《南华真经义海纂微》Vol. 1

The Huanghua Zhenjing Yihai Zuanwei (Collected Subtleties of the Ocean of Meaning from the True Classic of the Southern Flowers) comprises 106 fascicles. It is a Song-dynasty compilation of commentaries on the Zhuangzi, edited by the Daoist priest Chu Baxiu of Hangzhou. The work was completed in the gengwu year of the Xianchun reign, only six years before the fall of the Song. Zhou Mi’s Guixin Zashi Houji (Miscellaneous Notes after Guixin, Continued) records that in the ninth month of the dinghai year of the Zhiyuan era, Chu Baxiu still traveled with Wang Pan and others to visit the Yuegu Spring, showing that he remained active after the Song dynasty’s collapse.

The book gathers views from thirteen commentators—Guo Xiang, Lü Huiqing, Lin Yidu, Chen Xiangdao, Chen Jingyuan, Wang Pang, Liu Kai, Wu Chou, Zhao Yifu, Lin Xiyi, Li Shibiao, Wang Dan, and Fan Yuanying—and Chu Baxiu evaluates them with his own judgments, which he calls his “narrow view” (guanjian). The Jingdian Shiwen (Explanations of Classics and Their Texts) by Lu Deming is cited repeatedly, though Lu is not counted among the thirteen, because the work focuses on meaning and principle rather than on phonology and glossarial exegesis. The subcommentary of Cheng Xuanying, Wen Ruhai’s Zhengyi (Correct Meaning), and Zhang Qianfu’s supplementary notes are occasionally drawn upon but likewise not listed among the thirteen, since this book chiefly follows Chen Jingyuan’s work. Fan Yuanying was a Daoist master from Shu; he had not originally written a commentary on the Zhuangzi, but because he was Chu Baxiu’s teacher, the compilation preserves many of his views.

The main interpretive positions on the Zhuangzi before the Song are largely gathered in this work. Writings by Wu Chou, Zhao Yifu, Wang Dan, and others are now rarely extant in separate editions; they survive here thanks to Chu Baxiu’s editorial labors, so his compilation is historically valuable. The three prefaces at the beginning of the book—by Liu Zhensun, Wen Jiweng, and Tang Han—were all composed in the early Xianchun period. In the seventh month of the forty-third year of the Qianlong reign, an imperial order was issued to collate this text.

Chief compilers: Ji Yun, Lu Xixiong, and Sun Shiyi. Chief collator: Lu Feichou.

At first, when I read Zhuangzi, I often felt that the arguments in “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” (Qi Wu Lun) were extravagant and far-reaching, as if they did not fit ordinary human feeling. Once, when I was ill in bed, I dreamed that someone used the story of the “wooden cock” to admonish me, so I took the book out again and read it closely. Only then did I gradually grasp what Zhuangzi meant by his words: what he most wanted to do was to remedy the ills of society in his time—though people might not have seen it.

After the virtue of the Zhou dynasty declined, ritual and music and military campaigns were no longer controlled by the Son of Heaven. In the Warring States period, feudal lords fought one another like tiny states on a snail’s horns, and the common people suffered the pain of war. The root of these disasters lay in people not knowing how to rest content in their proper place. Zhuangzi lived in such an age; he wished to awaken those who were lost and to heal society’s sickness. That is why, at the opening of “Free and Easy Wandering” (Xiaoyao You), he used indirect language to offer counsel: the finch and the little bird dare not compare themselves to the great peng bird because they understand their own limits; Xu You refused to accept the empire that Yao offered to yield to him because he understood his own station.

If everyone in the world knew how to keep to their proper place, those of low rank would not envy high position, those of narrow scope would not constantly scheme for greater power, the strong would not bully the weak, and the numerous would not oppress the few. Rulers would fulfill the duties of rulers, ministers those of ministers, fathers would be fatherly, and sons filial. Each person would rest in the position heaven and earth had given them, neither overstepping nor contending, and there would be no harm that endangered life. Then, although the ten thousand things differed from one another, there would be no need to force them to become the same; naturally each would find its fitting place.

Zhuangzi and Mencius lived in the same era. If Zhuangzi’s words had gone against the Way and brought no benefit to the age and to people’s hearts, Mencius could have denounced him. Readers who cling to Zhuangzi’s letter without probing his intent often treat the whole book as contrary to reason; Guo Xiang and others took that approach. Can that truly count as understanding Zhuangzi?

One day, the Daoist Chu Boxiu of Zhongdu brought me his compiled commentary on Zhuangzi, with his own views appended. I admired his diligence in gathering material, the care with which he selected and rejected, and the many points in his insight that were penetrating and original. I therefore shared my own understanding with him. He said in surprise, “To explain ‘Discussion on Making All Things Equal’ with this single word ‘proper place’ (benfen)—that is something I had not thought of. Would you write a preface for this book so it can be carved and circulated?”

I replied, “That is only my personal surmise. Perhaps someone in the world understands this book better than I do; you might seek widely and see whether they agree. You can bring it back to discuss with me later—it will not be too late. As for writing a preword, I dare not accept.”

In the fourth month of summer in the first year of the Xianchun reign, Liu Zhensun of the Northeast wrote this at the Muji Ke (Wooden Cock Nest), his lodging in Gusu.

The Dao was originally one; once it is put into language, it becomes two. Hence it is said that the Dao cannot be exhausted through question and answer: asking about the Dao does not necessarily bring a reply. It is also said: “To know the Dao is easy, to speak it is hard; those who truly know the Dao do not speak, and those who speak of the Dao may not truly know it. Those who are good at practicing the Dao do not argue; those who love to argue may not be good at practicing the Dao.”

Can one then forget language altogether? If language could be wholly forgotten, the Nanhua Jing (the Daoist classic title for the Zhuangzi) would never have been written. Language cannot be wholly forgotten, and so there is the Nanhua Jing; because there is the Nanhua Jing, there are commentaries from various schools. Yet though the Nanhua Jing runs to more than a hundred thousand characters and seems to speak continuously, in truth it is as if it had not spoken at all. Why? Because its words are all yuyan—allegorical tales that convey meaning through stories and images. Later readers chase only what is already stated in the text and do not seek the meaning that resists words; they parse every character and split every chapter, so discourse grows finer while the Dao drifts further away.

Xueyan Yuyi Xu Bozhi, dwelling in heights near Heaven, yet with his spirit roaming between Qi Garden and the Pu waters—places bound up with Zhuangzi—gathered commentaries from various schools, judged them by his own insight, and compiled this book. Feeling that writing alone was not enough, he had it carved and printed so it might pass to later ages. His effort was truly diligent.

Alas, conveying the Dao through language is like Zhao playing the zither; not conveying the Dao through language is like Zhao ceasing to play. Neither sound nor silence harms the true “great sound” (the supreme voice). Once you have the fish, you may forget the bamboo trap; once you have the rabbit, you may forget the snare—that is acceptable; yet how could trap and snare be the fish and rabbit themselves? The Dao and language are the same: they seem two things, yet they are intertwined.

Alas—the Nanhua Jing, the schools’ commentaries, Xu Bozhi’s personal views, and my own idle remarks are all allegories within allegory.

On the fifth day of the fifth month in the first year of Xianchun (1265), Benxin Weng Wen Jiweng wrote this at Daoshan Hall.

Among the writings of the ancient masters, Mencius’s words are upright and solid, Zhuangzi’s are strange and splendid—both have reached the highest level of authorship. Later generations, even when they wrote and taught, have rarely surpassed them. Zhuangzi is especially difficult to read. Someone as brilliant as Su Dongpo still said he had only partially grasped the Zhuangzi; yet when one reads commentaries on Zhuangzi today, they often still miss his true intent. How much less can one reach the state of liberation described as “the Son of Heaven’s releasing the bonds” (di zhi xian jie) through annotations as harmful as Wang An’s and Lü Huiqing’s—full of harm, like poisonous thorns wounding the reader?

Recently there have been even more commentators on the Zhuangzi, and some surpass earlier views; yet they often borrow the words of Confucian sages or mix in Chan Buddhist essentials. It looks close, but in fact it does not fit. I think it is better to explain Zhuangzi directly with Zhuangzi’s own language: looking upward without clinging to other schools’ doctrines, looking downward without dragging in side branches. Perhaps then one can grasp Zhuangzi’s aim of according with nature and unobstructed passage, and see its general thread.

Mr. Chu Baoxiu of Wulin (the Hangzhou region today) is a scholar of the Dao, not of Confucianism or Mohism. When he read this book he was wholly absorbed, never losing his way among too many paths. He strove to recover Zhuangzi’s intent from a thousand years ago, gathered various opinions, and added his own views; he chose what seemed sound and did not discard a remark because of who wrote it. He spent many years completing the work—his effort was truly diligent. I see in him a upright, clear bearing and a calm, quiet air; this is precisely the cultivation that study of this teaching brings.

I once loved reading the Zhuangzi and often had moments of understanding, but never wrote my insights down. Now I am old, ill, and my eyesight is dim; I am glad that Mr. Chu’s project is finished, yet I lack the strength to examine each point for right and wrong. Mr. Chu has pressed hard to print the book and has asked me to write a preface. I smiled and said: “Has the carver not yet finished? When he puts down his knife, those who ascend will naturally write a preface for you.”

On the day jiashen in the eighth month of the yichou year of the Xianchun era, Tang Han of Poyang composed this.

Zhang Zhan’s Commentary on the Liezi records that Zhuangzi was a native of Meng in Song, served as keeper of the lacquer garden in Liang, and wrote fifty-two chapters. Guo Xiang edited them into thirty-three chapters and annotated them. Another account holds that Xiang Xiu first annotated twenty-eight chapters of the Zhuangzi; after his death Guo Xiang obtained his commentary, completed the chapters, and published it; later Xiang Xiu’s separate version also circulated, so the annotations and meaning of the Xiang and Guo lines are largely the same.

Bi Xu Zi Chen Jingyuan says in his preface at the head of the volume that Zhuangzi studied under Master Changsang, received his teaching, and wrote more than one hundred thousand characters under the title Discourse on the Southern Florescence (Nanhua lun). The parts marked as inner chapters with “three-character titles” are Zhuangzi’s original work; the outer and miscellaneous chapters were altered by Guo Xiang. Counting the main text today, only a little over sixty-five thousand nine hundred characters remain.

In the nineteenth year of Kaiyuan of Tang, Vice Director Pei Guangting requested ennoblement for four worthies; in the first year of Tianbao the emperor issued an edict enfeoffing Zhuangzi, retaining his old title, as the True Scripture of the Southern Florescence (Nanhua zhenjing). The name “Southern Florescence” (Nanhua) means that its brilliance displays and expounds the subtlety of the Dao.

On private inquiry, the title “Southern Florescence” is old and seems to belong to the nomenclature of celestial offices, akin to “Eastern Florescence” (Donghua) and “Southern Pole” (Nanjí)—it should not be guessed at with worldly reasoning, so successive commentaries offer no explanation. I respectfully note this as one puzzle in resolving the title, to be investigated by the learned.

In the Northern Sea there is a fish called Kun. It is so vast that no one knows how many thousand li it measures. When Kun transforms into a bird, the bird is called Peng. Peng’s back too stretches for thousands of li without end. When it rises to fly, its wings are like clouds hanging from the sky. When this bird meets the surging of the sea, it migrates toward the Southern Sea. That Southern Sea is the Heavenly Pool (Tianchi).

Qi Xie is a book that records marvels and strange events. It says: “When Peng migrates toward the Southern Sea, it strikes the water and raises waves three thousand li high; riding a whirlwind it spirals upward to ninety thousand li, then departs on the wind of the sixth month. The drifting breath like wild horses, the dust in the air—all are stirred by the breath of living things upon one another. The sky looks vast and blue—is that its true color? Or is it because heaven and earth stretch so far that the eye cannot see their limit? When Peng looks down from on high, the view is probably much the same.”

Guo Xiang comments: As for the real facts about Kun and Peng, I do not know them. Zhuangzi’s point is carefree wandering (xiaoyao), aligning with Wuwei (non-action), and resting content in what one has—so he pushes the contrast of large and small to the extreme to show that each nature has what suits it. Those who understand should grasp the meaning and need not fixate on the images used to carry the idea.

For Kun to become Peng, without a sea broad enough it cannot hold its body; without ninety thousand li of height and a strong wind, its wings cannot be borne up. This is not deliberate strangeness—great things necessarily arise in vast places, and vast places naturally harbor such beings. Peng’s wings are so huge they are hard to lift, so it must ride a whirlwind spiraling upward to reach ninety thousand li; only after half a year of flight does it rest at the Heavenly Pool. The breath drifting like wild horses is precisely the air current on which Peng flies. When Peng looks down on the earth from the heights, it is like a person standing on the ground looking up at the sky.

Lu Huiqing’s commentary holds that what pervades all under heaven is a single current of Qi (vital energy). When yang qi reaches its limit, yin qi arises; when yin qi reaches its limit, yang qi arises again—turning in cycles without end. All things, as they wane or wax, empty or fill, never step outside this pattern of change.

The kun in the Northern Dark Sea (Beiming) becomes the peng in the Southern Dark Sea (Nanming): a shift from yin toward yang. When Yin-Yang change hits its extreme, everything in the end returns to the heaven’s transforming breath. The peng’s flights of three thousand li and ninety thousand li are odd numbers; it rides the wind and leaves in the sixth month. From this one infers that the yin-side change symbolized by the kun answers to even numbers, and in the sixth month it subsides.

Mist and dust that drift like wild horses are made by living beings’ breathing qi stirring one another. Qi fills heaven and earth with no gap between, and people too stand within it. Looking up from below, the sky seems vast and blue—is that truly the sky’s own color? The sky’s distance has no known limit. Precisely because the limit cannot be known, people do not treat where they stand as “low”; so when the peng looks down from on high, how could it tell what should count as “high”?

Lin Yidu’s commentary states: “Beiming” refers to the sea in the north; “ming” conveys depth and obscurity. Beiming is the place where yin and yang enter and exit and transform. Zhuangzi uses Kun and Peng to illustrate yin-yang change, so the account begins from Beiming. Kun belongs to yin; Peng belongs to yang.

The Taixuan says that “you” (obscurity) is a state in which form cannot be seen and depth cannot be fathomed; in stillness it is called “returning to the root” (fuming)—returning to one’s essential nature and the root of life—which resembles the form of Kun. When the myriad things flourish, the function of Heaven appears and illuminates all things—this resembles the form of Peng.

When Kun has just transformed into Peng, although it already belongs to the category of yang, it has not yet left the deep and hidden state; therefore its body is still “of unknown extent—perhaps thousands of li.” Next, rising three thousand li means its journey has not yet reached its end; finally, ascending ninety thousand li indicates that movement ultimately has a limit.

Whatever has physical form, however far or vast, cannot exceed the pattern of yin-yang transformation. In movement the yang number “nine” is taken; in stillness the yin number “six.” When Peng flies for six months and then rests, that is the turn from yang back toward yin. Yin and yang alternate in operation, cycling without cease—one cannot trace it to an end.

“Wild horses” and “dust” refer to drifting vapors and dust in the air. Like the breath creatures exhale when they breathe, they illustrate that wind arises from what is subtle, gradually gathers and becomes thick; only then does Peng have wind to rely on and can fly south by it.

Chen Xiangdao explains that the Dao gives birth to Yin and Yang, and Yin and Yang in turn give birth to the ten thousand things. If the ten thousand things can rise above Yin and Yang and return to the Dao, they can be free and at ease wherever they are; if they enter into the transformations of Yin and Yang and cling to particular things, they will be constrained at every turn. Yin is the hidden aspect of brightness, and brightness is the manifestation of Yin.

The north belongs to water and the south to qi; water corresponds to jing (essence) and qi, in seasonal terms to winter, and in number to “one.” The transformations of the ten thousand things often begin from here. That is why Zhuangzi writes in the north of a fish hiding in the water, and in the south of a bird striving to fly.

The kun is a great fish and belongs to Yin containing Yang; the peng is a great bird and belongs to Yang containing Yin. The kun dwells hidden in the north, the peng moves to the south—neither leaves the positions ordained by Yin and Yang; when the peng flies ninety thousand li and waits six months, it still does not exceed the numbers ordained by Yin and Yang. Its back is like a great mountain and its wings like clouds hanging to the sky, yet it still cannot escape the limits of form. For the kun to transform into the peng it must rely on the force of water; for the peng to soar it must rely on the force of wind—it cannot do without external conditions. When it beats its wings and flies, it cannot be without attitude; after flying it must rest, and cannot be without an end. Though kun and peng are vast, they are still bound by the transformations of Yin and Yang—how much more so the cicada, the turtledove, and the little sparrow?

Commentary by Bixuzi Chen Jingyuan: The Dao takes generating and transforming the myriad things as its foremost task, with yin and yang as its root. In the north, the great fish Kun transforms into the great bird Peng; qi and form are both complete, yet no one knows why it is so by nature. This shows precisely that the biochemistry and transformation of yin and yang are unfathomably subtle. When the myriad things first begin to change, the scale of change cannot be inferred—hence it is said the Kun is thousands of li in size, and that too is unknowable. Yet whatever has life necessarily has a direction of movement. Strength and capacity cannot be without limit; therefore the Peng beats the water and rises three thousand li, rides the whirlwind upward ninety thousand li, and in flight must rely on the wind of the sixth month. “Breath” (xi) here means wind; “sixth month” uses yin numerology.

Primordial qi fills heaven and earth, ascending and descending without end—hence the simile of the wild-horse roaming vapor and dust. Living things stir one another’s breath and rely on one another, and so can come and go freely without obstruction. If boundaries are drawn only by the size of bodily form, yin and yang will be cut off from each other, above and below will have different horizons, and the realm of true ease will be hard to reach.

Commentary by Wang An: Kun dwells hidden in water; Peng flies toward the south. Kun and Peng are embodied things; even when vast and capable of transformation, they remain subject to yin, yang, and the like, and are therefore governed by creation and transformation—they cannot truly wander in freedom. The Yijing says: “Things gather by kind; things group by category.” As for carefree wandering—perhaps only what has no fixed direction and no fixed form can attain it.

The Peng beating water three thousand li symbolizes yang qi just beginning to expand; movement always has a limit, so it rides the wind ninety thousand li upward, and in flight must rely on the wind of the sixth month. The wild-horse vapor and dust are what the Peng’s flight depends on. The Peng, from its height looking down, is like a person on the ground looking up at the sky; if one cannot see small things because of one’s own size, the Peng too is burdened by its own immensity.

In his commentary, Zhao Yifu of the Empty Studio explains that Zhuangzi’s account of the kun transforming into the peng is meant to illustrate how yin-yang qi moves through heaven and earth: a fish becoming a bird and migrating from north to south symbolizes the shift from yin to yang and from stillness to motion. The text names the southern heavenly pool the “Heavenly Pool”; since heaven wraps around the earth, the northern sea can likewise be called a heavenly pool. “Three” is the number of yang qi’s first emergence—one containing three; “nine” is the number when yang reaches its fullness—three containing nine. Yang qi begins to rise at the zi hour and peaks at the si hour, which is why the text says the peng must wait for the great wind of the sixth month before it can take wing.

“Wild horses” and “dust motes” are the drifting mist and fine particles in the air. They are stirred and blown by one another along the breath of wind; though large and small differ, the qi each relies upon is the same. When people look up at the sky, it is like the peng looking down on the ground: what is seen may be higher or lower, but the principle is the same.

Lin Xiyi’s Yizhai Kouyi says the kun-peng story is only a figure for a broad mind and an untroubled heart. People’s horizons are small, so quarrels never cease; if one knows there is a vast realm beyond heaven and earth, one feels oneself no larger than a single grain in a great granary. Kun and peng are allegory as well—there is no need to fix on yin-yang doctrine alone. A bird in flight must depend on strength; the word nu (“fury,” “surge”) in the text conveys the force of beating wings and rising; “three thousand li” and “ninety thousand li” describe flight unimaginably high and far. “Rest in the sixth month” means that once the peng flies, it must pause for half a year. The lines on wild horses, dust, and breath blowing one another explain what follows as “gazing at heaven without limit”—the view on the peng’s southward flight—and also show Zhuangzi’s bold, expansive style.

Chu Shi says in Guanjian (Pipe Dreams): “Ming” (dark vastness) refers to a state in which one qi is wholly blended and undivided. The north governs moistening qi, which nourishes and gestates the myriad things; the south governs warm qi, which grows and rears them. The north comes first and the south after, just as yang arises from yin. Though directions differ, qi was originally continuous; only because north and south lie far apart does transformation of qi gradually occur beyond ordinary notice. It is like the turning of the four seasons—bitter cold and scorching heat do not arrive in a single day.

The kun lurks and the peng transforms when stillness at its extreme turns into movement; riding the wind it rises ninety thousand li and only rests after six months. These changes never exceed the pattern of yin-yang mutual transformation, and all remain within one qi’s undivided continuity—so both north and south may be called “ming.”

Zhuangzi, author of the Nanhua Zhenjing (True Scripture of Southern Florescence), whom Daoists honor as “Old Immortal of Southern Florescence,” was troubled by constant warfare in the Warring States period and a narrowing of learning. Some scholars clung to what they had seen and heard, treating vertical and horizontal persuasion and manipulation of affairs as skill, rushing after fame and profit while forgetting their own nature. Zhuangzi therefore wrote generously, offering vast and far-reaching discourse, clarifying root principles and opening the human heart.

Those who grasp this Way align their De (Virtue/Power) with Heaven and Earth and their movement with yin-yang; whether hidden or manifest, they change with the times and remain carefree. The yin-yang transformations of Heaven and Earth also dwell in the human body and mind: water and fire take their source here, temperament and disposition exchange and shift here. It penetrates above and below and reaches everywhere, yet cannot be directly grasped by ear and eye—so Zhuangzi borrows the names kun and peng to depict it. At first the student of the Way begins from things to inspect the inner mind, and in the end forgets the bondage of form and merges with the Dao (the Way); when the root is deep and the mind still, one can accord with the changes of creation. Yin-yang in the person never cease to operate; body, mind, Heaven, and Earth never rest. From this we know that human nature originally holds the possibility of carefree wandering.

Ordinary people often lose the true and chase the empty: while alive they worry over life and death; once they gain something they fear losing it, and do not understand what carefree wandering is. Zhuangzi therefore goes further: human life and death are like a fish becoming a bird—shedding scales, growing wings; abandoning swimming for flight. Appearance follows form as each accords with inborn creation. Creation is inexhaustible and life changes without end—why cling to love and hate?

When a thing first begins to change, the degree of change cannot yet be measured, so at first the kun is so vast one cannot tell how many thousand li it spans. Only when the peng moves toward the southern ming sea do the measures of three thousand li and ninety thousand li appear. When the peng flies it rides the great wind of the sixth month, embodying the mechanism by which yin wanes and yang waxes and creation keeps running. “Wild horses” and dust are images of visible things drifting on currents of air. If one can grasp the root and understand what the peng’s flight symbolizes, one can rise above the vulgar and wander carefree beyond the myriad things. Wandering qi moves hidden through Heaven and Earth; the living and dying of things blow upon and push one another; yin and yang wax and wane and creation never stops. Whoever accords with this change is not dragged down by outer things. Ease in every gesture and step—that is the meaning of “carefree wandering.” Hence Zhuangzi places it at the book’s opening as the guiding theme of the whole work.

The phrase “surges upward to fly” (nu er fei) is often left unexplained in commentaries. Here is a brief note on its sense: Heaven and Earth receive one qi and take form; one qi divides into Heaven and Earth; Heaven and Earth unite and give birth to the myriad things. Things part and join in endless generation; great and small, long and short each have their allotment. From receiving qi to forming a body, then to the body reaching its limit and changing in kind—all things embrace yin with their backs and yang with their fronts, depending on the moment. What must change changes; what must fly flies—all are outcomes of Heaven’s mechanism; what is transformed does not know why.

“Surges upward to fly” means rising and going after one can no longer remain still. Nu carries the sense of vigorous force: qi pushes it swiftly upward so that it looks like straining to soar—not action born of angry resentment. Whatever has long been hidden must eventually rise; whatever has long been suppressed must eventually stretch out. This is not weariness with the ordinary or greed for change, but the form dwelling within great transformation and following the movement of yin-yang through fullness, emptiness, waning, and waxing, unable to escape. The Qi Wu Lun (Discourse on Making Things Equal) says the various openings “howl in surge”; the Wai Wu chapter says plants “surge into life”—the same meaning. The Daodejing (Classic of the Way and Virtue) speaks of “the myriad things arising together”—also the simultaneous rising of all things. Observing from this that after rising things return, one can understand the meaning of “resting after six months.”

People only see things surging upward, not resting; they know only flourishing, not eventual return. So they turn away from carefree wandering toward striving and contention, tangled in complexity and the pull of worry, exhausted without knowing where to go—a thing truly pitiable.

Master Yin said: “Though Heaven and Earth are vast, they can command what has form but cannot command what is formless.” Whoever wishes not to be ruled by yin and yang must seek the root from the time before form has taken shape.

If water does not gather deep and wide enough, it lacks the strength to bear a great ship. Pour a cup of water into a hollow on the hall floor and a mustard seed can serve as a boat; put a cup in it and it sticks fast—because the water is too shallow and the vessel too large. If wind does not accumulate enough depth and breadth, it lacks the strength to lift enormous wings. So when the peng rises ninety thousand li, the wind lies beneath its wings. Only then can it ride the wind, shoulder the blue sky without obstruction, and set out toward the south.

The cicada and the dove mock the peng: “When we shoot up, we reach the elm or sandalwood and stop; sometimes we don’t even get that far and fall back to the ground. Why go ninety thousand li up and then south?” A trip to the suburbs needs only a day’s rations and you return with a full belly; a hundred-li journey requires pounding grain the night before; a thousand-li journey takes months of stored food. What do such small creatures understand?

Small understanding cannot match great understanding, nor a short life a long one. How do we know? The morning mushroom knows neither month nor month-end; the winter cicada knows neither spring nor autumn—such is brevity of life. South of Chu grows a tree called Dark Spirit: five hundred years for one spring, five hundred for one autumn; in high antiquity stood Great Chun: eight thousand years for one spring, eight thousand for one autumn. Peng Zu is famous today for longevity, and everyone wants to match him—is that not pitiable?

The passage first compares pooled water and accumulated wind to continue the earlier theme, then has cicada and dove ridicule the peng: great and small differ, and so do capacity and insight. Each knows only its own station and cannot grasp a vaster horizon. Destinations differ in distance, and provisions must differ in amount—cicada and dove cannot fathom the peng’s journey. The text repeatedly contrasts small with great, short life with long, to make this point. The closing note holds that resting content in what one has, without envying another’s realm, is precisely what “carefree wandering” (xiaoyao you) means.

When King Tang of Shang questioned Jie, Jie is said to have replied: In the uttermost north, in the land where hair does not grow, there lies a Northern Dark Sea—the Heavenly Pool. There lives a fish thousands of li in length; no one knows how long it truly is. Its name is Kun. There is also a bird named Peng. Its back is like Mount Tai; when it spreads its wings, they are like clouds hanging from the edge of heaven. Peng rides the whirling updraft and soars ninety thousand li into the sky, passes through the mists, bears the blue sky on its back, and then turns south to fly toward the Southern Dark Sea.

The little bird called the sparrow mocks Peng: “Where is it going? When I leap up, I rise only a few zhang before I come down again, fluttering among the wormwood and brambles—that is as far as flying goes for me. Where could it possibly be going?” That is the difference between small and great.

Thus someone whose talent fits a single office, whose conduct wins a village’s trust, whose virtue satisfies a lord, or whose ability makes a whole state acknowledge him—such a person sees himself much as the sparrow sees itself. Song Rongzi would only smile at that. If the whole world praised him, he would not strive harder because of it; if the whole world condemned him, he would not grow despondent. He could distinguish the boundary between inner and outer, and mark the line between honor and disgrace—and that was all. He did not hotly pursue worldly affairs, yet he still had not reached the furthest point.

Liezi rode the wind and went lightly and freely, returning only after fifteen days. He was not eager to seek good fortune. Even so, he was still acting with effort and still had something to rely on. As for those who accord with the inherent pattern of heaven and earth and guide the six qi—yin, yang, wind, rain, dark, and bright—roaming in the boundless realm, what would they need to depend on? Therefore it is said: the Perfect Person has no fixed self; the Spirit Person does not seek merit; the Sage does not seek a name.

Lu Deming’s Yinyi (Glosses on Pronunciation and Meaning) records that when Jizi answered King Tang, the worthy Master Cui said that Jizi belonged to the same kind of figure as those in Qixie (On Harmonizing All Things)—someone who could name marvelous beings such as the great catalpa tree. In his commentary on the passage where King Tang questions Jizi, Guo Xiang likewise writes that each thing has its own proper measure; if one follows its native disposition and lets it be, it opens and flows freely—hence Zhuangzi treats Jizi’s reply as correct.

Lü Huiqing held that the Tang-king–Jizi episode is cited here because Jizi says, “From antiquity there have been such cases”—a instance of chongyan (“heavy speech”), that is, putting words in the mouth of the ancients to expound the point. Jizi’s remarks about Kun and Peng are precisely the passage quoted here; they also appear in the Liezi, though in a shorter form.

Lin Yidu’s commentary explains that the story of King Tang and Xia Ge runs from the time heaven and earth first possessed things to the realm of the inexhaustible, and further that within the inexhaustible there is nothing else, and beyond the boundless (wuji) there is no further boundless. This dovetails with the preceding argument, so the story is adduced in support. The author of the original note argues that Guo Xiang’s claim—that things each have their limit and unfold freely when their nature is followed—does not match Zhuangzi’s intent; readers may decide by comparing the Liezi.

Chu Shi’s Guanjian holds that in Liezi the wording is “Yin Tang asked Xia Ge”; here ge and ji are close in sound and also overlap in sense, both carrying a note of urgency. Cui placed this line as the closing of the preceding discussion of the “spiritual catalpa”; Lü took it as the opening of the next section on the northern sea. Commentators differ in their chapter breaks according to their own readings. The annotated edition printed in the eighth year of the Daguang reign treated this sentence as a separate entry, seemingly because it was hard to decide whether it continues what came before or leads into what follows. Lin’s commentary links it to the preceding text, agreeing with Cui; editions associated with Bixu and Chen Jingyuan begin the second chapter here, in line with Lü.

On a close reading of the passage’s intent, the author appears to be confirming the allegory of the kun and the peng. He first states the theme, then adduces two kinds of evidence: he cites what Qie Xie records, then the story of Shang Tang questioning Xia Ji (i.e., Ji), and corroborates Zhuangzi’s words with the account of the northern sea and the Pool of Heaven in the “Tang’s Questions” chapter of Liezi. On this view, the chapter should begin at the line “Tang’s question to Ji.” The phrase “this is so” (shi yi) at the end of the sentence serves to validate the earlier discussion and to introduce what comes next. Many readers have not seen this clearly and have mistaken it for the closing line of the previous chapter. If it were a closing line, the prior chapter’s argument would already be complete; yet the next chapter would then reopen with “north of bald-tip land,” which would not match the usual structure of such writing. I therefore venture these notes at the end of the entry to resolve the doubt. Lin of Zhuxi also said this sentence belongs with the text below; using a closing line as an opening is precisely the kind of rise-and-turn a skilled essay employs. The discussion of the kun and peng that follows is not a mere rehash of the earlier remarks on “knowing is enough for one office” and “conduct compares with one village,” and the like.

Human talent and capacity differ in scale; each has its proper sphere. So long as one can put one’s abilities to use, one may rest content. Song Rongzi still looked down on such people—showing that he was not swayed by honor or profit, understood seeking nothing and finding sufficiency in one’s own use, and had risen above judging people by the rank of their talents. Yet the true person (zhen ren) still regarded even that as not yet settled, which shows how much higher his insight reached. Liezi could ride the wind yet still depended on something; only when one rides the six qi and wanders in the boundless does one reach the highest level. Hence the text declares: “The ultimate person has no fixed self, the spirit person (shen ren) takes no credit for achievement, the sage (sheng ren) seeks no fame.” These three lines sum up the utmost that human cultivation can attain and gather the main theme of the opening chapter of Xiaoyao You (Free and Easy Wandering).

When the Dao reaches its utmost, one can exhaust the subtle and enter the sacred realm; whether one speaks from the “ultimate person” or from the “sage” and “spirit person,” the reference is always to a state beyond ordinary people and too deep to fathom. Applied to life in the world, this also has its proper sequence. All living things tend toward partial self-interest, so one must first forget the self; pride and reserve easily arise, so next one must forget merit. Once one has forgotten one’s own merit, others’ praise may still come—and one must go further and forget fame, leaving worldly entanglements behind. Only then can one preserve oneself and make the Dao pure and De (de, virtue/power) solid; in dealing with others one can also hit the mark, until even the labels “no self, no merit, no fame” dissolve and are no longer clung to.

From antiquity to the present, many have been brilliant in talent and famous for achievement, yet few have known how to preserve themselves wisely. Is that because their wisdom was insufficient? It is because the heart aligned with the Dao was not yet clear and remained obscured. Diligent study and striving are originally for building accomplishment; merit can benefit others, but after success one is often envied. Cultivating the person and establishing a name is originally to encourage the world through reputation—yet fame too is hard to rest in for long. The problem lies not in merit and fame themselves but in clinging to the self. If one can truly achieve “no self,” one will shun credit, keep away from fame, and withdraw to guard the Dao—like boating on the five lakes, wandering far with Master Red Pine, or fishing on the Tong River. Between heaven and earth there is inexhaustible delight; what danger need one fear? The Daodejing says: “When the work is done, do not dwell on it; when the name is fulfilled, withdraw the person.” That is exactly this principle.

If one can act on what one knows so that word and deed accord with reason, then hardship and success can both be faced in peace, life and death gladly accepted, and one may wander freely wherever one is. The titles ultimate person, spirit person, and sage are praise others give after all things have received such virtue; they cannot exhaust the mystery of roaming the Way of Heaven. Guo Xiang’s commentary says: “When principle reaches its limit, traces vanish.” His explanation has already said all there is to say.

Yao offered the empire to Xu You, saying: “The sun and moon have already risen, yet the torch still burns—would that not be superfluous for illuminating the ten thousand things? The timely rain has already fallen, yet you still carry water to irrigate the fields—would that not be wasted effort for soaking the earth? If you, sir, took the throne, the world would be well governed; I still occupy this place and feel myself lacking. Please allow me to give the empire to you.”

Xu You said: “You govern the world, and the world is already well governed. If I were to replace you, would it be for the sake of a name? A name is merely an appendage to real achievement—would I be such an appendage? The wren nests deep in the forest and uses no more than one branch; the field mouse goes to the river to drink and fills its belly—that is enough. Go back, lord! The empire is of no use to me. Even if the cook does not cook himself, the one who presides at the sacrifice will not step over the sacrificial vessels and take charge of the cooking in his place.” Here shizhu refers to the person who represents the one being sacrificed and the one who leads the rite; zunzu are the wine vessels and ritual implements used in sacrifice.

Guo Xiang held that what truly settled the realm was not Xu You but Yao. Xu You merely saw that the world was already well governed and that no successor was needed, and so offered to step aside; the one who actually governed the realm was Yao. When Yao said, “Let Xu You govern,” that should be read as a way of stating a principle—not as evidence that Xu You ruled the realm while Yao did not. To read it that way is to miss the point entirely.

Both ruling and not ruling can spring from Wuwei (non-action, not forcing matters from private will). Yao followed nature and brought the realm to peace; that was enough. Why would he need to depend on Xu You? If Wuwei is taken to mean hiding in the mountains and doing nothing at all, that is exactly why the teachings of Laozi and Zhuangzi were pushed aside by those in power.

Those who act only from their own will set themselves against things; those who follow things can harmonize with the ten thousand beings. Yao was not at odds with the world; Xu You was set alongside Ji and Qi, the worthy ministers of Yao’s time. Why? Someone who moves in one flow with the ten thousand beings is someone the ten thousand beings cannot do without. Such a person keeps no fixed plan in mind but answers whatever the world presents, like an unmooring boat carried east or west by the wind—not by its own design. Wherever such a person goes, he lives with the people; wherever he stands, he can be lord of the realm.

The cook and the invoker at the sacrifice each do their own part; birds and beasts each rest content with the life they have been given. Yao and Xu You likewise each rest in their place. That is the realm’s most honest condition: each keeps to his allotment—what need for deliberate striving? Their paths differ, yet in unfettered ease they are the same.

Lü Huiqing argued that from Yao’s side, Xu You, though Wuwei, was not unable to act—so when he asked Yao to hand him the realm, he did not hesitate. From Xu You’s side, Yao, though he governed the realm, also acted from Wuwei—so once the realm was in order he would not accept the abdication. Each speaks from his own path; readers often infer inner motives instead.

To gain the realm and settle it through Wuwei is Wuwei in its true form. Once the realm is settled, if Yao still had to “take” the realm in Xu You’s stead, that would be grasping the realm and acting on purpose—bound to fail—and would be no more than hunger for the name of “Wuwei.” Name follows substance; Yao would not act for a name alone. When Yao acted, people across the four seas and nine provinces were glad to raise him up, yet he did not feel he had received too much. When he was Wuwei, content with one branch to perch on and a belly full, he withdrew and left, yet did not feel he lacked anything. Neither needed to treat the realm as a burden—that is why both Yao and Xu You could wander free.

Lin Yidu explained: The sun and moon run their course naturally, and timely rain falls of itself—so one cannot see human effort at work, yet the effect is great. Torchlight and irrigating fields depend on human labor, so deliberate action is visible, and the result is limited. Yao felt that the way of non-action represented by Xu You was already in effect; his own active way of governing the empire then seemed unworthy by comparison, so he asked to hand the realm over to Xu You.

Xu You replied: You have governed the realm, and the realm is already at peace. At that point, even without deliberate action, nothing fails to be accomplished. The Yijing says that what moves the myriad things yet does not toil like the sage is the power of spirit (shen). The sage’s achievement takes this spirit as its root—and spirit has never deliberately built achievement. Only Yao still shared the people’s joys and sorrows, so he could not avoid acting. When action reaches its limit, it returns again to non-action; that is why Yao offered the realm to Xu You.

The sage’s inner spirit and outer action and non-action are like a drop of water and the great sea: outwardly there may be action, but as long as the inner mind is not entangled, that is likewise the subtlest realm under heaven—one need not envy non-action alone. Next, the butcher cutting meat illustrates deliberate action; the shizhu (the ritual officiant who represents the recipient of sacrifice and presides over the rite) at a sacrifice illustrates non-action. The divine person (shenren) cannot but be non-active; the sage cannot but act.

Chen Xiangdao explained: Yao governed the realm; Xu You forgot the realm. Governing the realm depletes actual virtue or efficacy while building up reputation; forgetting the realm accumulates inner cultivation while reputation fades away. If the realm is already well governed, one cannot pass the burden of governing to another; if one forgets the realm, one forgets it entirely, and no one can take one’s place. Thus Yao’s wish could not be realized through Xu You, and Xu You’s aim would not submit to Yao.

The rising sun and moon stand for wisdom pervading the myriad things; timely rain stands for the Dao’s grace reaching the world. The wren needs but one branch to perch; the field mouse is satisfied when its belly is full of water—human needs are limited. The cook is busy with immediate tasks; the shizhu does not personally manage the sacrificial rites. Busyness easily leads to entanglement, so the one who has no affairs never oversteps his role to interfere. That is why Xu You did not overstep his place or govern the realm in Yao’s stead.

Chen Bixu’s commentary states that rank and ritual objects must not be handed over casually; how could the great treasure—the imperial throne—be accepted lightly? Xu You valued his own person and held external things cheap; he did not treat the realm as personal gain. When no one treats the realm as personal gain, the realm naturally settles into order. For this reason Xu You did not serve lords and kings; he took lofty integrity as his own vocation, and his aspiration is worth emulating.

“To know others is wisdom; to know oneself is true clarity.” Without knowing others, one cannot discern benefit and harm or conduct oneself well in the world; without knowing oneself, one cannot recognize Heaven’s mandate or align with nature. This is precisely why Yao understood Xu You, and Xu You understood himself.

Wang Dan’s discussion runs: the Way of Heaven proceeds from Wuwei (non-action); the human way proceeds from deliberate action (youwei). Those who practice Wuwei regard deliberate action as a burden; those who practice deliberate action take Wuwei as their root. When Yao was Son of Heaven and held the realm, he did not feel he had anything to spare; when Xu You was a commoner dwelling on Mount Ji, he did not feel he lacked anything. Using Xu You to illustrate the Way’s operation, the sun and moon’s course and the four seasons’ rain are the examples; using Yao to illustrate human operation, lighting torches for illumination and channeling water for irrigation are the examples.

Yao believed Xu You capable of governing the realm yet did not dare impose on him the title of ruler; Xu You believed Yao capable of governing the realm and therefore would not replace him. Viewed this way, who ultimately governs the realm? If we say Yao governs, though he acts outwardly, inwardly he can remain in Wuwei; if we say Xu You governs, though he has no outward intent to act, he can still accomplish what needs doing. The Dao embodied in the sage appears as Yao when he enters public life and as Xu You when he withdraws—what is there to choose between them?

Zhao Yifu of the Vacant Studio notes that Yao and Xu You are not two separate persons. Readers should grasp the meaning beyond the words; what Yao and Shun exchange in the “Heaven’s Revolving” chapter of the Zhuangzi expresses the same point.

Chu’s Guanjian says that reading the chapter “Yao’s Abdication,” one almost sees with one’s own eyes the ancient plainness, thick good faith, and mutual yielding. Yao and Xu You are not two persons; readers should grasp it beyond the words; what the Yao–Shun dialogue in the “Heaven’s Revolving” chapter expresses is the same.

In his Guanjian (Personal Views), Master Chu writes: I have reverently read the chapter on Yao’s relinquishing the throne, and it is as if the plain, ancient grace of voluntary abdication were before my eyes. From this one sees that sages honor virtue: they would rather yield than take precedence, and they weigh self-cultivation more heavily than governing the realm. Later generations, by contrast, fight over scraps of territory—how thin the spirit of the age has become!

Yao compared himself to a faint flame and belittled his small merit, showing humility at its utmost—how could he truly have cared for the august seat of the Son of Heaven? Xu You likened himself to the wren and the mole, saying what he had was already enough; he was simply content with his lot, not grasping after wealth and rank by chance.

Because the sacred Yao held the throne, Xu You could withdraw to the wilds; their temperaments resonated, and they responded to each other—there is reason in this. Yao deeply worried for the world and believed that though the four seas were already at peace, only Xu You could succeed in governing. Xu You treated the realm as none of his concern: if the four seas were already settled, what role could he play? That Yao could entrust the great charge to Xu You without hesitation shows his supreme discernment; that Xu You looked far and refused shows the purity of his adherence to the Way. Sages do not measure worth by office or withdrawal alone—they advance or retreat according to the Way. That depends on when the Great Dao is manifest or concealed, and on whether the times are fitting.

Yao knew Xu You thoroughly, so he recommended him to succeed without waiting for further trials. Had Xu You gladly accepted the abdication, he could still have sat in court and received the realm’s homage; had Yao retired in peace, he could still have hidden his glory among the ancient sages. Whether sages appear or withdraw, they follow the Great Dao, like tally and notch matching—how could ordinary people glimpse the depth of it?

In name, Xu You was subject to Yao; in the Way, he was Yao’s teacher. With subtle, penetrating instruction and transmission heart to heart, Xu You benefited Yao greatly. Even to accept the realm might not have been excessive—yet Xu You truly felt the world was not worth his trouble. Reputation is merely the shadow of reality—a saying fit to be the standard for ten thousand generations. From this one may infer that it can not only wake people from dreams of fame like the man who learned to walk in Handan, and still petty quarrels like those of the snail-horned beasts, but also let later generations imagine the recluse’s charm of Mount Ji and the Ying River. Even with only wind in the trees and one dipper of water, one might still feel burdened.

The scripture ends by comparing the situation to “the officiant does not step over the ritual slab to replace the cook”: the sacrificial officiant (shizhu) does not cross the altar implements to wield the kitchen ladle. Yao’s utmost virtue lay in knowing people; Xu You’s hidden virtue lay in knowing how to settle himself. Each kept his place and fulfilled his part, and the realm had no troubles. Officiant and cook differ in rank and toil, yet both serve the spirits sincerely and with reverence—there is indeed a sense in which one might substitute for the other, yet the ancients still would not lightly overstep and do another’s work. When the age grew corrupt, some turned against human relations and the Way, dreaming of replacing others. Fortunately this classic was not lost: it can clarify the measure of advance and retreat and the bounds of giving and receiving, and cut off the world’s thoughts of speculative luck.

Alas, the Old Immortal of Nanhua (Zhuangzi) was truly a sage! He knew that after the Way had decayed to the utmost, people would devour one another, and so he recorded in detail how ancient sages yielded the throne, hoping readers would trace from the deeds to their inner intent. It is like the famous physician Bian Que prescribing before illness appears—secretly nourishing the hearts of the age, though few understand. I reverently unfold this intent and set it forth for all to see.

Jian Wu asked Lian Shu: “I heard Jie Yu speak about ‘medicine’ and the principles that apply before illness sets in. He said there is indeed a hidden way they can support and transform the world, though few people know it. I respectfully repeat his words and would like you to explain what they mean.”

Jian Wu went on: “I heard Jie Yu say that his talk was grand but without solid ground—that once spoken, it could not be taken back. I was both startled and afraid, feeling his words were as vast as the Milky Way and as far from ordinary custom as could be, almost inhuman.”

Lian Shu asked: “What did he say?”

Jian Wu replied: “He said that on distant Mount Guye live spirit persons—beings who have surpassed the ordinary and attained the Way. Their skin is white as ice and snow, their bearing as graceful as a young girl’s. They eat no grain, only inhale wind and drink dew; they ride the clouds, drive flying dragons, and roam beyond the four seas. With spirit gathered and steady, they keep the myriad things from harm and the crops abundant year after year. I thought this too extravagant to believe.”

Lian Shu said: “The blind cannot appreciate patterns and colors; the deaf cannot hear the sound of bells and drums. When the senses are deaf and blind, can the mind not be deaf and blind as well? What he described is precisely what you cannot grasp.

“Such a person’s De is vast; they merge with the myriad things and put the world in good order without strain or worry. How could worldly people who take the realm as their personal burden understand them? Nothing can harm them: when floods fill the sky, they are not drowned; when great drought melts metal and stone and scorches hills, they feel no heat. Even the dust and chaff on their bodies would suffice to mold sages like Yao and Shun—why would they treat outer things as a career they must fret over?

“A man of Song brought ceremonial caps to sell in Yue, where people cut their hair short and tattoo their bodies—the caps were useless there. After Yao had governed the people and settled affairs under heaven, he went south of Mount Guye and north of the Fen River to visit four persons who had attained the Way; in a daze he forgot that he possessed the realm.”

Guo Xiang commented that the spirit person is the Yao spoken of earlier. After Yao had governed the people and settled the realm, he visited the four men south of Mount Guye and north of the Fen River and suddenly forgot his possession of the realm.

Guo Xiang also said that the spirit person is the sage. Even when the sage sits in court, they are as at ease as in mountain forests. The text places one who has the virtue of a king in a remote mountain to show that ordinary people cannot recognize them—so they are placed in the farthest reaches, pushed beyond the range of ear and eye.

Lu Huiqing commented that only one who has the Way can ascend Mount Guye; the spirit person is a state everyone holds within, and only one who has fathomed the subtlest principle can see them. “Miao” suggests disdain, “gu” something provisional, “she” rejection. Whoever climbs that mountain feels that affairs under heaven are not worth a thought; only the spirit person can do that.

Lin Yidu holds that this passage treats the deepest doctrines—matters the sage keeps secret and does not proclaim aloud. When principle runs this deep, words cannot fully express it, so Jie Yu’s speech is borrowed to clarify the way of the sacred, and “Miaogushe Mountain” (Miaogushe shan) carries the meaning: it stands for what is remote and abstruse; there need not literally be such a mountain. As with the five immortal mountains and divine beings in the Liezi, the realm of the sacred cannot be fathomed—how could it be exhausted in speech?

Chen Xiangdao holds that “Miaogushe Mountain” is a figure for the Dao. The spirit person has no fixed bodily form and takes the Dao as form; the spirit person has no private efficacy and takes the Dao’s efficacy as efficacy. Therefore where the spirit person dwells is the Dao.

Chen Bixu holds that the spirit person is an allegorical device for the person who embodies the Dao. The enlightened ruler is plain and without desire, governs through wuwei (non-action), follows change, and rises and falls with the myriad things, leaving no trace of deliberate rule. Hence those who govern through deliberate action mock them as mad and unbelievable. Wu Chou holds that “Miaogushe Mountain” places the tale beyond the everyday world to depict the spirit person’s arcane realm; what the spirit person inhabits is precisely the Dao—a state ordinary people cannot grasp.

Wang An holds that Miaogushe Mountain lies amid the northern sea, symbolizing return to root and recovery of original nature. Fan the Master of Hidden Learning in western Shu holds that the mountain stands for the human body, “miao she” (miao she) expresses depth and subtlety, and the spirit person is the most numinous presence within the person. If one seeks within that depth and subtlety and finds one’s own most numinous nature, then abstaining from the five grains, living on wind and dew, riding clouds and dragons, and roaming the four seas are not idle tales. If one searches only outward, does one not only stray farther away?

Chu’s Guanjian says that the chapter on the Divine Person of GuShe, who does not eat the food of the human world, is not empty invention; without having personally received the sage’s teaching, how could one transmit the Dao to the world? Zhuangzi uses this to clarify the principle—genuine and profound. To grasp its hidden meaning is not easy for beginners. Among earlier commentators, Lü Huiqing and Lin Yidu had already seized the main point. The later Master Wuyin set aside elaborate elaboration and pointed straight at the subtle purport, revealing what the sage had not stated openly, so that those who study the Dao would recognize their own innate nature. He wished he could personally lead all beings together up Mount GuShe and roam in freedom. His intent was truly vast. Bo Xiu was fortunate to hear this teaching and dared not keep it to himself; he therefore respectfully appended it after the various commentaries to spread the Dao, and also set forth his own understanding in a detailed explanation of the text that follows.

“Skin like ice and snow, nature and bearing pure and plain” means not being tainted by the dust of the world; “graceful as an unmarried maiden” means holding to softness and preserving oneself, unharmed. “Not eating the five grains, breathing wind and drinking dew” means cutting off worldly flavors and absorbing the clear qi of heaven and earth; “riding clouds and dragons, roaming the four seas” means transcending the distant sky and dwelling in depth and stillness together with primordial qi. This is what is meant by arriving without walking and roaming together with creation. The divine person’s spirit is concentrated, so that the myriad things are spared from disaster and the crops flourish—showing that nurturing spirit has reached the utmost, not only preserving oneself but also assisting heaven and earth in transformation and helping the myriad things follow their natural course. This speaks of the efficacy that extends from self-cultivation to the myriad things; therefore one can align with the spirits and accord with the way that has no fixed form. Some, pulled by names and appearances, go to distant borders to seek Mount GuShe—and in that way the divine person becomes only more remote. I believe that this chapter of Zhuangzi already fully displays the realm of probing the wondrous and transforming the myriad things; those who hear it and take it for absurdity and do not believe—such people are surely more than Jian Wu alone.

Examining this passage, its wording differs slightly from Chapter Two of the Liezi “Huangdi” section, but the meaning is the same. The Nanhua zhenjing (Zhuangzi) entrusts the story to Jie Yu to tell, also to make the divine person’s traces seem numinous. The rest of the text is plain and needs no further gloss; only the phrase “you shi nǚ ye” has two interpretations. Commentators such as Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying take “you shi nǚ” to mean like a woman in the prime of youth, naturally sought after. But if you explain that to the deaf and blind, they would feel such reasoning does not exist. Master Xuzhai Zhao read “shi” as “is” and “nǚ” as “rǔ” (you), the same sense as “shi nǚ” in the Shangshu. Lian Shu is saying: “Jian Wu, the divine person seems to be you.” The Liezi phrase “sheng sheng xing xing” and the oral teaching of Master Yu of the Yǎn study hall also match Zhao’s reading of the sounds and meaning.

As for “dust and filth, chaff and husks” and “fashioning Yao and Shun,” the surface seems to slight Yao and Shun; but examining the text’s intent, it in fact highly honors them. The world honors Yao and Shun as sages, yet here it is said that the reputation by which they are called sages is no more than dust, filth, chaff, and husks; Yao and Shun’s true realm—how could names and words exhaust it?

On “Yao went to see the Four Masters at Mount Miao GuShe,” the various explanations also differ. Lu Deming’s Yinyi preserves Sima’s old note that the Four Masters are Wang Ni, Nie Que, Pi Yi, and Xu You. Guo Xiang’s note holds that “Four Masters” is a borrowed designation, to show that Yao is not bound by the name “Yao”: Yao’s true realm is deep and hard to fathom; what appears outwardly is Yao. If one views Yao from outward traces, inner realm and outer display are not the same; people only see that Yao is Yao and do not understand his inner realm. Therefore, if one goes overseas to seek the Four Masters, or understands only from the appearance Yao saw, one mistakenly thinks that flowing with the myriad things loses the way of carefree wandering.

Cheng’s Fashu explains the Four Masters as four levels of realization: first, substance; second, traces; third, neither substance nor traces; fourth, neither “not substance” nor “not traces.” The meaning is that Yao turned back to contemplate the source of mind, saw through the Great Dao, and transcended these four distinctions—hence it is said he “went to see the Four Masters.”

Lü Huiqing said that Yao’s going to Mount Miao GuShe to see the Four Masters is seeing the divine person. The divine person is one’s own mind; when one’s own mind is without attachment, even possessing the realm under heaven, one does not take the realm as a matter of concern. He also explained that Yao’s teacher was Xu You, Xu You’s teacher was Nie Que, Nie Que’s teacher was Wang Ni, and Wang Ni’s teacher was Pi Yi. The Four Masters all plumb the wondrous; Yao entered the Dao through their guidance, hence it is said he went to pay a visit.

Lin Yidu held that Yao, relying on the achievement of governing the realm, went to see Xu You, Nie Que, Wang Ni, and Pi Yi, yet could not win them with fame and merit—as if a man of Song brought ceremonial caps to Yue, where they were not needed. Chen Xiangdao held that the Four Masters did not take the realm and outer things as objects of pursuit. Lian Shu said the divine person does not fear floodwaters drowning or drought scorching; Wang Ni said the perfected person does not fear marshes burning or rivers freezing; He Bo said the person of De is unharmed by cold and heat, and beasts cannot injure them; Confucius said the true person passes Mount Tai without feeling obstruction and enters deep pools without being soaked by water. These four kinds of person are those whose mind accords with primordial qi and whose body responds to Yin-Yang. Yao obtained the Dao of the Four Masters, hence it is said he went to pay a visit.

Chen Bixu said that one who truly forgets the realm does not take nearby reputation as a resting place. The more the multitude honors one, the more one can forget name and rank. Therefore placing oneself behind preserves oneself; placing oneself after the multitude yet walking before them—hence the people under heaven gladly uphold one without weariness. Wu Chou also said that viewed from outward traces, Yao governed the realm and settled the four seas—only what he displayed; as for Yao’s inner mind, it was open and penetrating, far in the vast realm, unbound by one corner of heaven and earth.

Master Xuzhai Zhao Yifu said that when Yao went to pay a visit to the Four Masters, were there really four concrete persons to be seen? In fact he turned back to seek himself. Understand that Xu You is Yao, and one can grasp this layer. This chapter’s purport lies in the question and answer between Jian Wu and Lian Shu; penetrate that and one can thread the whole chapter.

Lin’s Yǎn study hall oral teaching said the Four Masters have no fixed names; some take them as Xu You, Nie Que, Wang Ni, and Pi Yi; others explain them as the four levels of realization mentioned above. Such extrapolation becomes forced and absurd—precisely Zhuangzi’s witty craft. He leaves a question hard to resolve directly, for the student to ponder: people are confined by what is before their eyes and do not know they are deluded; only one of deep insight can see through it.

Master Wuyin of Xishu, Fan, held that the Four Masters stand for the Four Greats, and GuShe signifies depth and subtlety. Though Yao left the work of governing the realm and settling the four seas, inwardly he did not leave the Great Dao; he could turn back within the subtle and contemplate the Four Greats, so entanglements in the mind vanished and he attained carefree wandering.

Chu summarized that explanations of the Four Masters differ: some align in overall meaning but not with the number “four”; some fit the number but the reasoning is less apt. Among recent interpreters, Master Xuzhai Zhao reasons well; Master Fan’s explanation balances meaning and number—both worth adopting. I hold that the Four Masters here are allegory, to speak of the Great Dao. The Great Dao is indistinct and subtle, not fixed by form or number; the learner must concentrate and personally realize it to probe the ultimate—language cannot fully express it.

Now, following the text’s meaning, a trial explanation: Yao’s teacher was Xu You; the Dao of Xu You in turn came from Nie Que, Wang Ni, and Pi Yi; the Dao of the Four Masters is ultimately one. Yao could forget outer form and go to seek the Dao, hence “went to see.” Mount GuShe is the metaphor of turning back to oneself and discerning the subtle realm above. This Dao is the same in ancient and modern times; ruler and commoner can both apprehend it: the ruler who obtains this Dao is like today’s Yao; the commoner who obtains it is like today’s Xu You. The Fen River is where Yao established his capital—showing that one can see the Four Masters in the present; seeking the Dao need not go to remote depths. That Yao could forget his realm under heaven and regard it like worn-out shoes is exactly this meaning.

I also repeatedly reflected on the patriarchs’ classics, with a faint awakening, and used “there is image, there is thing, there is essence, there is trust” to interpret the Four Masters—and found them to accord. After seeing the Four Masters, one understands that what is most precious is the Dao one has obtained oneself; even possessing the dignity of a lord of ten thousand chariots and the wealth of the four seas is not worth cherishing.

Huizi said to Zhuangzi: “The king of Wei gave me the seed of a great gourd. I planted it, and the fruit grew so large it could hold five piculs of grain. When I used it to hold water, the gourd was not strong enough to bear its own weight; when I split it to make a dipper, it was so huge there was no suitable vessel to hold it. It was not that it was not big enough—I simply felt it had no use, so I smashed it.”

Zhuangzi said: “Sir, you are really not good at using large things. In the state of Song there was a man skilled at making a salve that kept hands from cracking in the cold. His family for generations made a living rinsing cotton in water. A traveler heard of it and offered a hundred in gold for the recipe. The man gathered his family to discuss it: ‘We have rinsed cotton generation after generation and never earned more than a few in gold; now we can sell the recipe in one day for a hundred in gold—let us sell it to him.’ The traveler got the recipe and went to persuade the king of Wu. When Yue raised trouble, the king of Wu put him in command of troops; in winter they fought the Yue army on the water, defeated them, and he was rewarded with a fief. The same salve that keeps hands from cracking—someone was enfeoffed for it, someone else still rinsed cotton only. The difference lay in how it was used.

“Now you, sir, have a gourd that holds five piculs—why not make it into a waist boat and float with it on rivers and lakes? Instead you worry it is too big and there is nowhere to put it. It seems your mind is still blocked and not open.”

Huizi said to Zhuangzi again: “I have a tree people call chu—a tree whose form does not fit the usual rules for timber. Its trunk is swollen and crooked, not matching the carpenter’s ink line; its branches are twisted and do not meet the compass and square. It grows by the road, and carpenters do not even glance at it. Now your words are vast and useless, and people do not accept them either.”

Zhuangzi said: “Sir, have you never seen a li shao—a small wildcat-like beast? It crouches low waiting for prey, dashing up and down without regard for height or depth, until it falls into a spring trap and dies in a net. Then look at the lao niu—the great ox whose body is like a cloud in the sky. It is indeed huge, yet it cannot catch mice. Now you, sir, worry that the big tree has no use—why not plant it in open, boundless ground, wander at ease beside it, or sleep peacefully under it? No axe will cut it down, and nothing will harm it. Since there is no place where it must be ‘used,’ what is there to grieve over?”

Guo Xiang’s commentary says: this salve keeps the hands from cracking, so people can rinse cotton in water year round. “Peng” means bent and not straight, used to describe a mind that does not connect and flow. Each thing has what suits it; find the right place and one can be at ease and content. Things large or small—if they lose the right measure, benefit and harm look the same; if they are applied in the right place, every thing can roam freely in ease (xiaoyao).

Lü Huiqing held that Huizi, bound by bodily form and the practical uses of things, found Zhuangzi’s talk grand but useless, and so used the big gourd as an example. From planting the gourd and waiting for it to grow to finding it could hold five piculs yet was too large to carry, Huizi judged it only by shape and use. Splitting it to make a dipper, he still felt it was too hollow and awkward to hold anything—again trapped by fixed uses. That is clinging to one’s own form and stuck in the limits of the everyday.

Large vessels ought to be used in broad settings. Huizi, cramped by his body and immediate utility, doubted Zhuangzi’s point and asked his question. Zhuangzi replied that Huizi did not know how to use what is “large,” and told the story of the anti-cracking ointment: the same medicine—one family used it generation after generation to wash silk and earned a pittance; another used it in naval battle and won a fief. The principle is the same; what matters is how it is applied. Used well, the medicine not only protects oneself but can even save people adrift in the waters of the world.

What is “filled yet never full, scooped from yet never exhausted” can also be called a person’s rivers and lakes. Huizi had a great vessel but could not place it in the open to function; instead he worried it had nowhere to fit. No wonder Zhuangzi said his heart was overgrown with weeds and his thinking blocked.

Still not understanding, Huizi brought up the great chu tree (a towering useless tree). When things are measured by usefulness, their use shrinks; when uselessness is taken as use, room to function grows. The leopard cat that leaps and hunts ends in nets and snares—a image of failing to follow nature and being ruined by cleverness. The great ox cannot catch mice but lives at ease, preserving body and life.

The sage embodies the Dao in the person like deep roots and a firm trunk, and so becomes a great tree. To plant such a tree well, one best returns to the heart to seek it. Where the heart truly is, no one can say for sure; to settle in that unknowable place is to plant the tree in the “Land of Nothing-Whatever” (a realm without fixed form or assigned use). Let it fill steadily and it can reach the six directions; let the heart be still and nothing in the ten thousand things can disturb it. One plays freely beside the tree and sleeps peacefully under it, never leaving it for an instant. What is there to worry about in what is “great yet useless”?

Though clever, Huizi had not yet emptied the mind of cleverness to reach a state of not clinging to ready-made things, so he still doubted the Dao. Zhuangzi then developed his teaching around uselessness and freedom from partial affection. Later readers who are puzzled can reflect on this and grasp his meaning.

Lin Yidu explains that “the King of Wei gave me seeds of a great gourd” is a metaphor for Heaven bestowing upon one a heart-nature that is empty and vast; “after planting, it grew into a great gourd” means receiving one’s innate nature and keeping it whole and intact. A gourd large enough to hold five dan of grain stands for a heart-nature that can embrace the Five Constants—benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. If it is filled with clear water, it can mirror the ten thousand things like a looking glass; yet it is solid and heavy, and one cannot lift it by oneself. When the Five Constants rest upon a person, are they not likewise a heavy load?

When the great gourd is split open to make a dipper, it is divided into two halves and loses its original wholeness; if the gourd is too large, there is nowhere to store it, people deem it useless, and smash it and throw it away. This likens a person who cannot preserve his innate nature: though that nature shines clearly before the eyes, it is seized away by desires, and the person mistakenly thinks he cannot recover his true nature, without noticing why.

When you cannot put the great gourd to its full use, it is like a person who cannot fully bring his innate nature into play. Therefore Zhuangzi tells of a man in Song skilled at making medicine to prevent chapped hands, to show that the same thing, used differently, has a different worth. A person’s empty, quiet, and spacious innate nature ought to be allowed to function along the principle of carefree wuwei (non-action); just as one might use the great gourd as a waist-boat to drift on rivers and lakes—why worry that there is no place for it? One who cannot fully realize his nature cannot attain thorough understanding; hence it is said that Huizi “had cogongrass growing in his heart,” meaning his thinking was not penetrating enough.

Huizi then raised the great chun tree—a tree with gnarled, swollen trunk whose wood is useless—as a challenge: its trunk is swollen and crooked, and everyone despises it, thereby mocking the emptiness and uselessness of what Zhuangzi teaches. Zhuangzi answered with the raccoon dog, the xing (a small agile hunter), and the lao ox (a huge, slow beast): though they differ in size and in quickness or slowness, the more adept one is at a particular use, the more likely one is to suffer hardship because of it.

Thus the sage preserves the root of life and takes embodying the Dao as his function. When the chun tree’s roots go deep, its branches and leaves flourish; when a person holds fast to the root of life, the ten thousand affairs fall into good order. The Yijing says: “Zhen (constancy/uprightness) is the trunk of things.” This shows that holding to what is upright is likewise the root of all affairs.

“Empty, vast, and boundless” refers to a realm without limit. If you possess such a great tree, it is as when a person holds a proper Heaven-given mandate—why not plant it in that empty and boundless expanse, let it roam in carefree wuwei, and avoid premature cutting and harm? That is precisely the great good fortune that the spirit person possesses.

Chen Xiangdao explains: every thing has a use that suits it, and every affair has a way that fits it—the crux is simply that people do not know how to make good use of them.

The people of Song and the people of Wu obtained the same kind of medicine that keeps hands from cracking in the cold. The Song people used it to guard against the cold and gained little profit; the Wu people used it to make a wash for degumming silk and, relying on that skill, helped the army of Wu in battle, thereby reaping great benefit. Stratagems in the Warring States period worked the same way: Chao Cuo applied stratagem and brought disaster on himself; Zhufu Yan applied stratagem and quelled disorder. Is the use of a large gourd not the same kind of case?

The gourd is hollow inside and good at holding; round outside and good at floating. Set on the ground, it loses the advantage of floating; its shell is not hard enough to lift weight. Split open and made into a dipper, its originally whole form is ruined, and if the dipper is too large it is awkward for holding things. Fashion it into a waist-boat and let it float on rivers and lakes, and a person can drift within it without strain. Then, wherever it is placed, it is apt.

Things in the world: what is small is often easy to put to use; what is large is hard to employ. People are usually skilled with small objects; faced with large things that are hard to manage, they sometimes seem clumsy. Only someone free of fixed prejudices, who arranges things according to their inherent nature and the pattern of the Way, can make full use of them.

Huizi again took Zhuangzi’s talk of “large yet useless” and likened it to the great chu tree—showing that he knew only the uses of the useful and did not understand that the useless also has its value. Zhuangzi replied: the li shi (a small wildcat-like beast) is small and “useful,” yet for that very reason it cannot escape harm; the yi niu (great ox) has a huge body and no special knack, so nothing injures it. This shows that the good that comes from being useful is not necessarily better than the preservation that comes from being useless.

The great chu seems useless; plant it in a useless place, and the planter can wander and roam at ease beneath it, while the tree itself escapes the axe. It need not suffer like things caught in profit-and-loss and struck by the world—how can the two be mentioned in the same breath?

Chen Bixu explains: when something does not fit ordinary uses, people casually discard it—they have not yet grasped the “usefulness of the useless.” So whether things are large or small, fine or coarse, everything turns on whether people can employ them well. Zhuangzi then uses the great chu again to clarify useless-as-use: the li shi triggers traps through agility; the yi niu preserves its body because it does not display a special talent. How can their capacities be weighed the same?

Chen Bixu’s commentary says that when something is unsuited to ordinary use, people cut it down and discard it—showing they have not yet grasped “the use of what seems useless.” Whether things are large or small, coarse or fine, what matters is whether a person can put them to good use.

The commentary then uses the great chu tree—thick-trunked, with crooked branches—to explain that use again. The civet cat is nimble and catches prey, yet for that very reason falls into traps and nets; the great ox has no skill at hunting but, precisely because it shows no special talent, preserves its life. Ability draws disaster while dullness can keep one safe—a pattern as old as time. Earlier, Peng and the wren were contrasted to show each following its nature and flying freely; here, the great gourd and great chu tree show that one should not die young or be felled merely because something lacks outward utility. Once this is understood, one can be at ease wherever one goes.

Wang Bian’s commentary says these passages aim to show that while the ten thousand things share common ground, each also differs; the text has been abbreviated.

Zhao Xuzhai’s commentary says Huizi thought the great gourd and great tree were useless, so Zhuangzi answered with the stories of the non-cracking hand salve and the great ox, showing that what seems useless still has its use.

Lin’s Yizhai Oral Explication says that tying a wine gourd at the waist can float one across rivers; when a boat capsizes, a single gourd can be worth a thousand in gold. Zhuangzi’s “non-cracking hand” story shows that Huizi did not know how to bring out a thing’s usefulness. Zhuangzi then asks: given such a huge gourd, why not think of making it into something to float across rivers and lakes? “Peng xin” (narrow heart) means the mind is closed and not open enough.

Huizi again mocked Zhuangzi with the great chu’s swollen trunk and non-straight branches. Zhuangzi replied: the civet cat is small and quick, yet ends up in a trap; the great ox is large and lacks hunting skill, yet keeps its life. Large and small differ, and what suits each differs—you cannot therefore conclude that everything large is useless. “The Land of Nothing Whatever” and “the Broad Wilds” mean that within the vast realm contained in transforming nature and the utmost Dao there is naturally a place to dwell in peace and joy; even if something cannot serve the mundane world, it may for that reason avoid harm.

Chu’s Guanjian gives the same reading here: one must not call something useless across the board just because it is large; in the broad space of transforming nature there is naturally somewhere to be at ease.

Chu’s Guanjian (Personal Views) holds that the myriad things born from creation fill heaven and earth; whether something is useful or useless often depends on whether it meets the right moment—quality of material is secondary. What was once useful may now be cast aside; what is discarded today may serve a purpose tomorrow. This rests on human action; things themselves cannot decide. Consider the straw dogs laid out for sacrifice: their treatment before and after the rite differs. The bladders and viscera of pigs and cattle meet different fates depending on whether people guard against them—so much is clear.

All the more so with King Wei’s great gourd, unlike ordinary varieties: onlookers had scarcely recovered from astonishment; how could they know how to use it? Huizi was puzzled and questioned Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi knew Huizi did not know how to draw out a thing’s great usefulness, and used the story of a man of Song skilled at making hand-salve against chapping—who was enfeoffed as a lord—to show that the same thing can differ in value tenfold, a hundredfold, even a thousand- or ten-thousandfold; the crux is whether people know how to use it well.

People often excel at small uses and willingly do small tasks—what they can achieve is roughly predictable. Many do not know how to employ great capacity; some rest content guarding great material—what lies hidden there is also roughly predictable. A gourd of five shi capacity does not grow overnight. Huizi not only failed to use it greatly but smashed it and wasted it at will—how regrettable! Such an extraordinary thing is also what creation gathers essential qi to produce; seeming useless may mean only that the right use has not yet appeared. Since it was too large to split and make into household vessels, one should have thought how to preserve it and put it to use on rivers and lakes: crossing deep water and easing travel, its function would match boats. Thus the great gourd’s “uselessness” becomes ingenious usefulness.

Huizi’s vision was broad yet he missed this layer—his mind was blocked, as if choked by tangled grass. He once mocked Zhuangzi with a great chu tree whose trunk was thick and limbs twisted, unsuitable for a carpenter’s square and line, saying his words were vast but useless. Zhuangzi answered with the cat and weasel, nimble yet dying in traps and snares, and the yak, lacking small beasts’ tricks yet preserving its life—who really gains and who loses?

Huizi himself had a great tree yet did not plant it in a “useless” place where it could preserve itself and let people enjoy carefree wandering; instead he worried the carpenter would not look at it. This is precisely what the Nanhua zhenjing (Classic of Southern Florescence, Zhuangzi) deeply laments. Zhuangzi, through Huizi’s questions, corrected his outlook, hoping people would shed bondage to bodily form and the uses of tools, preserve life in empty stillness and subtle mystery, transcend deliberate action and enter wuwei (non-action), and achieve true great use through apparent uselessness. This is roughly the aim of “Free and Easy Wandering” (Xiaoyao you).

The chapter Free and Easy Wandering is vast in scope, far-reaching in its analogies, rich in language, and supreme in spirit. To read it is like riding the clear wind upward, roaming boundless realms, forgetting worldly entanglements, and reaching the high and distant heavens and earth. It truly presents a great teaching that transcends competing doctrines, passes through layer upon layer of barriers, and releases the bonds of attachment—also a swift path to penetrating the subtle and probing the root.

Beyond my measure, I offer a modest personal view and a brief summation at the end: those who accord with the supreme principle understand all things through principle; those who preserve a whole and upright nature can dwell in one world with the myriad things. Whoever understands heavenly principle and keeps their nature intact has nothing that cannot be free and at ease. An infant’s mind originally holds little knowledge; as the body grows, experience accumulates, external things appear before the eyes, and gain and loss lodge in the heart—now cold as ice, now hot as fire—casting one thing aside to chase another, never at rest. Without thoroughly understanding affairs and subduing selfish desire with the way of right, even high rank and wealth cannot escape being dragged down.

Thus the key to learning the Dao is first to inquire how sages found joy, then personally taste and earnestly practice it—only then can one truly gain something. The Book of Changes speaks of “delighting in Heaven and knowing fate”; Yan Hui had only a basket of rice and a gourd of water yet rejoiced in himself; Mencius nourished flood-like qi until it filled heaven and earth; Yuan Xian walked along singing, his voice ringing like metal and stone. All such people transcended the pull of externals and preserved their innate nature. Whether in office or withdrawal, in movement or stillness, they could rest content and find joy—only then can one speak of free and easy wandering.

The great fish Kun in the Northern Sea transforms into the bird Peng, rides the wind, beats the water, and migrates to the Southern Sea. This story means that if one’s learning is narrow and one’s ambition small, one does not know how deep and clear the sea of one’s nature is—and may even lose the root of one’s own life along with it. Zhuangzi therefore tells of a great fish born in the great sea to show that human beings originally have deep roots. With long nurturing, one can apprehend the wondrous, accord with change, move between Yin and Yang, and act in ways beyond measure. Those whose talent fits one office, whose conduct wins one village, whose virtue matches one lord’s heart, or whose ability convinces one state—all should learn from this: externals are light; one’s innate nature is precious. Seeing this, one can ride wind and cloud, wander with transformation—how could worldly ties bind such a person? One must reach the state of according with heaven and earth, riding the six qi (the natural shifts of Yin, Yang, wind, rain, dark, and light), and roaming the inexhaustible—only that is the utmost of freedom. So-called utmost spirit and utmost sagehood are nothing but merging with the myriad things and changing together; fame and achievement are ultimately things outside the self.

The story of Yao yielding the throne to Xu You further clarifies the foregoing: it promotes integrity and modest yielding, warns later generations against chasing outward fame and profit, and also benefits the ordering of the age. Shoulder Wu heard from Jie Yu about the spirit person (shenren), using that to reveal the mystery of such a being and to show the realm where all things are one. To reach that realm, one should guard the mind and continually nourish the inner spiritual nature—at first there is no need to seek far away.

Dust, filth, chaff, and husks—in the hands of the spirit person are enough to produce a Yao or a Shun. This means the spirit person’s virtue accords with the way heaven operates; even with their surplus strength they suffice to bring about rule like that of Tang Yao and Yu Shun—while their true attainment is not something the world can fathom. Yao went to Mount Guye to visit four recluses, showing that deep principle cannot be guessed in the void—one must go in person and experience it; arriving at Mount Guye and meeting the four recluses, understanding comes naturally. Students of the Dao should strive accordingly.

The opening discusses Kun and Peng, the cicada and the little dove, the great tree and the morning mushroom—using differences of size and of long versus short life to probe principle. The close cites the great gourd and the great useless tree: the great gourd preserves itself because it is hollow within; the great tree stands firm because its roots run deep. These analogies show that nurturing nature until one penetrates fate is the full achievement of learning the Dao—that is, entering the wondrous realm. Without being urged one advances; without walking one arrives; wherever one is, whenever it is, one can be free and at ease.

In the chapter “Discourse on the Equalization of Things,” Nanguo Ziqi sat leaning on his low table, head tilted back as he breathed out. His expression was distant and dazed, as if he had lost what he normally kept company with. Yan Cheng Ziyou stood before him in attendance and asked, “What is going on? Can the body really become like withered wood, and can the mind really become like dead ashes? The way you are leaning on the table today is not like before.”

Ziqi said, “Yan, you ask well. Right now I have forgotten myself. Do you know what that means? You have heard the sounds of humans, but not the sounds of the earth; you have heard the sounds of the earth, but not the sounds of Heaven.”

Ziyou asked, “Please explain what lies behind this.”

Ziqi said, “The breath the great earth exhales is called wind. When the wind is not blowing, all is quiet; but once it blows, countless openings suddenly roar together. Have you never heard the wind howling through mountain forests? In ridges and valleys, on great trees a hundred arm-spans around, the openings take every shape—some like noses, mouths, and ears, some like pillars, beams, rings, and mortars, some like deep pools or muddy pits. When wind passes through these openings, it produces every kind of sound—sharp and rushing, quick and tight, sighing and calling, shouting and whistling, deep and hidden, fine and scattered. The wind rises in waves: what sounds in front is answered from behind.

When the wind is faint, the answering sounds are light; when a fierce whirlwind blows, the answering sounds are loud. When the violent wind stops, every opening falls silent. Have you not seen how they sway and gently swing with the wind?”

Ziyou said, “The sounds of the earth are these sounds from the openings; the sounds of humans are the sounds of panpipes and similar instruments. Then what are the sounds of Heaven?”

Ziqi said, “Wind blows across the ten thousand things, and the sounds they give are not the same, yet each thing makes its own sound. Each sounds according to its own form—then who is it that makes them sound?”

Guo Xiang’s commentary says: A person who follows nature and merges with heaven and earth has already forgotten the distinction between self and things, so he seems blank and unknowing, as if he had nothing to lean on. When still, he is like dead wood; when he moves, like floating dust—as if he had no feelings and no fixed posture of rest or motion. I cannot reduce all these appearances to one single form; yet they all arise from no-mind and are naturally so, and I cannot split them into two kinds either. Having already forgotten myself, what is there left to distinguish?

The tones of panpipes are long or short, high or low, each different, yet the pitch and law they follow is one. Each sound arises according to its conditions; from this one can see the lai (sounds) of heaven and earth. Does the earth “breathe” because something deliberately blows into it? It is simply heaven and earth giving off breath of themselves. Myriad openings howl; the holes in trees differ, and the sounds they give differ too—each rings out according to the endowment it has received. “Tiao tiao, diao diao” describes how trees look: the wind is about to stop, yet there is still a slight trembling.

Having already explained human lai and earth lai, Ziyou goes on to ask what heavenly lai is. Ziqi answers: “When wind passes through things, the sounds that arise are not the same, yet it lets each thing sound of itself—that is heavenly lai.” Is there a separate thing called heavenly lai? It is the natural whole formed where human lai, earth lai, and living beings meet and join.

Lu Huiqing’s commentary: Human beings have physical form and mental activity because there is a “self.” Without that “self,” one would be like withered wood or cold ashes—nothing to distinguish. Ziyou does not know where the “self” comes from; he thinks body and mind are driven by external things and cannot rest, yet he fails to see what makes them behave that way. Still, in a state of mental vagueness he can notice how leaning on the table now differs from leaning on it in the past—so his observation is very fine. Leaning on the table in the past was a response to things outside; if one understood where the “self” arises, one would know that coming into being and passing away never leave the self. Everyone knows a bamboo tube is hollow; the way the “self” becomes “self” is the same. When myriad openings (natural holes and crevices) are blown through by the wind and howl—is that any different from a person having a “self” and being driven by thought and body? “Have you not heard and seen?” means the starting and stopping of the earth’s sounds (wind through openings) are what you usually hear and see; the arising and ceasing of thoughts are what you have never truly heard or seen. If you can hear what you normally hear, you can naturally understand the heaven’s sounds (the voice of nature in non-action).

Lin Yidu’s commentary: Wind blows out from emptiness; seek its trace and it cannot be found. It arises from stillness and returns to stillness, comes from nothing and goes back to nothing. Only each opening receives the wind differently, so what people hear differs. The endowment of the ten thousand things is similar: wind makes the many openings sound; change drives the ten thousand things. When wind no longer sounds the openings, the openings return to silence; when change no longer drives things, things cease. As for the state where there is no sound and no opening, wind cannot enter—that is what Liezi calls “yidu” (deeply solitary, beyond measure).

Wang An’s commentary: The main idea is the same as Lin Yidu’s.

Chen Xiangdao’s commentary: Human sounds (sounds from people playing instruments) come from human agency; heaven’s sounds have the working of nature within them. Who ultimately presides over all this? Each of the ten thousand things is simply thus—only the voice is intense. The sun’s course has fixed degrees, yet people who are sad or glad see it differently. As for the state where there is no sound and no opening, wind cannot enter—that is what Liezi calls “yidu.” Wang An’s note agrees in substance with Lin Yidu.

Chen Xiangdao holds that human sounds (ren lai) arise from human activity, while the sound of Heaven (tian lai) involves a kind of spontaneously operating force. So who or what is in charge of all this? The various sounds each take shape on their own; it is only that the wind stirs them. The sun’s shadow moves by a fixed rule, yet someone anxious or joyful watching it feels the day now long, now short. The moon runs on a fixed course, yet travelers looking at it seem to see it racing both east and west at once. Wind passes through countless hollows and the noises differ, yet each is simply what that hollow itself presents. How is this unlike the case of sun and moon? This is tian lai. Wind can enter only by way of emptiness; hollows can hold sound only by way of emptiness; the sound of the pipes likewise arises only from emptiness. If one views the myriad things from emptiness, they have no distinctions; if one views them from what is solidly present, each thing differs from the others.

Chen Bixu holds that wind in heaven and earth is like primordial qi (yuanqi) in the human body. Wind does nothing of itself, like a person in zuowang (sitting in forgetfulness of form and discrimination); wind blows through ten thousand openings and every kind of noise appears, like a person responding to affairs in daily life. The openings are not the same, so the sounds are endlessly varied—yet this too is entirely natural. Look closely at how the three lai (ren lai, di lai, tian lai) come about of themselves, and you will see that they return to one root principle—the profound state zuowang is meant to reach.

Zhao Xuzhai holds that sounds issue from many hollows—who or what actually makes them ring? There seems to be something that sounds within them, yet it cannot be grasped directly by eye or ear. That is the tian lai concealed within di lai. Ren lai is the same: bamboo pipes cannot fully explain it, which is why Zhuangzi later uses “knowing” (zhi) as a metaphor. Dream and waking, joy, anger, sorrow, and delight alternate day and night, yet people do not know where they first sprout. “Sprout” (meng) means the first stirring of life; from morning to evening people receive the root of life from this—that is the tian lai within lai. What is called the “true master” (zhen zai) and the “true lord” (zhen jun) also point to this.

Lin Yizhai’s Kouyi on the Zhuangzi says that in Zhuangzi’s writing, this passage is especially fine. The ancients said poetry has sound and painting can depict what words cannot; yet no one has seen a painting that depicts wind itself, or wind clashing with wind. Zhuangzi, with only a brief eight-part description of mouth-shapes and vocal reply, sets down eight kinds of sound and how they answer one another. Wind in heaven and earth, without form or shadow, and sounds one can hear but not see, are made to appear on the page—this is the wonder of language.

Chu’s Guanjian says: In the passage above, Ziyou asks whether a person’s body can be like withered wood, and Ziqi answers directly that it can; he then asks in turn whether the heart can be like cold ashes, completely extinguished. Ziqi says, “Now I have lost myself”—meaning: if one can still know “this is my self,” the heart cannot truly be like cold ashes, utterly dead. This shows that the true self still exists: outward activity may vanish, but inner awareness does not break off.

Ziyou asks for the principle behind this. Ziqi first uses the “great clod” (the natural cosmos) breathing in and out to explain the “pipes of earth” (the sounds all things on earth give forth). When Ziyou presses again, Ziqi says that when the qi of heaven and earth blows through the myriad things, each makes its own sound, yet each thing emits its own voice. Only then does he reveal the subtlety of the “pipes of heaven” (sound and efficacy arising from nature itself). Unfortunately, although Ziyou understood that the body can wither while the heart cannot be reduced entirely to dead ashes, he did not grasp that this is precisely the principle of the pipes of heaven.

The heart is what governs the person; what is called “pipes” (lai) is the heart’s functioning. Recognizing things, responding to change, and expressing intention in speech and action—all belong to “pipes”; one need not actually produce sound. A ruler may sit upright in wuwei (non-action), yet cannot lose the throne for a single day; the heart may be still and without deliberate thought, yet cannot be utterly extinguished for an instant. Though the heart makes no sound, the root of sound remains in the heart, like bells and drums hung in place—without being struck, one knows they can sound. Only by fixating on the coming and going of outward traces does one mistakenly think sound is sometimes there, sometimes not.

The pipes of man and the pipes of earth have times of stirring and times of stillness; the pipes of heaven naturally transcend motion and rest. Within them is a true master—the root that gathers both sound and hearing. The later phrase “not blown” means sound is not merely something the wind blows out; “the speaker has words” means each who speaks has his own say.

Ordinary people in daily life do not know this. Contact with outer things entangles them, drains their spirit, and torments them over the unevenness of the myriad things. It is like carrying kindling to put out a fire—only making the blaze fiercer. If the student can turn back and seek the root, grasp the intent, then looking inward at oneself and outward at the myriad things, one sees that from beginning to end all things accord with the source; great and small alike return to one root—how could there be real unevenness?

Consider again the meaning of “great clod”: Guo Xiang takes it as the pattern that forms without a thing yet naturally; Cheng Xuanying takes it as the Creator, or simply nature; another view holds that “great clod” is Heaven. The scripture says “the great clod loaded me with form”; Liezi says “the great earth is merely accumulated clods of soil,” so reading “great clod” as the great earth has some warrant.

Here “great clod” seems to mean the natural whole between heaven and earth; “exhalation of breath” (yi qi) is akin to the bellows in the Daodejing. The opening and turning of heaven and earth is the root of yin-yang change and the mechanism by which primordial qi (yuanqi) moves and nurtures the myriad things. It pushes the myriad things so they unfold, grow, and flourish. Sometimes its force is immense—it can overturn houses, uproot trees, move mountains, raise sea waves; when the qi stops and sound subsides, all is still and returns to formlessness. Where did that force that moved the myriad things go? Using this to liken the arising and passing of mind-thoughts is apt. As for why mind-thoughts arise and pass, one must reflect deeply and inquire skillfully.

Great wisdom appears broad and at ease; petty cleverness is calculating at every turn. Great words are fervent and stirring; small talk is trivial and rambling. When people sleep, their thoughts crisscross; when they wake, the body stirs and contacts the outer world, and all kinds of entanglements take shape. People spend whole days battling in the mind: some thoughts ease and spread, some lie buried and hidden, some are unfathomably deep. On small matters they grow anxious and uneasy; on great matters they become blank and lost.

When a thought flares up, it is like the trigger of a crossbow suddenly releasing—this speaks of people busy judging right and wrong. When a thought holds fast, it is like a sworn pledge locked in place—this speaks of people bent on winning. When thoughts dwindle, it is like the withering of all things in autumn and winter—this speaks of the heart’s strength wearing away day by day. People sink into what they do and cannot turn it back; the heart is blocked as if sealed shut—this speaks of the heart’s qi closing off in old age. A heart nearing death is like yang qi that can no longer be restored.

Joy, anger, sorrow, delight, reflection, sighing, change, agitation, indulgence, opening out, posturing—and music issuing from emptiness, steam condensing into fungi: these phenomena alternate before the eyes day and night, yet no one knows from what they first arise. Enough, enough! Between morning and evening, can one really find the root from which they depend? Without that root, there is no me; without me, there is no way to know or make use of that root. This understanding seems close to the truth, yet we still do not know what truly presides over it all. As if there really were a master—only its trace cannot be found: it can operate, and that is trustworthy, yet no form is seen; it has real effect, yet no visible shape.

The hundred bones, nine openings, and six viscera all stand complete in me—which should I be close to? Are they all equally worthy of love? Or is there partiality among them? If they are all the same, are they like ministers and concubines each performing their office? Can ministers and concubines not govern one another? Or do they take turns as master and take turns obeying? Is there another, true master? Even if we found out how things really stand, what could that add to us or take away?

Once a person is born with a body, he can only hold to it until life is exhausted. Person and outer things clash and wear each other down; the journey of life is like galloping horses, yet no one can make it stop—is this not deeply lamentable? A whole lifetime of busyness without seeing achievement; toiling until weary without knowing where to turn—is this not deeply sorrowful? People say the body still lives—what good is that? When the body changes and decays, the heart changes with it—is this not enormous sorrow?

Guo Xiang comments: Wisdom and words, sleep and waking, each differ; contact with outer things, and fear and alarm, each have their own state. Life finally moves toward decline, the heart’s strength wanes day by day, and people sink in and do not return; disposition and things change in alternation day and night. If the so-called true master cannot keep one from death, then even if the body changes and the heart changes with it, what benefit is there? Is this not enormous sorrow?

Guo Xiang says that human mind alternates between wakefulness and sleep, that in social interaction people show fear and all sorts of other responses, and that the body gradually ages and wears out as one is caught up in affairs and pushed ever forward. Human dispositions and worldly events are in constant flux; day and night succeed each other, as if something behind it all were in charge—yet no trace of it can be found. This shows that the myriad things come to be entirely of themselves, with nothing pushing them to be so.

When a person acts, if he can trust his own nature and follow what is natural, he will not be led astray by external distinctions when he meets things; the parts of the body and the senses will each keep their place and function on their own. If one fixates on favoring certain things, private intent arises within, each part vies for control, and the relations that should hold among them are disrupted. The roles of ruler and subject are like heaven being high and earth being low—they should each occupy their proper station. The true “master” simply accords with things as they naturally are; it is not deliberate contrivance.

If a person can preserve his authentic nature and let things develop according to their own nature, then whether clever or dull, each can live in accord with what is natural. Yet the clever cling to their own views until life ends; the dull hold to dull opinions until they die. In success and failure they each stick to one side, trust only their own bias, act as they please, and cannot turn back to examine themselves. Compared with what the masses lament, this is equally worthy of grief. Yet people never take this as grief, because that is how their nature is. Each thing exists by following its own nature—what is there to lament?

Therefore, if a person toils and labors all his life, weary and worn, though alive he is in fact no different from the dead. This is the greatest grief. Yet if people do not even grieve over this, then what is usually lamented is not worth grieving over excessively.

Lü Huiqing’s commentary explains: People’s capacity for tolerance is sometimes broad and sometimes narrow; the state of mind when sleep and waking alternate also differs from person to person. Likes and dislikes lie hidden within, and when external things touch them, they flare up as if a trigger had been pulled. Reputation and integrity show on the outside, and when external things pull at them, a person is bound as if by a sworn oath and finds it hard to break free. All of this shows that the directions in which the heart-mind turns—toward what is right or wrong—are not the same. Desire for things runs deep or shallow and varies from one person to another; joy, anger, sorrow, and delight, along with indulgence, ease, and the outward showing of emotion, also take different forms.

These changes are like the myriad things each giving forth its own sound and then letting that sound cease on its own. It is like music issuing from emptiness, or fungi growing in damp heat—day and night they shift and change, yet no one knows where they first arose. This is Tianlai (the spontaneous sounds and transformations of the natural world): an effect that arises through Wuwei (non-action), naturally and without deliberate doing.

Do differences in capacity, aspiration, desire, and the depth of one’s inclinations not resemble the way rocks, hills, and caves each have their own shape? Do the varying states of mind and the forms of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight—not each appearing in its own way and then subsiding on its own—not resemble the different howls and whistles from various hollows? Music from emptiness, fungi growing of themselves—seek their source and there is nowhere to find it. Is this not like wind passing through empty openings and making all sorts of sounds, while no one knows where they finally go?

Seen in this light, where exactly is that which makes “me” me? Cannot the body be like withered wood, and the heart-mind like dead ashes? Tianlai is hard to grasp, and the True Lord (the inner, authentic master) is hard to manifest. Only when the heart-mind is still and the self is forgotten can one apprehend it with the heart; then one can understand on what basis human life is sustained. Its source of arising cannot be known; one can only feel it with the heart.

Within the body one cannot trace its tracks or see its form, so one cannot pin down what it is that governs the body. Searching the whole body, one still cannot find this master, and thus knows it does not stay fixed in any one bodily part. People cherish their bodies yet do not know which of the hundred bones and nine orifices is closest or most vital. If there were no part especially close, each part would be like a subject or concubine with no true sovereign; subjects could not govern one another, so they would take turns playing lord and subject—yet none would be the real master. Since one cannot find within the body what rules the body, one can know that a True Lord exists apart from that search.

Everyone has a True Lord, but it is not something one can clarify by deliberate seeking, nor can one add anything to it by doing so; failing to clarify it, one cannot subtract anything from it either. Why? It is not something that can be approached through lack of mind, nor can it be kept at a distance or controlled by intentional effort of the heart-mind.

Lin Yidu explains: When the mind is extremely thin and weak yet contends with the myriad external things, one can only grow exhausted and decline until utterly spent. The heart is obscured—sometimes from shallow understanding, sometimes from treating things as profoundly hidden; the latter kind of obscuration runs especially deep. “Mechanism” means that once set in motion it is hard to pull back; “covenant” means that once pledged it is hard to alter. People then cling to arguing right and wrong, even more fiercely than they cherish their own jing and qi; body and spirit wither like plants in autumn and winter. Drowning in private gain and desire, they cannot return to a state of goodness.

From “blazing” and “leisurely” through “Yaoyi Qi” and the other dispositions described above, all portray those who cannot recognize “independence” (the authentic that does not depend on externals)—how they are ruled by yin-yang change and show ten thousand different forms. “Music issuing from emptiness” means sound arising from silence; “steam forming mushrooms” means form generated from the formless. Day and night alternate and the myriad changes follow one another, yet people do not know whence life comes; from morning to evening they rely on this life to survive without understanding why it is so.

Without the “True Overlord” (the root force that governs life), I could not exist; without “me,” there would be no occasion to speak the name “True Overlord.” The “True Lord” issues the command of life without showing the action of one who rules; the “Overlord” receives the True Lord’s command and has some dominion over life. As the root of the myriad things, the True Overlord belongs neither to yin nor yang, neither inside nor outside; it can only be apprehended through spirit, not sought through concrete images. Life’s nature and true condition must depend on the True Overlord to operate, yet the True Overlord’s form cannot be seen.

The various bones and nine orifices of the human body ought to follow nature as it is. If one cannot let go of attachment and instead favors certain parts, partiality arises within: what is liked is treated as lord, what is disliked as servant. Servants and lords together are not enough to govern the body—there must be another True Lord to oversee them. The True Lord acts through wuwei and dwells in the emptiness within; every part of the body and every orifice obey its bidding without knowing it is there.

Even if one presses for the True Overlord’s real state, knowing or not knowing does not add to or subtract from its authenticity. Laozi’s “cut off learning and be without worry” means that pursuing knowledge does not thereby bring any real benefit. The myriad things rest within creation and transformation, change without end, yet the True Lord in itself never perishes. People who happen to gain a human body cling to the self without knowing there is an indestructible root. They contend with external things and wear each other down, toiling body and mind until form and thought change along with them; if this goes on without end, they reach their limit. Is this not deeply lamentable?

Chen Xiangdao explains: people constantly deploy their discursive intelligence and speech to cope with the outer world, while strife and anxiety keep assaulting the heart within—so right and wrong tangle in conduct, and fixation and rivalry obscure the mind. That erodes a person’s De until it cannot be restored, and blocks the heart until vitality is lost. Joy, anger, sorrow, and delight arise only from external things—how could one speak of carefree wandering (xiaoyao)?

Joy wells up from a realm of emptiness, like fungi that sprout from steaming warmth; Yin and Yang alternate day and night, cycling without end within the boundless. If one looks only at form and sound, one is far from the root that gives rise to form and sound, yet does not know where they first emerge; if one looks only at self and other, they seem close, yet one does not know what force makes them so. Therefore there seems to be a true master, yet its trace cannot be seen. What is called the “true master” (zhenzai) is the operation of the Dao.

The eyes see, the ears hear, the hands grasp, the feet walk—we merely let each faculty play its part; who then favors and commands them? Servants and concubines serve others yet cannot enslave one another; people take turns in the roles of lord and subject, and acting in some way is hard to avoid. If there is a genuine master, deliberate effort is unnecessary. When the eyes look, the eyes seem to lead—but what enables them to see is a more fundamental power. All of this belongs to what humans already have. Whether or not one can investigate the reality within, one’s original authenticity is neither added to nor subtracted from.

Relying on a limited body, one dwells amid boundless change—how could the body be kept forever? Those who cling to life and cannot follow change are tossed through right and wrong by external things until the body changes and the heart changes with it. That is the greatest sorrow—what is meant by “there is no sorrow greater than a dead heart.”

Zhao Xujie explains: from waking to sleep and from sleep to waking, one meets the shifts of social life like wind blowing different instruments, each sounding in its own way. Drowning in life and unable to break free of attachment to things, one is spun through right and wrong with external objects until the body changes and the heart changes with it—that is the greatest sorrow, “there is no sorrow greater than a dead heart.”

Zhao Xuzhai’s commentary states: Knowledge and speech alternate between sleep and waking, responding to each other in endless variation, like wind blowing through different openings and producing different sounds. What is called “emergence” (fa) is the first sign that appears when activity begins; what is called “lingering” (liu) is the momentum that remains after activity has passed. The shift from fullness to decline, from growth to waning, is the gradual process of decay; to enter and not come out again, to close and not open again, until exhaustion and depletion—that is the end.

When the strong wind stops, the various openings return to silence. This is what is meant by letting the ten thousand things follow their own course. The twelve kinds of emotion—joy, anger, and the rest—show themselves and are expressed through voice and expression; but who is it that makes them so? Emotion appears in response to music; fungi arise from damp heat. This shows that the twelve emotions each arise of themselves.

When emotion meets external things, they pull and stir each other in rise and fall, yet people do not know where they first come from. The ten thousand things are born from nothing (wu), and in that “nothing” there seems to be a master at work. From morning to night people live by it—this is the “heavenly sound” (tianlai): the sound the ten thousand things make of themselves, not something deliberately arranged.

Without the other, there is no self. The Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean) says, “Without sincerity (cheng) there is no thing”; yet without concrete things, sincerity cannot show itself. Hence it is said, “Without me, there is nothing to take as model.” This already approaches the truth. Still, people do not know who or what is making the ten thousand things behave as they do: as if there were a true master within, yet its beginning and trace cannot be found.

Xing (nature) is acting in accord with one’s inherent disposition; qing (emotion) is the state in which that nature has already become manifest. Emotion can show itself; xing has no fixed form that can be seen. The human body has many bones and openings that cannot govern one another—so who is it that personally presides over them? There must be a “true lord” (zhenjun)—an inner master—that keeps the whole body in harmony.

When the benevolent person sees this, he calls it “benevolence”—he has grasped the reality of it. Ordinary people use it every day without knowing they do, and so they have not grasped that reality. Whether one grasps it or not, this true nature neither increases nor decreases because of that. People rely on it to form a body; the body may perish, but xing does not perish with it. The world busies itself with arguing right and wrong and weighing gain and loss, not knowing when to stop, and willingly rots away with the grass and trees—a thing truly to be mourned.

Those with great knowledge are at ease and unhurried; those with petty knowledge fuss over every detail. Great words shine with clarity—Zhuangzi means that figures such as Yi Yin, the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, and Mencius all fall within what “great words” point to. Petty words are trivial and endless, looking before and after; the doctrines of the hundred schools and street gossip all belong to “petty words.”

Human mental activity and bodily action pull on each other: when the spirit gathers, the mind concentrates in the heart; when the body moves, the four limbs follow. From emperors down to commoners, everyone is in this situation. At night people sleep peacefully; at dawn they meet the world and must handle affairs and wear out the mind, as if in battle. This is just what Mencius meant when he said that daytime conduct constrains and gradually erodes the original heart.

“Slow and loose” (man) means not hitting what matters; “pit” (jiao) means speech hides cunning, as if setting a hidden trap; “close” (mi) means deep thought that leaves no trace. All of these describe how people engage the outer world: the heart is bitter and afraid, unable to be free—the very “the petty person is long in anxiety.” Confucius said the petty person is often fearful; Zhuangzi’s point is that even Yao, Shun, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius could fall into such fear.

People argue over right and wrong as if in archery, intent only on hitting the mark; the will to win stays fixed, like swearing an oath with someone. The mind is worn by worry and fear; once sunk in a fixed idea, one pushes forward and cannot turn back. Such people may still be alive in body, but the heart seems already dead.

Having used words like “joy and anger” to describe worldly minds, the text goes on to sketch their shifting forms: as music seems to issue from emptiness, as breath steams and breeds mold—all the work of the Creator, so the ten thousand things are like wind through ten thousand openings, each making its own sound. Day and night alternate because the Creator’s process comes and goes, yet one cannot see where it begins. In the span of a morning and evening, one receives this bodily form and lives through it—showing that the Creator enables life, but how it acts, people do not know. Thus the Creator seems close at hand yet cannot be seen. As for the True Lord (Zhenzai) that drives the ten thousand things, one cannot assert that it truly exists in some fixed shape; “cannot obtain its signs” (bu de qi zhen) means one cannot discern the omens it shows. The Creator’s working seems real, only without visible trace, and its operation is unknown. Reasoning from this, people do feel the Creator’s presence yet cannot grasp its reality. From day-and-night alternation to here, the point is the same: the Creator’s arising seems right before the eyes, yet is unseen—one should attend to this carefully.

The body has the hundred bones, the nine openings, and the six viscera—why favor one part as especially close and privately cherished? When the head itches, the hand scratches and the hand obeys the head; when the eyes look ahead, the feet walk there and the feet obey the eyes. These parts command one another like minister and servant, yet also depend on each other, so one cannot simply label who is lord and who is subject. If even the lord-and-subject relations within the body are unsettled, the heart seems to be master of the whole—yet the heart cannot master itself either; what truly masters it is still the Creator. So the Creator is the real sovereign.

People seek in this way because they want to see the truth clearly; yet whether or not one sees the so-called True Lord, what does that add or subtract from it? People receive bodily form from the Creator and accompany the Creator without parting until the form breaks down. If one does not follow this course but is stirred up by outer things, one exhausts a lifetime—short as a fine horse flashing past a crack—running weary to the end, which is truly pitiable. The body declines and white hair appears, then aging follows; as the form decays, the spirit grows tired too, showing that heart and body change together. Is this not deeply worth lamenting? The author laments again that such a state is hard to reverse.

The preceding collected commentary has already explained the passage in considerable detail, so I will not repeat it here. The eight words in the scripture—“lü, tan, bian, zhi, yao, yi, qi, tai”—were written in one continuous flow by the True Person, and they do not appear in this form in other books. Most commentators’ notes miss the main point; only Master Cheng’s subcommentary says: “lü” is premeditating and scheming about the future, and “tan” is sighing over what is past. Those two readings are indeed apt, but the senses of “bian” and “zhi” have not been made clear. I venture the following: “bian” is being rash and restless, always wanting to act and achieve something; “zhi” is shrinking back in fear and not daring to act—perhaps that more fully captures what the text intends.

The subcommentary also says: “yao” is frivolity, and “yi” is extravagant indulgence. Those glosses are likewise sound, yet the treatment of “qi” and “tai” seems not to fit the preceding lines. I venture: “yao” is craving what is pleasing and sinking oneself into it; “yi” is letting oneself go in pleasure and forgetting to return; “qi” is opening the heart-mind and allowing outer things to enter freely; “tai” is arrogant self-display that feeds pride.

When a person chases externals single-mindedly and forgets the self, these different states arise within one and the same body: calculating gain and loss, now burning with agitation like fire, now congealing like ice. Body and spirit-spirit (Shen) then decline day by day, gradually sliding toward death. Yet are these states truly human nature? In fact they come from being lost in outer objects and desires, with consciousness and feeling turned upside down: what ought to be released is not released, and what ought not be released is released instead.

This is like music issuing from emptiness, or steam rising and giving birth to fungi; it is also like illusions, dust, foam, and shadows that suddenly appear and suddenly vanish. Such changes are hardly worth disturbing the vast, tranquil heart-mind. One should know that the clear, still original nature has endured from antiquity, while these disturbances are merely images within change—chance encounters with dusty affinities. Once seen through, one knows they were empty all along; tracing self and externals further, neither has a fixed, substantial root—they only lodge in the world for a time, provisionally settling old karmic debts.

Therefore one should find a way to loosen the bonds of heavy worldly dust and receive the primordial Yuan Qi; neither chasing the past nor reaching for the future, remaining clear and at peace throughout. Then, even while the body remains in the dusty world, the spirit can transcend ordinary bounds—what worldly tie could still sway such a person?

People live in the world as if adrift in a haze. Am I alone in my confusion, while others are clear? People follow the inclinations and judgments they have already formed and treat them as standards—yet who has no standards of their own? One need not wait until one understands how things change before the heart passes judgment; some are simply like that from the start, and the foolish are no exception.

Before judgment has taken shape in the heart, one already labels this right and that wrong—like setting out for Yue today yet claiming one arrived yesterday. To treat what is not as if it were— even the divine Yu could not sort that out; what can I do?

Words are not empty like the wind; the speaker does mean something, though what is meant may not be fixed. Do words have a definite meaning? Compared with the peeping of nestlings, is there really a difference? Does that difference exist, or does it not?

Where is the Dao obscured so that true and false appear? Where are words obscured so that right and wrong appear? The Dao is nowhere absent, and words can express things everywhere. Yet the Dao is hidden by partial success, and words are hidden by florid phrasing—hence the wrangling of Confucians and Mohists, each calling the other’s wrong right and the other’s right wrong. If you want to decide who is right and who is wrong, better to look with a clear, penetrating eye.

Things have no absolute “that” and no absolute “this”: from the standpoint of “that” one does not see “this”; from one’s own standpoint one knows oneself. Thus “that” appears through “this,” and “this” also depends on “that” to be established—this is what it means to say they arise in mutual dependence. Given that, why insist on deciding one side right and the other wrong? Better to look with a clear, penetrating eye.

When something has just appeared, it is already on the way to perishing; when it has just perished, it may in turn reappear. Where there is “acceptable,” there is also “unacceptable”; where there is “unacceptable,” there is also “acceptable.” Right and wrong depend on each other, so the sage does not cling to one side but views from a broader vantage and also accords with each thing’s own standpoint.

“This” is also “that,” and “that” is also “this”: each side has its own judgment of right and wrong. Is there really a division between this and that—or is there no division at all? When this and that no longer oppose each other and each clings to one pole, that state is called the pivot of the Dao (daoshu)—the hinge of the Way that does not fix on either side of right and wrong. The pivot sits at the center of the circle, and so can follow endless change. “Acceptable” can be one pole of the endless, and “unacceptable” can be another; what matters is to look with a clear, penetrating eye.

People have cognition, yet they do not know where that cognition comes from; they are alive, yet they do not know where life comes from—they simply know and live as a matter of course. Thus everyone under heaven dwells in a kind of obscurity.

The mind that can govern the body’s activity is called the “formed mind”—the mind in which fixed subjective views have already taken shape. Each person takes their own formed mind as the standard and has their own criterion of judgment; even a fool will take their own mind as teacher. Before they have truly sorted out what is beneficial and what is harmful, they already treat their own view as correct. What they discard as shortcoming and what they keep as strength are all ruled by the formed mind. If one set out for Yue today yet claimed to have arrived yesterday, that would clearly not hold. Yet each person has judgments of right and wrong that the multitude cannot avoid; therefore the zhi ren (person who has attained the Way) accommodates the various views and does not cling to fixed right and wrong. The Dao (the Way) in itself is neither right nor wrong; the deluded take right and wrong to be real. Once that delusion is fixed in the mind, even a sage finds it hard to remove.

Those who speak each have their own position, so they differ from one another. When one blows, the tones differ—does that prove who is right and who is wrong? To say “there is speech” does not thereby establish any one saying; to say “there is no speech”—yet this very sentence is already speech. Whether words and the chirping of nestlings really differ is also hard to settle. People under heaven need not share the same situation, yet the words they utter cannot be entirely unlike one another.

The Dao is everywhere; what in speech could hide it, and what could fix true and false, right and wrong, on that basis? People fail to see that the Dao is omnipresent and that all things can be reached through it. Partial, small-formed views take their own gleam for the whole and seem to hide the Dao—yet the Dao itself cannot be hidden. Right and wrong, true and false, hold within each partial view, but they come to rest before the real Dao. Partial views see only one corner; the complete Dao embraces all things.

Confucians and Mohists criticize each other and each favors their own view. Rather than deciding which side is right, it is better to let their claims reflect each other so one can see: what they call right may not truly be so; what they call wrong may not truly be so. Yet each thing takes itself as its standard, so each has its “right”; each thing also takes the other as the opposed side, so each has its “wrong.” When the divisions of self and other and of right and wrong are cleared away, one can join with the myriad things in the deep Dao.

Each person knows only what they see and know and treats that as correct, while others may take it as wrong. It is like the living taking life as life while the dead might instead take life as death. So it is with “acceptable” and “unacceptable.” In the dispute between Confucians and Mohists I cannot say the two sides are wholly the same; yet if each holds to their own ground, I also cannot say one side must differ from the other. Judging by the judgments of all under heaven, right and wrong can each find their place. This side may become that side, and that side may become this side; self and other, being and non-being, cannot be finally settled on that basis.

Right and wrong chase and replace each other like an endless ring. The center of the ring is empty. To see right and wrong as a ring and grasp that emptiness at the center is to stop clinging to fixed right and wrong, and thus to be able to respond to every turn of right and wrong. Right and wrong change without end; response, too, can be without end.

I and external things stand opposed to each other; body and inner mind shift accordingly, yet I do not notice—this is confusion at its extreme. The heart-mind of the True Person is calm like a mirror, not because it depends on anything outside, but because it simply holds to its own inherent formed heart-mind—the heart-mind received from Heaven before it is clouded by things. I failed to hold to that heart-mind, and so I alone went astray. The True Person was never confused to begin with. If people could truly follow their formed heart-mind and take it as their teacher, who would be without a teacher? Why must one know the root of every change in things? Habitually letting the original heart-mind lead is enough; from that, what to accept and what to reject will take care of themselves. Even the foolish have a formed heart-mind that is not confused and can serve as a teacher—they simply do not know to look for it.

The formed heart-mind is what we inherit from Heaven, unobscured by things, and so able to tell genuine right from wrong. Once things obscure it, right and wrong are no longer settled. Right and wrong have no fixed substance to begin with, yet people treat them as solid facts; even wisdom like that of Yu the Great could not nail them down. What can I do?

Speech is not like wind that blows and makes a sound of its own. The speaker speaks, and the words are shaped by things; the speaker cannot, like the wind, push things around at will. So while discourse has not yet reached any conclusion, having spoken and not having spoken are like the peeping of nestlings—there is little to distinguish one from the other.

Dao is everywhere; no utterance falls outside Dao. How could Dao be “hidden” so that some words are true and others false? The ten thousand things never leave Dao, and speech belongs to Dao too; how could Dao be “hidden” so that some words are right and some wrong? Seeing that Dao is everywhere, you know it is present wherever you go; seeing that speech never leaves Dao, you know no way of talking is wholly worthless. Still, people feel that some truths “are not there” or “will not work,” because partial views hide Dao—people grasp small points, not the great Dao whole—and surface glitter hides the root and the real. Then Confucians and Mohists each grip one corner and fight over right and wrong. To affirm what the other denies and deny what the other affirms is not as good as contemplation with an illumined heart-mind. “Illumination” means returning to one’s nature and knowing the constant Dao.

Today’s Confucian–Mohist quarrels over right and wrong still never step outside knowledge and discriminating judgment, and they never really use illumined heart-mind contemplation—so they cannot be the measure of right and wrong. Drop knowledge and discrimination, gather the spirit, and look within: then you see that what people call “that” and “this” have no fixed line; with no fixed line, there is no absolute that or this.

From the other’s side you do not see yourself, so you call the other “that”; from your side you see yourself, so you call yourself “this.” The other does the same. So right and wrong have no fixed boundary from the start. People treat them as real anyway, like someone about to be born who takes birth as birth and someone about to die who takes death as death—that is taking what was never a fixed reality and treating it as real.

From Dao’s view, when something is about to be born, one asks where it comes from; when it is about to die, one asks where it goes. Understand that birth and death are one continuum—that to be being born is already to be moving toward death, and to be dying is already to turn toward new birth—and “acceptable” and “unacceptable” work the same way. These splits are all built by the heart-mind. Exhaust the nature, penetrate the subtle, return to the state without a fixed self, and you find the substance of the ten thousand things was never divided. To affirm from this side or deny from that is only mutual conditioning and mutual shaping. The sage does not get caught in that; he looks from the perspective of Heaven’s Dao. That is called illumination.

People often live in confusion and obscurity—not because they lack a clear inherent nature, but because outer things cover it over and they do not notice. The sage does not take the road of arguing right and wrong; he sets aside fixed views, stills discursive thought, and looks at the ten thousand things through natural inborn nature. What he sees is simply the right and wrong that the world always had. Hence it is said “following what is”: looking along with how things are in themselves.

What I take as right, another may take as wrong; what I take as wrong, another may take as right. Each of us has our own scale of right and wrong. To show that one should not cling to mutual right and wrong, and need not trace where such division comes from, the Zhuangzi uses the phrase “whether in the end there is or is not”: when both the split between self and other and the cause of that split are forgotten, then “that” and “this” can no longer stand opposed to me. This is called the “pivot of the Dao.”

“Pivot” is what turns and opens and closes; “ring” is the circle—here, a state that is empty yet has not left behind form. The pivot’s round turning and liveliness symbolize subtle existence (miaoyou); the ring’s round fullness and stillness symbolize empty void (zhenkong). Subtle existence and empty void depend on each other and work together, and so can meet endless change.

Lin Yidu held that only the most penetrating person in the world can reach this. Chen Xiangdao said that the human heart is originally clear, like water and fire; it is pursuit of outer things and being pulled by changes of the body that make it dull and unknowing. What is called “obscured” (mang) is the heart covered over by human artifice; what is called “not obscured” is the inborn nature still bright. One who is good at nurturing the heart does not let artificial views harm innate nature; he need only preserve the originally clear heart.

When a person is born, Heaven gives him a body and the Dao gives him a heart. If he takes already-formed views as his teacher, he may align with the Dao—why must he rely on knowledge to judge and actively choose? People always have their own views to rely on; they need not take knowledge as the standard. Yet if, before views have formed, one already divides right and wrong, that is treating a distinction that is not there as if it were; even Yu the Great might not understand such talk, let alone others.

Honoring the Dao, the Dao is like a lord; seeking by way of the Dao, the Dao is like a teacher. If one takes the heart of right-and-wrong as teacher, one keeps separating “correct” from “incorrect” and falls into the clinging of self-styled cleverness. If one is not driven by such division, one does not invert right and wrong and can escape foolishness. The ancients at first also took their own hearts as teachers, yet in the end could forget this heart that clings to division: clinging to the heart, right and wrong appear; forgetting that clinging, right and wrong dissolve.

Speech is not merely natural noise. Sounds that arise naturally are like wind moving through things—flowing as they will, without stopping. Speech comes from disputation and easily invites judgment. A nestling’s cry may not be intentional harmony, yet it still carries distinction and response. Speech begins where there is something to say and ends in saying nothing; thus it differs from wind in nature. Disputation begins in quarrel and ends in not quarreling; thus it too differs from a nestling’s sound.

The Dao is nowhere absent and nothing is unreachable; therefore speech itself is not hidden and obscure. It is only that people drown in flashy words and partial views and cannot reach the great Dao, so true and false and right and wrong arise. Flashy words do not rest on the real; hence right and wrong show themselves. If today one tries to decide that what Confucians and Mohists reject is truly right, or that what they approve is truly right, one is still trapped in the split between right and wrong. The sage does not cling to either side’s view but looks along with nature.

The “pivot” turns and opens and closes things; the “ring” is round, empty, still, and good at adapting. Grasping the “center of the ring,” one can turn through change; each thing finds its pivot and can respond to the boundless. Therefore the sage lets the right and wrong of both sides run in parallel without contending, and so answers endless change.

Chen Bixu’s commentary says: From the moment a person is born, desire and aversion often pull at them, disturbing the original mind and muddling judgment of right and wrong; nature is thereby obscured and the mind grows dim. The perfected person (zhiren) transcends birth and death and deeply understands subtle principle—how could such a one be dim or confused?

If one does not take the Dao as teacher and does not follow the ancients, yet clings to one’s own views, this is called “fixed mind” (chengxin)—a view already formed and held fast. If everyone took fixed mind as teacher, who would be without a teacher? Each person would have their own way of taking guidance, and there would be no need to replace the unworthy with the worthy. If one treats fixed mind as proof and thinks one has gained something, then the faction of fools would also be large. Thus those who attain the Dao align with the Dao; those who lose it align with loss.

Before judgments of right and wrong have formed in the mind, one rushes to decide right and wrong; before principle has arrived, one already claims to know; what is not there at all is insisted upon as existing. Once it is taken as existing, new “existence” keeps arising without end. Even a person of supreme virtue and divine attainment may not be able to explain why.

Blowing to make a sound is like ringing out. Speech and sound differ: people dispute and each holds to their own words, so there is no fixed, unchanging doctrine. Speech is meant to express the heart; blown sound has no fixed meaning. If meaningless sound is taken as doctrine, how is it different from the peeping of a chick still inside the shell?

The great Dao has never been hidden; it is only that seekers differ in authenticity. The utmost speech has never been obscure; it is only that speakers dispute over right and wrong. One who has attained the Dao has no barrier—wherever they go they connect with the ten thousand things; in teaching all kinds of people, wherever they arrive they can put teaching into practice.

Only after the Dao was abandoned did benevolence and righteousness appear; only when small cleverness arose did great falsity appear. Confucians honor the Duke of Zhou and Confucius; Mohists honor Yu of Xia. What Confucians call right, Mohists call wrong, and what Mohists call right, Confucians reject. If one now wants to affirm what Confucians deny and deny what Mohists affirm, it is better to turn and examine each side’s standpoint. Then each side’s right and wrong can both stand on its own terms.

Things by nature have no fixed “that”; “that” appears only because an opposing side exists. There is no fixed “this” either; “this” is affirmed only because each side contends for victory. From the other’s standpoint one does not see why Zihuan became a Confucian or why Mozi became a Mohist; from one’s own standpoint one knows Mozi held to Mohism because he took it as right, and Zihuan took Confucianism as right because Mohism served as contrast. Mutual right and wrong arise in opposition, as those who live prize life and those who die are content with death. The sage looks according to the pattern of nature, not by human partiality, so one cannot say that the distinctions among things are wholly without ground.

“That” and “this” each form a system of right and wrong. If one presses to the bottom, in the end being and non-being return to forgetting words; when language can go no further, there is nothing to stand opposite—this is called the “pivot of the Dao” (daoshu). The pivot is empty; it turns without sticking. The hinge’s function lies in standing at the center of the ring so one can respond to endless change. The utmost of the Dao is to turn the ten thousand things by principle; though heaven and earth are vast and things are many, nothing can stand opposite to the pivot’s subtle working.

Zhao’s note says: “Mang” means rushing about without knowing where to return; knowing where to return, one is not lost. “Fixed mind” can be understood through Zisi’s “sincerity completes itself”—the nature that is so of itself. If a person fully realizes their nature, nothing is beyond reach. Everyone has such a mind; why seek another teacher? “Dai” refers to the alternation of day and night and of life and death. If one takes one’s fixed mind as teacher, one can understand these patterns; why insist on pressing the question? For example, Zilu asked about ghosts and the afterlife, eager to know the principle of life and death; Confucius answered that he should first know how to serve the living and understand life—meaning he should return to experience within himself. To decide right and wrong before principle is clear, or to treat what is not there as existing, is reckless assertion; even a sage cannot decide for such a person.

Speech is like the sound the heart sends forth; blowing is like wind sound; the sound of panpipes and other wind instruments is yet another kind of sound; the cry of a chick in the egg wanting to break the shell is again different. Yet all are sound; differences of sound come from the condition within each. “The speaker has speech” means the speaker already has something to say in the heart but has not yet spoken it aloud—so doctrine is not yet settled.