The Tianxia’s concluding assessment of Laozi and Guan Yin is all praise. Of Laozi the author writes: “He was broad-minded and tolerant of all creatures, never slicing his way into the domain of others. This can be called reaching the zenith.” (p 123)
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What is most valuable in describing the attributes of a sage, to my thinking, is simply in providing us with an opportunity to explore their implications and to perhaps experientially try them on so as to see how they fit. There really needn’t be any sages at all.
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This particular description seems too curiously simply and prosaic to be called “reaching the zenith”. Yes, it’s a worthy attribute, but what about supreme unsurpassable enlightenment? Well, philosophical Daoism doesn’t entertain this goal—its vision is much more down to earth.
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There is, nevertheless, something quite profound in the very un-profundity of this attribute when you think about it. To be able to actually embody this implies so much more. But that is the way of such things, I think—to embody one such attribute is to embody them all. There is one quality that does seem to encompass them all, however: “It’s just being empty, nothing more.” (7:13)
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The author concludes: “Indeed! Guan Yin and Laozi, these were truly the vast and broad Genuine Human Beings of olden times.”
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Well, I was wondering who those often referenced “ancients” were, and now I know. But if they are in fact essentially legendary figures, this doesn’t really tell us all that much. (There may have been a Lao Dan, but the legends that form his identity cannot be taken as telling us anything about him.)
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This is for the best, is it not? The ancients, like all sages, serve us better as hypothetical archetypes then as actual historical personages. If no one has ever “attained” something specific we are left to have fun in wandering in that general direction.