart of the matter. Whether justice is served or not has little to do with the technique, or the gameplay, of court. The justice of the matter already exists; we often know it before the process even begins. If we don’t, it’s simply a case of gathering information.
In the same way, philosophy often proves things we already know. It’s just a question of putting into words, and conceptualizing it.
Qu Boyu went along for sixty years and transformed sixty times. There was nothing he didn’t initially affirm as right that he didn’t later repudiate as wrong. So he could never be sure if what he presently called right was not fifty-nine times wrong.
I’m not sure if I’ve transformed more or less than thirty times in my thirty years. I guess it depends on how big a transformation must be to be considered a “transformation.” Often, it feels like I’m alternating back and forth, or reverting to forms I took several years in the past. Re-learning and re-discovering things about myself and the world that I’d forgotten. But perhaps “forgetting” isn’t the right word; I’d just let them fade into the background. I still knew them, but I wasn’t using them.
In this ever-changing, ever-flowing state, it’s no wonder that it’s so hard to hold on to anything. Even if you continue with the same action, or the same goal, your reasons for pursuing it will constantly change. You approach it one way, and then another, and then the first way again. Each time we change, it feels new and exciting, even if we’re only changing from the fifty-ninth transformation back to the forty-eighth.
I’ve been off work due to an injury for a few months now. Although this feels like one distinct phase of my life, I realize looking back that this time has been full of mutation and evolution. At first, I was very concerned about getting back to work. Then, I never wanted to work again, and decided to become a monk. Then, I thought I should decide, right now, whether I want kids or not. Then, I started wondering why I do anything at all, as I tried to determine the purpose of my life. Then, I realized that nothing I was thinking about had any meaning.
At first, I couldn’t type, because my wrists hurt too much. Then, something erupted within me and I was writing way too much every day, causing myself constant pain. Then, I stopped again. Some days, I decided to rest completely, while other days, I did a bunch of work around the house until my wrists exploded.
At times, I felt sorry for myself. Then, I felt happy for myself. Then, I felt guilty, as if my injury wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. This coincided with the times I decided to do a bunch of housework. When I realized that I was as injured as I thought, it reassured me, for a period of time. But the feeling has returned twice or thrice.
I was worried about money, and then I became obsessed with my investments, and then I didn’t care about money at all, and then I returned to caring about money just as much as I need to.
For a while, I was reading Tale of Genji and watching a bunch of Japanese movies. Then, there were those few weeks where I read a bunch of Goethe, for some reason. I obsessed over Paradise Lost for a while, and then got back into 20th-century Japanese literature after years of absence. Now, all I do is play Myst games and watch tennis.
Perhaps I’ve transformed sixty times in just these last few months.
I couldn’t stay stagnant if I wanted to. I can hardly sit still. Although often sedentary, I’m always on the move. There’s so many places to go! Or I can travel down the same street in a new direction. One moment I’m an orangutan, and the next I’m a gorilla. One moment I’m deep within the Earth, and the next I’m riding upon a cloud!
Can I ride upon a cloud? It seems like I can, but only in short bursts. As soon as I look down to study the cloud beneath me, it fades into mist, and I come hurtling back to the ground.
Now Liezi got around by charioting upon the wind itself and was so good at it that he could go on like that in his cool and breezy way for fifteen days at a time before heading back. He was someone who didn’t get caught up in anxious calculations about bringing the blessings of good fortune upon himself. Nevertheless, although this allowed him to avoid the exertions of walking, there was still something he needed to depend on.
If even Liezi could only manage fifteen days riding on the wind, maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. And even Liezi depended on something. What did he depend upon? The wind itself.1 While the wind is something, it’s not a particular thing. You can’t point at the wind and say, that’s the wind. You can only see its effects. You see the wind via the things that it exerts force on.
When you ride upon a cloud, you’re not in control. Clouds are passive creatures; they travel where the wind blows them. It’s not like riding a horse, when you can tell it where to go. Clouds form and clouds disappear, just like that. One moment you’re high and mighty, and the next moment you’re falling like a rock.
It’s not like I can force myself to be happy and content all the time. It’s not up to me. There are times to be happy, times to be upset, and even times to be angry. One minute the sky is clear, and the next it’s pouring with rain. If even the weather is condemned to endless fluctuation, who am I to stay the same?
1. The wind is also a symbol of the Dao, but we don’t need to get into that.