《南华真经义海纂微》Vol. 6

If people still take pride in reputation and are caught up in emotion and discursive thought, then filial piety is not truly from the heart and compassion is not genuinely real. When fathers, sons, and brothers each keep their own schemes and look to one another for what they want, how can that still be the original point of ritual?

When principle is pushed to its limit, inner and outer must reflect each other—there is no ultimate that means roaming only on the outside while neglecting what is held within.

Mourning the dead is fundamentally an inward matter. Treat it as a form put on for others and it becomes shallow.

To treat being alive as an extra growth on the body, a hanging wart—qi briefly clumped together, not something one is born to rejoice in; to treat death as a sore breaking open and pus running out—qi dispersing by itself, not something one is born to grieve over. Life and death turn without end, so there is no need to fight over which side “wins”; gathering and scattering, from the perspective of the Dao, are simply outer things.

The forms we borrow differ, yet they make up one whole body, so one can forget liver and gall, set aside ears and eyes, and go straight with the way things are; even the five viscera can be left out of account—what is there to grip tightly? What is displayed before the crowd is mostly dust and grime.

Those who “roam outside” still depend on the inside; those who “leave the human” still must meet the customary. So whoever holds the realm under heaven does not treat it as private property. Though tangled in affairs, they share with you the insight that the true self often stands outside affairs. Human beings and fish are not made the same, yet both can draw “having business” from “no business,” link the world beyond convention with the world within it, and then be fully nourished and settled in life—always so, each complete in itself without jostling the other.

To roam outside in order to guard the inside, to let the ten thousand things be natural and each nature be satisfied—that is how the way of the sage-king is fulfilled. In human eyes this looks “odd”; in heaven it is aligned. In terms of nature, people are not inherently large or small; in terms of human order, one who is aligned with the way of heaven may be called a junzi (exemplary person).

This passage explains episodes in the Zhuangzi—Zhuangzi drumming on a tub when his wife died, Confucius sending Zigong to offer condolences, Zigong’s exchange with the two men about “inside the square” and “outside the square”—and develops the theme using Lü’s commentary.

“To associate in non-association, to act for one another in non-acting” means living and acting together in a state where neither side forces the other nor contrives outcomes. That is precisely the level returning to the root and restoring the mandate (gui gen fu ming) aims at. Ascending to heaven, one connects with the great clarity above; roaming in mist, one enters the gate of the hidden and subtle—thus one can stir and lift the boundless without end. If returning to authenticity (fan zhen) is taken as joy, then singing beside the corpse is exactly what one should guard against. The ancient kings instituted ritual to help people moderate likes and dislikes and return to what is correct in the human way; if returning to authenticity is treated as joy, is that not contrary to the intent of ritual? Roaming outside the square (fang wai)—beyond ritual and human norms—one takes heaven’s way as companion, so death is joy and not worth grieving. Roaming inside the square (fang nei), one takes the human world as companion, so death is mourned and one dares not treat it as joy. If all three took death as companion and rejoiced in it, there would be many who turn their backs on death and forget the living; if those three were absent, people would cling to the tangle of life and death and never get free—and that is what the perfected person (zhi ren) grieves over. Inner and outer orientations differ, so they do not reach each other.

Confucius sent Zigong to mourn because he wanted him to grasp the meaning of ritual without stepping outside the scope of the truths of nature and life (xing ming zhi qing). Yet the subtle principles of the world sometimes lie outside the lines of ritual and law. Roaming in the single Qi of heaven and earth, one is neither yin nor yang. Treating life as an appended wen or hanging boil is to see life as a burden and exaggerate it; treating death as bursting a abscess is to take death as release and rejoice in it. Borrowing other forms and lodging in the same body is not to treat them as solid reality; when liver, gall, ears, and eyes are forgotten and cast off, turning and returning from beginning to end without knowing where it starts or ends, how can one be bound by worldly ritual? If Confucius placed himself here, he would roam inside the square while loudly praising the heights outside it. Zigong wondered: though he roams inside the square, what he relies on may not be there—what he roams is the track, what he relies on is the heart-mind. Heaven’s condemned (tian zhi lu min) means the heaven-imposed penalty cannot be undone. Someone like Confucius embodies nature, holds spirit, and roams the mundane world—what reliance could burden his heart? Thus one may roam inside the square without having to leave it, and accept heaven’s penalty without having to escape it. This is not something I alone share with you; the text also uses fish as a metaphor for people: dig a pool and you have enough to live—one need not vast waters; when nothing is done, stillness arises—one need not be outside the square. Forgetting each other in the rivers and lakes (xiang wang yu jiang hu) is more than merely digging a pool; forgetting each other in the way and its arts is more than merely doing nothing. The extraordinary person (ji ren), aligned with heaven, is therefore outward and not inward. The person of heaven and the human gentleman—natural humanity and the ritual gentleman—are scrupulous about ritual and law yet do not know the truths of nature and life; that too describes this situation.

This passage is a Yihai cuanwei-style explication of the episode in the Zhuangzi in which Confucius and his disciples encounter several “beyond-the-square” companions whose ritual decorum differs from theirs.

Mutual companionship without fixation on mutual deeds

“Having the Way of mutual companionship, yet no fixed deeds of mutual companionship; having a heart of mutual support, yet no trace of mutual support” means that people may naturally associate and care for one another without being bound to what must be done or what marks must be left; one may inwardly complete one another without keeping score of “what I did for you.” Such a state is like ascending heaven and roaming in mist—the mind tending toward xuji (utter emptiness and stillness), turning freely on the surface of zaohua (the generation and transformation of heaven and earth) without being shackled by outward form.

Living without clinging to life, dying without fear of death

“Mutually forgetting in life, they do not cling to life; with no ultimate end, they have never truly died” indicates that these beyond-the-square companions forget one another within life, neither craving survival nor treating an end as real “death”—from the perspective of the Dao, there is no finality severed by birth and death. They may simply plait rope and weave hemp like ordinary folk, yet have returned to the true self; in Zigong’s eyes they still appear as “people,” hence Confucius’s sigh of admiration (“yi”). Zigong does not grasp the spirit of ritual (li’s inner meaning, not the letter of ceremony) and steps forward to question them; the two beyond-the-square companions exchange a smile—smiling because he still dwells within the square’s ritual forms.

Beyond the square and within the square

Confucius says: they roam “outside the bounded realm,” while I roam “within the bounded realm.” Beyond the square, weight falls on the spirit of ritual; within the square, on ritual form—the inner and outer situations differ, and one cannot force them to align by a single standard. To be ranked alongside the “Maker of Things” as “human” means their subtle functioning cannot be measured by zaohua alone; roaming in the single qi of heaven and earth, even heaven and earth cannot frame talk of their span of years. Attached excrescences and hanging warts are qi gathered into form; lancing abscesses and bursting sores are qi dispersed from form—all are “foreign things” (outer forms), changing and perishing with birth and death. Opposed to “sharing one body” are the six limbs, ears, and eyes, also foreign things—a borrowed frame, not the true self. Hence “abandoning the inner and forgetting the outer, unknowing of beginning and end” speaks of merging with transformation, no longer sharply dividing inner self and outer things.

Confucius and “heaven’s punishment”

Conf Confucius is constrained by benevolence, righteousness, and ritual; the beyond-the-square companions see this as fetters, like “heaven’s punishment” hard to shake off—not that Confucius is inferior, but his station requires it, hence “I share this with you” (both caught in the world’s ritual order).

Zigong’s question and “matching heaven” / “matching people”

Zigong sees the three not paired with the way of ordinary people and wants to align them with “the Way of heaven”; the commentary holds that one who truly mou (matches) heaven, spoken of in heavenly terms, is the noble person; if one only mou people yet speaks in heavenly terms, the dispute becomes that of the “petty person.” The sage can accord with heaven and with people, blending the myriad things—why would one need a “cripple” or oddity before one can mou heaven? The point: one need not posit a strange “heaven-and-human being”; the sage in the ordinary already fulfills both heaven and humanity.

Following the Dao (note: the text may read “Xiang Dao”; here it is taken as shun dao, aligning with the Great Way) says: The human body is what creation (zaohua) has formed; human lifespan is what creation has granted. One who cannot align with the body will feel revulsion in a cramped, constrained way; one who cannot align with Heaven’s mandate (tianming) will feel grief in a strained, gasping way.

Zishi, Ziyu, and Zili—three close friends in the Zhuangzi—could align with the body; Zilai could align with Heaven’s mandate. Though their emphasis differed, they agreed on taking nothingness as the head, life as the spine, and death as the rump—that is, threading through birth and death as one with the Dao.

Yet aligning with the body still falls short of forgetting the body; aligning with fate still falls short of forgetting fate. When Zisang and his two companions “ascend to Heaven, wander in mist, and roam the boundless,” that is forgetting the body; when they sing over a corpse and their faces do not change, that is forgetting fate. Forgetting the body means setting aside liver and gall, abandoning ear and eye; forgetting fate means cycling through life and death without knowing where the thread begins or ends—this is the way of those fangwai (“outside the square”), who step beyond ordinary ritual and custom.

Confucius, by contrast, dwelt fangnei (within the square of rites and human relations) yet did not shirk his place; he accepted the punishment of “resting in Heaven” (submitting to Heaven’s mandate) without fleeing; in idleness his heart was at peace. He did not need to wait until he was fangwai to be joyful—as when a fish in a pond is already sufficiently nourished, it need not reach the rivers and lakes to feel at ease.

Seen from the Dao, who can say that what we call petty persons are not gentlemen, or gentlemen petty persons? Still, if one speaks from “matching Heaven and human effort each in its place” (yu tian ren xiang mou), those three friends were only slightly more worthy than “Heaven’s petty persons.” The sage blends self and things and is at home wherever he goes—why must he insist on matching Heaven in the same way as the jiren (the “lopsided” ones who are odd and close to Heaven)?

Bi Xu’s commentary explains: those who do not deliberately give to one another can nevertheless be self-sufficient; those who do not deliberately act for others can nevertheless act for themselves. Self-sufficiency leads to self-governance; acting for oneself draws one near to Wuwei (non-action)—this is what is called “friendship of mutual forgetting”: together ascending to the heavens, wandering in mist, treading loftily and leaving the dust of the world behind. When worldly troubles come, they push them away; the mind is boundless and indifferent, so they can forget one another and each live on, without end.

They arrange songs and harmonize on the zither—not as at a funeral to mourn Sanghu (a sage in the Zhuangzi), performing for outsiders to see; their long sighs are to awaken the multitude. As for weeping, sitting on the ground, and stamping the feet, these are the forms of ritual; living at ease and following death as it comes is the true intent of ritual. Cultivating “non-being” (wuyou), they leave no trace of words; there is no need to fix them with names and categories—are they “gentlemen” or not? Those outside the conventional square (fangwai) prize subtle meaning; those within it (fangnei) mostly leave coarse tracks. These few will wander with “Transformation” (hua) in the great void, become one with primordial blur (hunming), not treating life and death as two, seeing birth and death as the rise and fall of water bubbles—did heaven’s rain exist only to make bubbles? Humans are merely temporary composites of the Five Phases (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water), entrusted to the one body of creating-and-transforming; they cast off form and forget liver and gall, dismiss cleverness and abandon ears and eyes, come from emptiness and enter the hollow void, blend with the world yet stay unstained, and find delight beyond the square—how could they use ornate, false ritual to display themselves to the crowd?

The adept takes self-reliance as root and is ashamed to cling to the traces of sages; thus though sages and worthies differ in aim, in responding to things they do not divide. Fish that gain water forget one another amid the waves; people who gain the Dao forget one another on the road—each keeps to its pool and is nourished, doing nothing yet preserving life. Following heaven’s nature, one forgets ritual and law; cultivating ritual and law, one loses heaven’s nature. Those who lose heaven’s nature are heaven’s petty persons yet society’s “gentlemen”; those who cultivate ritual and law are society’s “gentlemen” yet heaven’s petty persons. One who can have both—perhaps that is Meng Suncai.

Zhao’s commentary on “dwelling together in the state where there is no non-being and no form, extending without end” points to the realm of the divine beings of Mount Gushe. The previous chapter treats life and death as one; here a further level appears—neither birth nor death.

Zifan and Qin Zhang played and sang, taking return to original authenticity as joy, and laughed at Zigong for missing the heart of ritual. Confucius knew where the Dao resides and unfolded the subtlety of “forgetting liver and gall, abandoning ear and eye.” Zigong then asked: Master, do you follow the way outside the square or the rites within it? Confucius said: You and I are both bound by ritual and law—that is heaven’s punishment; it cannot be undone.

Digging a pool to hold water serves daily life—it is seeking ease in water. Wuwei (non-action) with a settled heart is seeking ease in the Dao. Fish cannot leave water; people cannot leave the Dao—this is roaming within the square. Forgetting one another in rivers and lakes, forgetting one another in the arts of the Dao—this is roaming outside the square. The iconoclastic person (jiren)—one who does not align with others but aligns with Heaven—does not pair with people; he pairs with Heaven.

Heavenly Dao is what is real; the human way is what is artificial. The difference between the two lies precisely here.

Yan Zhai (a figure in the Zhuangzi) says that when people relate to one another with “no mind” (wuxin) and act within non-action (wuwei), as if climbing into heaven, drifting in mist, or toying with the boundless— that is roaming freely beyond the ten thousand things. When each forgets the other yet each rests in what they were born to be, with no end to that fullness, they neither fix on a starting point nor chase an ending.

Matters of remote antiquity resemble passages in the Record of Rites—such as Yuan Rang (a friend of Confucius who ignored ritual propriety) bathing the coffin and singing at a friend’s funeral, or weaving bamboo strips to set words to music. “Returning to the real” (fan zhen) means returning to what is primordial; the original sense of li (ritual) still points to the root of ritual. This may be read as Zhuangzi’s allegory; yet the “Fox Head” song attributed to Yuan Rang in the Record of Rites shows that people who turned away from the world existed long ago—they did not appear only after someone had studied the Dao.

In practice, “having nothing” (wuyou): speak little and do not parade virtue; to be human together with the Creator is to be the Creator’s companion and to roam in the single breath (yi qi) of Heaven and Earth. “Wen” (growths) and “carbuncles” (yong ju) are images for this body in the cosmos as something extra that must be cut away or lanced and drained before one feels light again—that is the meaning of laboring through life to rest in death and shedding the shell. The body is a temporary joining of the four great elements (earth, water, fire, wind); lodged in one shared husk, it goes round and round from beginning to end without knowing where the thread leads—then one wanders freely and finds no place unsuitable.

Zigong asked Confucius: Does the Master stand on the “inside square” (fang nei)—the world of ritual and law—or on the “outside square” (fang wai), the world beyond? The answer, in substance: one whom Heaven has marked for punishment (“Heaven’s executed person,” tian zhi lu min) cannot have the mark lifted, and so cannot become a person of the outer square; those who travel with you are meant to speak with you of the joy of that outer realm. Digging a pool to keep fish, living self-sufficiently on what one has, means that having water is not a matter of quantity; when the Dao is attained, one sustains life according to one’s allotted share.

“Singular person” (ji ren) means one who is uniquely other—hence aligned with Heaven. Seen from Heaven’s view he is a junzi (exemplary person); seen from the human view he is a xiao ren (petty person)—or the reverse: human eyes call him junzi while Heaven’s eye sees xiao ren. Zhuangzi’s “junzi” carries a barb at the sages: he holds that ritual, music, and law did not spring from nature, and that only after “splitting the measure and breaking the scale” so the people stop contending does Heaven recognize the junzi. That too is an extreme born of disgust with the age—not a measured doctrine.

This passage is a commentary on the episode in Zhuangzi, “The Great and Venerable Teacher” (Dazongshi), in which Zisanghu and his two friends travel “outside the square”—the realm beyond conventional norms—and on Zigong’s encounter with them.

Without Deliberate Association, Without Deliberate Action

When people relate to one another, they do not deliberately use etiquette and form to “make friends”; with plainness and naturalness, affection can truly take shape. When they help one another, they do not deliberately “lend a hand” or seek credit; with quiet wuwei (non-action), virtue can truly stand. Those who can ascend to heaven and wander in mist roam and fly freely, unbound. In life they forget one another—even forgetting themselves and the world outside the self—and wander beyond things; what end could there be to that? This describes the stature of “heaven’s gentleman.” The author also notes that Zhuangzi, indignant at the world, wrote such lofty discourse.

Zisanghu and His Two Friends

A single laugh and mutual understanding—that is spiritual communion and heart-to-heart meeting, “seeing the Way in a glance”—not the shallow custom of later ages, friendly to one’s face and mocking behind one’s back. After Zisanghu died, Confucius sent Zigong to offer condolences; from how the funeral was handled one can infer what kind of man Zisanghu was. The two friends drummed and plucked in harmony, taking “return to the genuine” as their joy—no ordinary taste. Zigong was well versed in ritual; no wonder he found it strange and asked. The true meaning of li (ritual) is understood only by those who wander outside the square. Confucius was not ignorant of this; he sent Zigong to observe and to draw out the question so as to instruct him through it.

Becoming One with Creation

To share the same body as creation and to wander with heaven and earth in one breath is for yin-yang change not to stand opposed because there are “two.” To treat birth as a wen or a dangling appendage and leave it be; to treat death as gangrene that finally breaks and scatters—how then distinguish before and after? To borrow the four greats to form a body, to unify inner and outer and forget both, to go back and forth from end to beginning without knowing where the thread starts—that is the Way of the “great and venerable teacher.”

Zigong Asks Again

Zigong asked Confucius which side he followed. Confucius said: What you and I discuss—benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music to transform the world—is still the shackles the Creator sets. What you call “words from outside the square” also does not escape that scope. Fish live by water; people live by the Dao. Those at home in water need only dig a pool; those at home in the Dao have nothing to do yet the heart is settled. This is a metaphor: those who wander inside the square merely find their ease inside the square.

Rivers, Lakes, and Outside the Square

As for “forgetting each other in the rivers and lakes” and the like, the image is of wandering outside the square, unbound by worldly ritual and law, so that facing the shift of life and death one can be at ease and not grieve. Zigong, having heard the wind from outside the square, turned from the vulgar and asked about the “eccentric person.” The answer: one who is eccentric toward people is matched with heaven—turning against the world, one must align with the Dao.

The Two Lines on Heaven and Human

From this one can see: “Heaven’s petty person is the human world’s gentleman; the human world’s gentleman is heaven’s petty person.” The two lines are really one: they explain that “eccentric” and “matched” differ, and “heaven” and “human” are not the same—in the world of custom one is a “petty person,” yet by heaven’s measure a gentleman; in the world of custom one is a gentleman, yet by heaven’s standard a petty person. This is Zhuangzi’s inversion of the values of heaven and the human, not a simple moral praise or blame.

Yan Hui asked Confucius: “When Mengsun Cai’s mother died, he wept without tears, felt no grief in his heart, and showed no sorrow during the mourning period—yet in all three respects he handled things properly. Can there really be someone in Lu who seeks reputation alone and has no genuine feeling?” Yan Hui found this very strange.

Confucius said: “Mengsun’s family has already reached the limit; their state surpasses what people ordinarily call ‘knowing.’ They wanted to reduce the mourning rites further but could not—because they had already been reduced as far as possible. Mengsun’s family does not ask why people are born, does not ask why people die, does not strive to be first, does not cling to being last, but simply transforms along with the ten thousand things. Mengsun’s family has truly reached the end and gone beyond ordinary ‘knowing.’”

“They only wished to simplify the mourning rites yet still had what had to remain, because simplification had gone as far as it could. Mengsun’s family does not know where life comes from, does not know where death goes, does not know how to get ahead, does not know how to fall behind—as if becoming one thing along with transformation, waiting for changes not yet known. About to change—how can one know it will not change? About not to change—how can one know it has already changed? You and I, I fear, are still in a dream and have not yet awakened.”

“That thing has a form that startles people yet no mind that diminishes; it has a dwelling for morning and evening yet no fixed attachment. Mengsun’s family is simply clearer than most people: when others weep, he weeps too—nothing more than each following his own nature. How can you and I know whether the ‘I’ we speak of is really that ‘I’?”

“You dream you are a bird flying in the sky, dream you are a fish sinking in the deep; you do not know whether we who speak now are awake or still dreaming. When chance brings ease, there is no time yet to laugh; when laughter comes, there is no time yet to dismiss it; when dismissal goes and one enters along with transformation—that is what is called entering the boundless realm of the Great Unity.”

Guo Xiang’s commentary explains it this way: someone who fully grasps the principle of life and death and harmonizes inner and outer is one whose conduct follows the Way of Heaven—not something worked out by petty cleverness. If you only pick over “what should live and what should die” yet fail to see that life and death are originally one continuum, that is like the natural succession of spring, summer, autumn, and winter: at no moment does anything fail to rest in its proper place. Becoming one with transformation and generation, one even forgets that one “knows”; dwelling only in the present, why rely on foreknowledge to worry first and rejoice later? Already transformed into being alive, how could one know what came before one was born? About to transform into death, how could one know what follows death? Life and death, waking and dreaming—people truly cannot say where they themselves are. Whatever they meet, they can settle into it; why grieve here for some other place? They may take changes of bodily form as startling, yet do not let the heart be dragged down; the appearance renews day by day, yet they do not treat that renewal as “death.” One who is always awake finds nothing that does not go smoothly; so when others weep, one weeps too—that is fitting. In the changes of life and death, all of it is still “me”; inner and outer are one body, daily renewing with transformation—why still cling to “where am I?” Dreaming one is a bird, dreaming one is a fish—wherever one goes, one is at ease; the shifts of life and death need not be mourned at every turn. Whatever one meets is suitable, so there is no need to deliberately “push aside” things and laugh—“push” means to shift and follow change; ritual demands that weeping be mournful and offerings joyful, but if the heart always harbors joy and sorrow, it cannot accord with the shifting of change. Master Mengsun could constantly rest in following change and go the same way as transformation; thus he entered vast stillness and became one with Heaven.

(Note: This passage belongs to the exegetical tradition related to the Zhuangzi, discussing life and death, dreaming and waking, and becoming one with transformation, largely in the spirit of Guo Xiang’s commentary.)

Lu’s commentary says: only when one understands that there is originally no fixed, unchanging “thing” will one not treat inner and outer, life and death, as two separate things. Why run off to the “beyond the world” and treat death as a delight, even singing over a corpse? Master Mengsun stayed in the setting of mourning and wept with others, yet was not bound by grief—so he differed from ordinary people. Zhuangzi uses Master Mengsun to show that the perfected person does not leave behind the outward forms of life, death, and mourning in the world; he only keeps them plain and simple, without becoming crude because of them.

Those three—the one who roams outside the world, the one who takes death as joy, the one who sings beside a corpse—though they do not know where life and death ultimately rest, still use “life” to set up defenses and “death” to turn back. That is not truly understanding why there is life and why there is death. To take “return to the genuine” as pleasure and to sigh with a human body is not really knowing what comes first and what comes after. Master Mengsun does not know why there is life or death; in life he does not arm himself, in death he does not deliberately turn back. Neither rushing ahead nor lagging behind—then death need not be joy and life need not be sighing. More than that: if we speak of “transforming into things,” that already waits on a transforming power one does not yet know, while the one who transforms also does not know. Just when transformation should happen, how can one know it will not transform? Just when it should not transform, how can one know it has already transformed? Then you and I at this moment—are we still asleep in a dream and not awake?

He has human form, so the form can be startled; the heart does not follow the stir, so the heart is not harmed. Life and death are like day and night, so he can “dan zhai”—treat the dawn as coming home. Without ordinary people’s emotional clinging, there is “qing-less” death. For these reasons Master Mengsun seems especially clear-headed.

Precisely because he understood this, when others wept for him he did not weep along—no tears, no mourning grief. That followed his own inner logic; there is nothing strange about it. When you dream you become a bird or a fish, you do not know you are dreaming; what we say today is hard to fix as waking or dreaming. From this we see Master Mengsun: he forgot us ordinary folk, while he alone was awake.

“Shi” (going toward laughter) is something deliberately made, not self-at-ease—hence “not yet reaching laughter.” Laughter used to dispel laughter is offered up, not true joy—hence “not yet reaching dispelling.” “Dispelling” is driving off sorrow and leaving. Master Mengsun’s kind of forgetting life and death cannot be deliberately manufactured and offered up either. To “arrange” (shun ren, yielding and accepting) is not to dispel by deliberate action; to “go toward transformation” (shun hua) is to know what cannot be resisted and to follow it; “liao” (open vastness) neither obstructs Heaven nor clings to the human; one thread, not two—here the Way is fully spoken.

This passage discusses Meng Sunshi’s way of meeting the world, and a linked series of Zhuangzi’s reflections on life and death, form and spirit, and dream versus awakening.

Ordinary people only know what it is to live; they do not know what death is. Meng Sunshi understood what others did not, so it is said that he “advanced beyond knowing”—he went deeper in understanding. He was at ease with life and at ease with death, without having to pick and choose between them, flee one, or chase the other. What Meng Sunshi took hold of and let go of was the Dao; he did not treat life and death as two things to pursue or avoid. When change comes it cannot be blocked; when it goes it cannot be caught—better to forget fixed attachments, wait in accord with principle, and when principle is present, respond accordingly. Only what is not shaken by change can, while still alive, penetrate the principle of death. Hence it is also said: if change is about to happen, how do you know it will not change? If change is not about to happen, how do you know it has already changed? Whatever the world ties you to is dream; when you truly awaken, even life and death cannot bind you—how much less the rules of worldly mourning?

When Meng Sunshi’s mother died, he wept when he saw others weep, yet inwardly he was not harmed. The bodily form is like “danzai”—a lodging for a single night. Ordinary people bind feeling and knowing to the form, so when the form perishes, feeling perishes too. The realized person knows the form is not truly “mine”; the body is only borrowed lodging for a night—the form may die while feeling need not die with it. Meng Sunshi transcended the dust of the world and awakened on his own, so it is said he was “uniquely awakened.” Words like “na” in the text touch on qi and atmosphere and are hard to put into language. When he wept, it did not surge from his inmost heart; he wept because others wept—that is precisely what was difficult and exalted about him. My living and my dying—wherever I go, it is still “me.” Dreaming I am a bird, dreaming I am a fish—I settle wherever I meet what comes, not knowing whether this “na” is na after awakening or na in a dream. Before one has reached the principle of life and death, even if one calls oneself awake, one is still in a dream; when one truly awakens, there is no split between awakening and dreaming. Only what fits by chance is truly fitting; if you insist on “fitting,” you cannot laugh. When the heart is not joyful yet one laughs for others’ sake, that is “offered laughter.” “Pai” means being carried along by the principle of zaohua (creation and transformation); only when there is no place one cannot fit does fitting reach laughter and joy; then laughter is truly laughter, and that extends to pai (being carried along). Thus the realized person rests in what shifts and forgets what changes, enters vast emptiness, and becomes one with Heaven.

Xiang Dao says: Meng Sun Shi was skilled at mourning—what he preserved was the Dao. Yan Hui’s rebuke drew on ordinary human feelings. If Meng Sun Shi had reduced the mourning rites to the utmost extreme, what remained would be the Dao itself; why then bother with the order of death and life, before and after? Ordinary people are bound by the body and burdened by staying alive—that is the usual way. If one can fear for the body without harming the mind, one does not treat the body as something to be buried with the dead; if one has the insight that “the bodily form is only a temporary lodging, and one does not cling to birth and death,” one does not treat living as a burden. Then in matters “on that side” one follows along without resisting—when others weep, one weeps too; in matters “on this side” there is no need for grief—hence weeping without sorrow.

If one forces oneself to seek “contentment,” one still falls short of a natural laugh; if others laugh at one, one cannot dismiss it and break free. Meng Sun Shi’s heart was not truly sorrowful or truly joyful—when others wept, he wept too, joining in expression, what is called “making it up and offering it.” That he did not reach true sorrow is reasonable: at ease with change without harming the mind, letting go of transformation without fixating on life and death, he entered a vast emptiness and became one with Heaven.

Chen Bixu says: Weeping, wearing mourning, and conducting the funeral are rites for serving the dead; shedding no tears and not grieving are the way of penetrating birth and death. One can fully perform mourning rites and advance to wisdom (zhi), seeing birth and death as a single thread—yet one cannot reduce that thread any further; though birth and death are already simplified, one still cannot simplify “weeping” away entirely.

Having what one avoids and what one accepts is ordinary feeling. Today’s “having a body” is already being transformed by change; once one is what change makes, one shifts with whatever change brings. When about to change, how can one know that after death one enters empty vastness and will not become human again? When about not to change, how can one know that life is brief and slips away in an instant? The form follows transformation, hence “startled by the form”; the mind is one with empty vastness, hence “no harm to the mind.” The body is the spirit’s dwelling—today one inhabits it and keeps it in order; tomorrow one moves on and it becomes discarded goods. Only the attained person lives on by following change, hence “no feeling toward death.” Yan Hui’s words liken it to breath leaving the body with difficulty—meaning that forgetting grief yet still having to weep is not easy.

Life is also “me,” death is also “me”—hence “together with each other.” The Perfect Person (zhiren) has no fixed “self”—where is not a dream? Dreaming one is fish or bird, roaming the deep abyss, sinking to the bottom—likewise. People have long been confused about birth and death, waking and dreaming. They do not know that those who dwell in the long view have no waking or dreaming, and those beyond images have no birth or death.

Forced, artificial pleasure falls short of natural laughter; offering a smile on display falls short of the unattached release of “pushing aside.” Meng Sun Shi was at ease with that release, untroubled by passing into change, and entered the silent Heaven, blending with the funeral rites without duality.

Zhao’s commentary says: When Meng Sun’s mother died, his face did not show extraordinary grief, yet he gained a reputation for “observing mourning well.” The Master of Lu (Confucius) said that Meng Sun had penetrated the logic of life and death and reached the level of “extending knowledge”; yet ritual still required mourning and weeping—you cannot simply skip what you wish to simplify. If one truly felt no sorrow, that would already be “simplification”—but he was not ignorant of the order of life and death; toward his mother he still practiced filial piety: serving the living and serving the dead were, in his view, one and the same.

“If transformed into another thing” means the other party has already become something else. What humans cannot know is neither strictly “life” nor strictly “transformation”—why wait until that unknowable layer is fully transformed before stopping? What can transform is form; what does not transform is the non-formal. How could what transforms and what does not recognize each other?

“Having a startling form yet without injury to the heart”—outward appearance may startle, but the heart is not wounded. “Having a day-residence yet without emotional death”—like a lodging at dawn, without feelings stirred by death. That is: there is human form, but no human emotional fixation. The Master said to Yan Hui: You and I have not yet awakened; Meng Sun has already awakened. When others wept, he wept along, without clinging to “why weep,” so the heart was not damaged. Having form without emotional fixation follows the same logic. When the Master said they had not awakened while Meng Sun had, he meant this.

The character “day” (dan): day is birth, night is death. Ordinary people take “life” as “me,” not knowing that death is actually “the day within night”—brightness on the other side. What is called “me” persists through past and present; in dreams one becomes fish or bird without knowing it is a dream. Now the mouth speaks of dreaming—is that different from the dream itself?

One who can “create suitability” is at ease wherever he goes, so there is no deliberate effort “falling short of laughter”; offering laughter is joy responding to circumstance, likewise no deliberate effort “falling short of pushing away.” Only by resting in the Creator’s pushing and arranging, leaving the tangle of endless birth and transformation, does one enter the far heights and become a companion of Heaven (tian).

Yihai Zuanwei elaborates on the passage about Meng Sun in the “Grand Master” chapter of Zhuangzi along the following lines.

Yan Zhai said: To speak to someone with insight is to speak to someone who understands the Dao. “Simplifying and still not achieving it” refers to mourning and burying a parent—wanting to reduce even weeping as far as possible yet being unable to do so. Though one wishes to simplify, one’s conduct is already as spare as can be, yet one still does not know what comes first, birth or death; one only follows the cycle of return and renewal without knowing where it begins or ends, entrusting oneself to the Creator to become a thing among things, and awaiting changes one cannot foresee. He also said: leave it to nature—how then can one know what is about to change, what has changed, and what has not yet changed? The other person understood this principle; I found it strange—because I had not yet awakened from my dream.

The body changes from youth to age; though that may startle, when the mind is at ease and unburdened, the heart is unharmed. Dawn is life, like dwelling in a place; birth and death are like night and dawn. Knowing that what life “dwells in” is only a temporary lodging, one sees that death is not death in the ultimate sense—hence “no [clinging] feeling”: death is only awakening. When others weep, I weep too—simply following the crowd. This is where one wishes to simplify yet cannot; it is also where one finds one’s own subtle point: wanting to simplify and failing, one weeps with the rest.

And now, among us—since you take me as strange, how do you know what sort of “I” my words refer to? Here Zhuangzi stirs up his language; the reader should use a second pair of eyes. Dreaming of birds or fish is merely the idea of the earlier “transformation into a butterfly”: whether the speaker is awake or dreaming is Zhou dreaming he is a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming it is Zhou—mind goes where it will; sometimes one has no leisure even to laugh. Laughing because of things means things offer laughter to one— it arises naturally, without contrivance. Success and failure, gain and loss in the world are all already arranged; I only rest in what is arranged and follow transformation—then one can enter “the vast oneness of heaven.” “Vast oneness of heaven” is simply the name the Creator gives to what is so.

In the previous section, Zi Si, Zi Yu, Zi Li, and Zi Lai befriended one another: Zi Yu’s body was ill but his mind was untroubled; Zi Lai was about to die yet his spirit was unafraid—those who grasp principle and follow transformation. In the next section, when Zi Sanghu died, two friends composed a song and played lute and drum in harmony—those who forget the body and delight in transformation. In this chapter, burying his mother, he wished to simplify yet could not, so he wept without tears and his heart was not mournful; he did not know why there is life or why there is death—how could he know to take leaping, wailing, and weeping as ritual? The main idea is to show that birth and death are nothing to treat as alien, so that people may be at ease and follow them, delight and forget them; the living are not driven to ruin, the dead are spared shock and fear, and where the spirit roams is full joy—then what one lodges in will surely not be a violent or brutal body.

Consider the transformations of cicadas, dragonflies, and butterflies—the principle can be extended: about to transform, not yet transformed, fixed and still, not knowing the boundary between self and other; secretly awaiting the response of heaven-and-earth qi, the old shell is shed here and form is renewed there. At the moment of transformation, if one is touched by mistake by another thing, one may grow angry and turn into an ugly form—mind changes within, form shifts without; something has summoned it. Transformation comes from the Creator, yet one can also see things self-creating; the mechanism must not be treated lightly. Where the mind settles is “self-made ease”; self-made ease means true joy fulfilled within—not delight only after laughter. Laughing because of things is “offered laughter”—offered laughter is forced, inferior to the naturalness of being pushed along by arrangement. Things’ success and failure depend on the Creator’s pushing and arranging; human joy and sorrow depend on what that pushing meets. To rest in that pushing and follow transformation is to enter vast remoteness, accord with nature, and blend heaven and person without a second.

This passage is about Meng Sun: clear about fate, adept at change, following transformation and forgetting feeling, treating birth and death wholly as night and dawn, provisionally lodging awakening and dream between them—how could that tie one to joy and sorrow? One might ask: Meng Sun forgot feeling in face of birth and death and had no grief in his heart—clear enough, but applied to burying his mother, slighting kin and violating ritual—does that not make him an offender against name and teaching? Answer: those outside the usual bounds repay parents with substance, not with outward form; they care about hidden merit and secret practice, untying fetal knots, and ultimately the wonder of full spirit and transcendent transformation—why bother with the petty rites of the world? Confucius’s friend Yuan Rang, when his mother died, climbed a tree and sang—going even further; Confucius passed by as if he had not heard and in the end did not rebuke him. This is the distinction between roaming inside and outside the square, and between ritual-teaching as form versus substance—not something one can discuss without broad vision.

Yi Erzi went to visit Xu You. Xu You asked, “What did Yao teach you with?” Yi Erzi replied, “Yao told me: You must personally practice benevolence and righteousness, and you must also distinguish right from wrong with perfect clarity.”

Xu You said, “Then why have you come to Zhi? Yao has already tattooed your face with benevolence and righteousness, and cut off your nose with right and wrong. How can you still walk the vast, free, easy path of carefree wandering?” Yi Erzi said, “Even so, I still want to walk along the edge of that path.”

Xu You said, “No. With someone blind in the eyes, you cannot discuss the beauty of brows and complexion; with someone blind in vision, you cannot discuss the splendor of blue, yellow, and the patterned brocades on ancient ceremonial robes.” Yi Erzi said, “Wuzhuang lost her beauty, Jubiang lost his strength, and the Yellow Emperor lost his cleverness—all were worked in the furnace and hammer of the Creator. Are we only fit to linger on the ‘edge’?”

Xu You said again, “No.” (He repeats that the blind cannot be spoken to about brows and brocade patterns.) Yi Erzi then answered, “Do you not know that the Creator will not leave me forever bearing the face-tattoo of benevolence and righteousness and the nose-cut of right and wrong, but will repair and complete me, so that I may ride this whole form and follow the Master?”

Xu You sighed and said, “Ah, that too is uncertain. Let me tell you roughly: ‘My Master! My Master! He nurtures the ten thousand things yet does not call it righteousness; his favor extends through ten thousand generations yet he does not call it benevolence; he is older than the most ancient antiquity yet does not call himself old; he covers and carries heaven and earth and carves the ten thousand forms yet does not call it skill—to wander, one should wander in such a realm.’”

In Guo Xiang’s reading, to “carve the face with benevolence and righteousness” and “cut off the nose with right and wrong” means that they relied on external moral instruction and thereby harmed themselves, so they could not reach the utmost carefree wandering (xiaoyao). Their hearts may have yearned for it, yet they still did not dare to enter the true Way—they only wandered just outside the fence. Xu You did not see it that way. He said that things in the world are not all born entirely on their own; some must be smelted and hammered before they become useful vessels. Thus Wu Zhuang, Ju Liang, and the Yellow Emperor all only let go of what they clung to after they had heard the Dao. Here the narrative is used as a vehicle for teaching: to cast off the burden of youwei (deliberate, contrived action).

To follow one’s nature and go straight ahead is natural; to depart and yet wound one’s nature, and then to be able to mend that wound, is also natural. How then can one insist that my natural course must endlessly “repair the tattoo” and “restore the severed nose,” and only then, riding an already-formed mind, follow the Master’s (Xu You’s) path of wuwei (non-action)?

In Lü Huiqing’s reading, the Great Dao lies in vast openness, carefree wandering, free unfolding, and constant transformation—right on this path. Wu Zhuang was trapped by beauty because he prized his own loveliness; Ju Liang was trapped by strength because he prized his own power. The Yellow Emperor once purified his heart and disciplined his body, seeking to return to a state without knowing—showing that at the outset one cannot avoid using zhi (intellectual knowing). The furnace is for smelting; the hammer is for forging—the three men’s release was not because their natures were originally free of such burdens, but because they were refined as if passed through furnace and hammer. Who is to say the Creator will not stop my “tattoo” for me, mend my “severed nose,” and let me ride my already-formed mind to follow the Master in wuwei?

The great marsh has nourished the myriad things since antiquity; it shapes the ten thousand forms—where I roam and whom I take as teacher is precisely this. If you wish to still the tattoo and repair the severed nose, it is enough to take this as your teacher.

Lin Commentary (Lin family annotation) says: Yao personally practiced benevolence and righteousness in order to exhaust and make manifest human nature; he clearly distinguished right from wrong in order to carry reason through to the end. Yao was one who governed the world in the manner of “within the square” (within worldly rites and law), and that is why he spoke to Xu You as he did.

Xu You’s meaning was: Yao has already “tattooed” benevolence and righteousness upon your face and “cut off your nose” with right and wrong—what are you still doing here? He wandered far in openness, moved about at will, and came and went freely. Xu You had already understood that when people are bound by benevolence, righteousness, right, and wrong, they cannot break free; now he only wished to roam outside the fence of the Dao. Xu You used “blind and deaf” to stand for this state of being obscured by benevolence, righteousness, right, and wrong. Xu You was willing in heart to receive instruction, and so he brought up those three figures (the ones in the text who “lost their beauty, lost their strength, lost their knowledge”): their beauty, strength, and knowledge were all dissolved in the “furnace and hammer” (smelting and forging). That people can arrive at the Dao also depends on learning—how could one know that the Creator does not cease to “mend” the places where I was tattooed and mutilated, so that I may ride upon what has already been fulfilled in my aspiration and roam outside the fence of the Dao with the Master? Xu You used blind and deaf as a metaphor for being trapped by benevolence and right and wrong; Xu You wished to be taught, and therefore cited the three who lost beauty, strength, and knowledge—all of it within the furnace and hammer. That people reach the Dao is also through learning; who knows whether the Creator, without ceasing, mends my tattooed and mutilated parts and lets me ride the Dao already achieved to follow the Master?

Xu You also said: The ten thousand things are each made so by themselves; neither you nor I can fathom their root—we can only each guard ourselves. “My master!” refers to the Dao: crushing the ten thousand things without calling it righteousness, overthrowing states without losing the people’s hearts—the meaning is the same. In sum, the ten thousand things are all spontaneous; to whom do the names “benevolence” and “righteousness” cling? “Older than high antiquity yet never aging” speaks of the Dao’s lasting presence; “covering and bearing heaven and earth” is the Dao’s substance; “carving and shaping the myriad forms” is the Dao’s function. Everywhere I roam, it is nothing more than this.

Xiangdao Commentary says: When people of old discussed the Dao, by the second turn of speech they had fallen into benevolence and righteousness, and by the eighth into right and wrong. Benevolence and righteousness are the Dao spread out and diffused; right and wrong are the thin edge of benevolence and righteousness. Then the harm of benevolence and righteousness is like tattooing you; the harm of right and wrong is like cutting off your nose. “Losing their knowledge” is more utterly without knowing than losing beauty or losing strength. Xu You held that those blinded and deafened by benevolence, righteousness, right, and wrong are not fit to see the Dao. Xu You said that beauty, strength, and knowledge, stripped away in smelting, can all enter the Dao; then what was lacking before is “mended and restored,” and what is achieved afterward is “guided and cultivated.” Thus to crush the ten thousand things is not cruelty; to extend grace through ten thousand generations is not partiality; to be older than high antiquity yet never to age means its transformations renew day by day; to carve the myriad forms without showing off skill means its workings hide day by day. Could anyone who merely drifts on the surface of benevolence, righteousness, right, and wrong be like this?

The Bixu commentary says: What sages leave behind for later ages to accomplish lies in instruction and guidance alone. Therefore shattering the myriad things is not born of violence, and extending favor through ten thousand generations is not born of private affection; enduring from highest antiquity without aging means transformation renews day by day; carving the ten thousand forms without craftiness means function hides deeper day by day. Could anyone who does not roam outside benevolence, righteousness, right, and wrong do this?

It also says: If you take the sage’s traces as branding and mutilation, how can you roam in a realm of free release and nothing to tie you down? Knowledge, strength, and beauty were originally part of what you received from endowment; the reason they are hard to shed is that upon hearing the “Dao” you lost what was originally true. This means even the nature and disposition of sages must be forged and refined before they are complete—how much more so for talents of middle and lower rank? Though you are now diminished by the sage’s traces, do you not know that the Creator has unceasing restorative nurture? Nature is originally empty and spirit-like—what can branding and cutting damage? Now, riding this completed nature, follow after the Master—why still doubt? The Dao-master originally had no name of benevolence and righteousness; you now invite the reproach of branding and cutting—can you not wonder at it? Only when appearances are wholly extinguished can you roam in the domain of the Dao.

The Zhao commentary says: From the perspective of “Yi” (the mind): since Yao has branded and cut your body with benevolence, righteousness, right, and wrong, there is no more wavering, free-and-easy joy; Yi wishes to roam—can it roam in the domain of the Dao? From the perspective of “Mang and Gu” informing him: Yi then awakens—benevolence, righteousness, right, and wrong stored in the breast truly suffice to harm the Dao. Thereupon he cites beauty, strength, and knowledge as analogies: once passed through the great smelter, he understands with ease and joy—how does he know whether my branding has not ceased and my cutting not been restored? “My master!” means the Dao I take as master; the benevolence I speak of is not your benevolence; yin harsh and the myriad things killed is not righteousness; yang gentle and the myriad things born is not benevolence; encompassing and completing in every turn is not craft. My Dao is simply thus—you should roam here.

What Yi Er describes as “roaming far and wide, unrestrained release, indulgent freedom, moving in every direction, shifting and transforming” refers to a state in which spirit and mind are expansive in heaven and earth—unbound by physical form, turning and flowing with the momentum of things. The image of “blindness and deafness” means the other party’s endowment is not yet sufficient to hear the Way directly; one can only shed old habits first and awaken within change and transfer. He hopes to serve the Master along the natural order of things, yet sighs “it cannot yet be known”—whether it can truly be done remains uncertain.

From “My Master!” onward, the text introduces the chapter “The Great Master” (Dazongshi): non-action (wuwei) yet nothing left undone, utterly spontaneous. I have no heart for names and teachings, so it cannot be pinned down with labels like “benevolence and righteousness.” The Book of Changes says “it drums on the ten thousand things yet does not share the sage’s worries”—the same idea. Lines such as “extending back to highest antiquity” all portray the Way of nature: when the mind roams in the natural, one sees that heaven and earth are born together with me and the ten thousand things are one with me; what I roam in is nothing more than this. Xu You devoted himself to non-action and forgot the world together; Yao could not escape purposeful action and sought to benefit the world together. When one forgets together, the self is at ease and the world transforms itself; when one benefits together, the self toils and the world finds its own ease. The sage may emerge or withdraw—there is a distinction between “within the square” and “beyond the square”: they differ in outward track, yet are the same at heart. Personally practicing benevolence and righteousness and speaking clearly of right and wrong belong to learning within the square; the path of roaming freely, indulgent release, and shifting transformation is wandering beyond the square.

After ritual teaching had already imposed “tattooing, branding, mutilation, and nose-cutting,” Yi Er still understood in the heart upon hearing these words and wished to leave the square within to wander beyond—his aspiration is admirable. Yet before Xu You had even assented, the narrative brings in Zisi, Ziyu, Zili, and Zilai—people of extraordinary natural endowment who still heard the Way and were transformed. This shows that my coming here, too, is part of smelting and tempering. Learning the Way is originally for returning to the beginning, preserving wholeness, and avoiding harm; once one has been “tattooed” and “nose-cut,” to expect the Creator to repair and restore—is that not very difficult? If one can truly clarify that things create themselves, then so-called tattooing and nose-cutting are also self-stilled and self-restored—why need the Creator intervene? Yi Er said: if tattooing can be stilled and nose-cutting restored, I would again become a “whole person,” and riding this opportunity of completion to follow after the Master and advance in the Way would not be too late. People’s trouble lies in passing faults without reform and wandering in delusion without return; Yi Er saw yesterday’s error and today’s rightness—he may be called one who is good at returning to the beginning.

What humans take as master is the Dao. “My Master!” refers to the Dao; the four lines that follow unfold the Way of the Great Master: transcending benevolence and righteousness yet running through ancient and modern, arising from the work of non-action and the transformation that does not transform—how could worldly craft reach it? “Roaming” means lingering there at ease; nowhere is not carefree wandering, which is why the classic speaks of this again and again in many places.

Main Text

Yan Hui said, “I have made progress.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I have forgotten benevolence and righteousness.” Confucius said, “That will do, but it is not enough yet.”

On another day they met again. Yan Hui said, “I have made progress again.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I have forgotten ritual and music.” Confucius said, “That will do, but it is not enough yet.”

When they met once more, Yan Hui said, “I have made progress again.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I sit in forgetting.” Confucius asked in surprise, “What is sitting in forgetting?”

Yan Hui said, “Forgetting the limbs, dropping cleverness, leaving the body and discarding knowledge, merging with the great Dao as one—that is what is called sitting in forgetting.”

Confucius said, “Being one with the Dao means having no preferences; changing with transformation means having nothing fixed. You are truly worthy! I, Kong Qiu, ask to study behind you.”

Guo Xiang’s Commentary (Summary)

Yan Hui took “reduction” as progress, but Confucius pointed out: benevolence is the trace left by universal love; righteousness is the manifestation of completing things. As long as one holds on to benevolence and righteousness, one still does not understand where love and benefit come from, so one must forget them with a mind free of attachment. Yet to forget only achievements and traces is still not the clearest point. Ritual is the norm for the body; music is the tool for settling life. Forgetting the tools is still not as good as forgetting why there need to be such tools. Sitting in forgetting means forgetting traces and also forgetting the root that produces traces—within, not feeling that there is this body; without, not knowing that there is Heaven and Earth—thus becoming one with transformation and not differing from anything. When there is no difference, nothing is inappropriate, so there is no liking or disliking. Whoever is the same as transformation simply follows wherever transformation goes, so there is nothing constant.

Lü Huiqing’s Commentary (Summary)

People have been “people” for a long time; though awakening to the Dao can happen in a single phrase, to return to “no-thing” and reach sitting in forgetting is not the work of a single day. Yan Hui had heard of heart fasting (xinzhai—inner emptiness and non-attachment); if he had not yet truly “returned” (turned back toward the Dao), he might awaken in one saying—but from forgetting benevolence and righteousness and forgetting ritual and music up to sitting in forgetting is gradual accumulation over time. Being one with the great penetration (the Dao’s thoroughgoing openness) is being one with transformation. Sameness means that the myriad things are seen as one in what they share, so there is no preference; transformation means the root has no end, so there is nothing fixed.

Lin's Commentary

Yan Hui moved from “forgetting benevolence and righteousness” to further “forgetting ritual and music,” yet he had still not left a realm of distinction and boundary; in his mind there remained attachment to “things.” Going one step further to “no thing,” his four limbs seemed to fall away and his cleverness seemed to go out—leaving form behind and shedding knowledge, he merged with the Great Thoroughfare (Datong), and this alone was the summit. The so-called “dropping” and “deposing” still carried a touch of effort; only when one reaches “departure” is it truly natural. To be one with the Great Thoroughfare is to be one with the myriad things. Liking and disliking arise from “difference”; once there is sameness, there is no liking or disliking. “Fate (ming)” is what lets each thing attain its form; “transformation (hua)” is change without fixed pattern. To say that Hui could be one with things and go along with transformation, and that Confucius said he wished to follow behind—to be one with things and go along with transformation—is Confucius’s modest expression.

Xiangdao Commentary

Take tributaries as the hundred streams: one sees only the streams and not the sea; when the hundred streams return to the sea, one sees only the sea and not the streams. The Dao is like the sea; benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music are like the hundred streams. After Hui attained the Dao and forgot benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music, it was seeing the sea and forgetting the hundred streams—but he had not yet forgotten the Dao. When he left form behind, forgot things, shed knowledge and forgot the mind, resting easy without attachment—where then was the Dao? It was simply “forgetting both” together with me—that is why Hui was worthy. Righteousness is close to ritual, and benevolence is close to music—hence one first forgets righteousness and then forgets ritual, first forgets benevolence and then forgets music.

Bixu Commentary

What Yan Hui advanced was diminishing the outer: forgetting ritual, forgetting benevolence, and then forgetting music. Within Hui’s “forgetting” there was still something “not forgotten”; the gain lay in what is called “diminishing”—not forgetting what one has forgotten, in order to return to sincerity; then “forgetting diminishing again and again,” until reaching “no diminishing”—only one who has attained the subtlety of “sitting in forgetfulness (zuowang)” can measure up to this.

Bi Xu’s Commentary

Bi Xu explains Yan Hui’s word yi (gain): reduce what is outward and increase what is inward. Caring for all things is ren (benevolence); benefiting all things is yi (rightness). Ren and yi both belong to the outer realm; if you can forget them, you have advanced on the Dao, but you have not yet arrived. Li (ritual propriety) is the bearing of the body; yue (music) is inner harmony. Li and yue both depend on the inner mind; if you can forget them, you have again advanced on the Dao, yet still not arrived. Zuowang (sitting in forgetfulness) means forgetting at every moment. “Sloughing off limbs and body” means that in dealing with affairs and meeting the world, you drop all thought of the physical form; “dulling wit and intelligence” means that in clear seeing, you drop all thought of cleverness. Forgetting in action is leaving form and shedding knowledge; forgetting in insight is becoming one with the Great Penetration (the state in which one is fully continuous with the Dao, without blockage or hindrance). When body and empty space are one substance, there is no liking or disliking; when mind and creative transformation are one substance, there is no clinging to permanence or change (no fixed either-or distinctions).

Zhao’s Commentary

Ren, yi, li, and yue are things a gentleman cannot do without for a single day; Yan Hui’s mind was fused with principle, so he no longer needed to uphold those four labels and could forget them. “Sloughing off limbs and body” is leaving form; “dulling wit and intelligence” is shedding cleverness. Becoming one with Great Penetration is becoming one with the Dao. Confucius’s meaning was roughly: only when both sides of liking and disliking are reduced and both sides of permanence and change are extinguished can it be called “sameness” and “transformation.” If you can do this, I will take you as my teacher—but he may not have fully meant it in his heart. He also said that “sloughing,” “dulling,” “leaving,” and “shedding” still involve a mind at work and cannot truly be called forgetting.

Yan Zhai’s Commentary

The deep meaning of “zuowang” is Zhuangzi’s device of putting words in Yan Hui’s mouth to describe the subtlety of cultivating the Dao. Yi (gain) means that something has been attained. First forget ren and yi, then forget li and yue—like first “setting the world aside” and then “setting things aside”; when you reach zuowang, both being and non-being are released, the four limbs and the senses no longer know themselves, and you are the same as the way of Great Penetration. One with the Dao, then transformation; in transformation, the mind arises from nowhere in particular.

Ren and yi originate in the heart; when the heart reaches emptiness, they are easy to forget. Li and yue are formed by habit; long habit makes them hard to forget. Yan Hui had already reached zuowang in both respects and could do what others found difficult; when one can, there is transformation; in transformation, the mind arises from nowhere in particular.

Humanity and righteousness (ren and yi) arise from the heart; when the heart can be empty and still, it is easier to set aside thoughts of humanity and righteousness. Ritual and music come from long practice; once habit is deep, they become hard to let go. Yan Hui had already reached “sitting in oblivion” (zuowang) in both respects—a level others rarely match—yet Confucius still felt he had not reached the summit and pushed him one step further, toward the end of the Dao. From this we see Confucius’s purpose in “forging” Yan Hui. Others at this point often “turn back at the cliff” (stop while still short); Yan Hui went further into the depth of sitting in oblivion, and only then did Confucius startle and press him, amazed at how far he had gone. Yan Hui answered: to leave the body and drop cleverness, to become one with the Great Penetration (datong)—the undivided flow of the Dao—one must first forget the self, then forget things; that is sitting in oblivion. To be one with the Great Penetration is not to force sameness but to naturally align with the Dao, like the great transformation that never pauses: people turn with it through youth, maturity, age, coming and going, rise and fall—there is no fixed form. It is not that people must chase transformation; things follow their nature, past and present alike. Those who attain the Dao simply refuse to be dragged by transformation—they rely on “forgetting” alone. These two lines are a classic exchange in which Confucius tests sitting in oblivion: to find sameness within difference, to rest within change, to place the body in forgetting and unite emptiness with the Dao—that is the end. If one trusts that outer habit need not disturb one’s original truth, sitting in oblivion belongs to the proper work of learning the Dao; Confucius held Yan Hui up as the worthy one to encourage and guide his disciples.

Ziyu and Zisang were friends. After ten days of heavy rain, Ziyu said: Zisang is probably ill; he wrapped some food and went to see him. At Zisang’s door he heard singing and weeping, someone strumming and chanting: “Father? Mother? Heaven? Man?” Ziyu went in and asked: Why does your song sound like this? Zisang replied: I try to trace who brought me to this state, and I cannot trace it. Would parents wish poverty and sickness on me? Heaven covers all without partiality, earth bears all without partiality—how would heaven and earth single me out for poverty? I search for the one who “set this in motion” and find no one; yet here I am in this condition—it can only be ming (fate, what is allotted).

Guo Xiang’s commentary

These two people help each other from within wuwei (non-action). When someone wraps food and goes to feed another, it is because circumstances have come to that point—not because they first agreed to “help each other” and then went. Zi Sang plays the zither and sings a lament, trying to find who reduced him to this state, yet finds no one—showing that the ten thousand things are naturally thus, in the domain of wuwei.

Guo Xiang (continued)

In “The Great Master,” Zhuangzi first discusses Meng Sun Cai, Yan Hui, and others, as if among Confucius’s disciples the highest attainment were to “embodify nature, embrace shen (spirit), and play freely in the world.” He also feared readers might think Zi Sang inferior to Meng Sun Shi and Zi Yu inferior to Zi Sang, so he treats them together. In the end, all come down to “being at ease with ming (fate/life’s allotment).” Outwardly they differ, yet all take the Dao as the great master; when it comes to ming, the destination is the same.

Lin Xiyi’s commentary

Zi Sang forgets body and forgets life, so in illness he does not treat sickness as sickness and attributes everything to ming; nor does he strain his voice—weak from illness, his poem speaks only of ming; the point is the same.

Lin Xiyi (continued)

Parents are closest, Heaven and Earth most impartial—how could they mean to leave one destitute? If one asks “who made me like this,” the question has nowhere to land, and one can only call it ming. All transformation finally returns to one ming—this is the utmost of the Dao.

Bixu’s commentary

In cold, give clothing; in hunger, give food—like fish keeping each other moist with spittle, not for show. “Cannot sustain his voice” means exhaustion, no full voice; “hurriedly reciting his poem” means distress and clipped words, the verse not forming complete lines. At the extreme of want and sickness, seeking “who did this” without an answer, one finally ascribes it to ming—accept ming and nothing remains blocked.

Yan Zhai’s commentary

“Cannot sustain his voice”: too weak, the voice faint. “Hurriedly reciting his poem”: the breast tight, words rushed. “Would my parents wish me poor?” and “Would Heaven and Earth single me out for poverty?”—language at its finest. Seeking who did it without finding it, one returns to ming—here ming is the principle of nature; that principle stands above Heaven and Earth; ming is that natural principle, also what is called the “great master.” Reading this chapter of the Zhuangzi, its aim rises above the “Effort and Fate” chapter of the Liezi.

Zhao’s annotated explanation: Zisang could rest in his allotted lot amid destitution—of one spirit with Confucius, who between Chen and Cai was besieged yet never stopped singing, and with Yan Hui, who dwelt in a mean alley yet never lost his joy.

What the ancients meant by “friend” was people who uphold one another in the Way and in virtue, who together build character and accomplishment, who rescue one another in sudden hardship, and who do not forsake one another in life or in death. Consider how Ziyu treated Zisang: he truly practiced friendship. That he still worried Zisang might fall ill when the rains came was because he knew Zisang was poor; that he wrapped food and brought it was because he knew Zisang was hungry; that he was startled on entering to hear Zisang singing was because he feared that in his straits Zisang might resent his lot and lose his inner footing. When Zisang said, “Did my parents wish me poor? Did Heaven and Earth single me out alone for poverty?” that was penetrating discourse—not something ordinary want could crush. The point is only that even at that stage he had not yet fully forgotten feeling; once he attributed it all to fate (ming), he could overcome it by reason and meet it with the Way—hence Ziyu could share with him a wordless understanding.

The Zhuangzi (Nan Hua) uses this passage to close the “Great Master” chapter—much as in Zhang Zai’s Western Inscription: “Poverty, low estate, worry, and grief polish you to completion.” Without long refinement and nurture carried to the utmost, one is not equal to great responsibility. Students of the Way should take this deeply to heart.

The multitude of people takes the ruler as its head; the multitude of learners takes the teacher as their guide. Heaven produces sages to be rulers and teachers—only thus can they bear great charge. Students of the Way should likewise take this deeply to heart.

All things in the world take the ruler as their supreme head; those who seek learning take the teacher as their guide. Heaven and earth bring forth sages so they may serve as rulers and teachers—establishing a flourishing order of governance and opening the wellspring of transformation, so that people know virtue is to be honored and life-and-nature (xingming) is to be pursued to the limit, ruler and subject, father and son each keep their proper roles, and all under heaven returns to great order.

Yet the root of “rectifying the mind and making the will sincere” lies in the Dao; the subtlety of transmitting the Way cannot be borne except by a teacher—here the role of the Dao is greatest. “Zongshi” (Ancestral Master) is the title scholars follow and revere; adding the word “great” is like saying “father of fathers.” The chapter opens by discussing “knowing Heaven” and “knowing humanity,” and “clarity about fate and rightness” to establish the root: using what is known to nurture what is not known, aligning the human with Heaven; knowledge that arises from not-knowing is knowledge at its utmost. Hence what follows on the True Person (Zhenren) and true knowing: in sleep no dreams, awake no worry; going out without precaution yet not turned away at the border—empty and still without show, nearly wordless, truly wuwei (non-action); yet punishments, rites, wisdom, and virtue—the tools of ordering the world—are also densely used to embody and support this, reaching the way of inner sagehood and outer kingship.

If people can love their father and be loyal to their lord, even the body may be given up; how much more one who stands forth as utterly true? The worth of the true is honored above the commands of lord and father, yet the world does not know this and only drowns in petty kindness like “moistening with spit and foam”—far inferior to “forgetting each other in rivers and lakes.” The great clod bearing our form, releasing us in old age and resting us in death, is the Creator’s kindness to our bodies; because people mostly cling to life and fear death, the parables of “hiding a boat in a ravine” and “hiding a mountain” are set up to break that delusion. Whatever has form and the principle of life is subject to change; even deep ravines and marshes cannot escape transformation—so the Creator is formless yet mighty. To hide the boundless cosmos in a limited body—how can one guarantee it will not be lost? Only one who “hides the world within the world” has nowhere to flee—this is what the sage roams in, what the One Transformation awaits. Giving birth to Heaven and Earth, myriad transformations without end—why rejoice merely at meeting a human shape? Ascending long life without aging, mounting the clouds and dwelling in the dark palace—all are the wondrous workings of the True Person; the Great Master (Dazongshi) takes this as root, and people, things, and disciples rely on it as their lifeline.

Nüyu (the adept in the chapter) has neither ancient nor modern, so birth and death cannot bind her; sacrifice comes without resisting, friendship without gap—so self and things cannot be blocked. Thus cock on the left, pellet on the right, spirit horse with wheel at the rump—yielding to the Creator’s transforming nurture, at ease wherever encountered—this is what the ancients called “suspended liberation” (xuanjie). Why fuss over “insect arm and rat liver” and rashly doubt the leap into the furnace? Zifan and Qin Zhang played the zither to mourn Sanghu—taking involvement with the world as toil and return to the true as fortune; they wander outside the square, unlike the vulgar. Yet when one is about to be “made human” with the Creator, then long life and short life, success and failure cannot exhaust their changes, nor can heaven, earth, cold, and heat confine the body. Meng Sun had a startling form but undamaged mind—like dreaming one is fish or bird, soaring or sinking—at peace in the transformation of the moment; why would the form’s difference alter the heart? Long ago Nanhua (Zhuangzi) dreamed he was a butterfly—it is the same. What is now called waking and dreaming, only one who transcends waking and dreaming can know. Yan Hui dropped limbs, dismissed understanding, “sat in forgetfulness” to the utmost—the weight is on the inner reason of the heart, continuing the lineage of the sage’s gate. Originally “the indigo bluer than the plant” is truly the power of the teacher’s good transformation. As for Zisang playing the zither, now singing, now weeping, seeking who did this and not finding it, at last attributing it to fate—when the way of the Great Master cannot be practiced in the age, the chapter ends with Zisang’s acceptance of fate.

Once the True Person has attained the Dao, he transcends fate; worldly burdens cannot tie him. The Great Master presides over the dark Dao and awakens the people, yet fate has its rise and fall—acting or stopping depends on the times, while the Dao neither gains nor loses. So-called true knowing, then, exhausts Heaven and humanity, fully penetrates life-and-nature without doubt. Exhausting principle and fulfilling nature to reach fate—that is fate as regards self-cultivation; guarding the ancestor amid the transformation of things—that is fate as regards governing things. Fate in self-cultivation is Zisang; fate in governing things—can it be anyone but the Great Master?

Nanhuazhenjing Yihai Zuanwei, Chapters 19–20 (Excerpt)

“Fit for Emperors and Kings” (Ying Diwang), Section 1

Nie Que asked Wang Ni four questions in a row; Wang Ni four times answered, “I do not know.” Nie Que was so pleased that he jumped for joy and told Pu Yizi what had happened. Pu Yizi said, “Do you see it now? You Yu (Shun) still falls short of Tai Shi. You Yu was like someone who piles up “benevolence” to win people over—he could gain their hearts, yet he had not truly stepped outside the machinery of artificiality and contrivance. Tai Shi, when asleep, was at ease and unhurried; when awake, his spirit was clear and still, united with the One (the whole, the natural). This he called horse, that he called ox—going along with things as they are, without forcing fixed names and categories. His knowing was trustworthy; his virtue was plain and genuine. Likewise he did not fall into the trap of the artificial.”

Summary of Guo Xiang’s commentary: What You Yu and Tai Shi represent are images on the level of worldly affairs, not objects that the Dao itself should be “emulated.” What truly should be emulated is a state that transcends names and appearances and lets things be naturally as they are. Who fixed these labels for the world? One must therefore find a footing amid endless change: the world has order and disorder, and methods differ in loftiness and baseness. Taking “what people approve” as “human” and “what people reject” as “inhuman” is tantamount to locking oneself inside opposition between right and wrong. Only by stepping out of this domain of the artificial can one enter a realm without right and wrong—then there is nothing to gain or lose, nothing that must or must not be done. How could that be merely “hoarding benevolence” to demand people’s hearts? Now calling oneself horse, now calling oneself ox—that is letting things know themselves as they are; affect and reality are trustworthy, virtue is spontaneously genuine, and one does not fall into the realm of right and wrong. Only then can one cut off the path of You Yu’s “using benevolent government to win people.”

This passage explains the chapter in the Zhuangzi in which Nieque questions Wang Ni and Wang Ni answers “I do not know.”

Nieque asks four things in succession: Do you know whether what all things share in common is what counts as “right”? Do you know what you yourself do not know? Then do all things lack “knowing”? Is what is called “knowing” really not “not knowing,” and is “not knowing” really not “knowing”?—to all four questions Wang Ni replies with a single “I do not know.” Where things are the same as one another, that sameness stops at the layer you cannot grasp through knowing; Wang Ni’s “I do not know” is not feigned ignorance but genuinely dwelling in not-knowing and being one with it.

“Youyu” can also be read as a heart full of worry and anxiety; “Taishi” as great peace and great stillness. To have wisdom yet be anxious is not as good as having no wisdom and resting in great stillness. Youyu leaves “traces”: hiding benevolence to win people’s compliance may indeed gather followers, but once benevolence is fixed as good and lack of benevolence as evil, one has not yet stepped outside the opposition of “human” versus “non-human”—with “people” and “non-people” marked off, boundaries are drawn and the world falls into disorder. Taishi, by contrast, sleeps at ease and wakes in quiet; treating himself as horse or ox matters little to him, and others do not despise him. His knowing is solid and free of doubt; his virtue is genuine and unfeigned—why must “lack of benevolence” be taken as negation and one fall again into the “non-human” scheme? From Wang Ni’s perspective, Youyu cannot match Taishi—“cannot match” means that artificial traces still remain; what Taishi embodies is the very state Youyu pursues. To get close to the intent behind those “traces,” one must undo the knots in the heart, let go of clinging to discursive consciousness, and enter deeply into the cultivation of Wang Ni’s kind of “not knowing.”

Lin’s commentary: Taishi lived in the primordial age of plain simplicity; by the time of Yao that simplicity had dissolved and norms and measures had taken shape, and Shun piled further rules and extensions on top of Yao’s. That they could not match Taishi was not because the sages’ Way differed, but because the times had changed and sages who responded to the world had no choice but to change with them. The Youyu line (Shun’s lineage) took humaneness (ren) as good and wanted all under heaven to follow—it could be called winning people over, yet it never truly left the level of “non-human”: once the world had “the humane,” it treated “the inhumane” as “non-human.” From the human way, Youyu still fell within “non-human”; from the Way of Heaven, even where there were “humane” ones, one could not avoid still being “non-human.” “Xuxu yuyu” describes a relaxed, at-ease manner—that kind of plain simplicity: if others called you a horse you were a horse, if they called you an ox you were an ox, and the heart was at peace. Thus its knowing lay in sincere trust (qingxin), its De was very genuine, and it had not yet fallen into disputes over human versus non-human—meaning that sort of oppositional split was absent.

Xiangdao’s commentary: The Dao takes unknowing as inner and knowing as outer, unknowing as deep and knowing as shallow. Hence when Nieque pressed four pointed questions, Wang Ni answered only “I do not know,” and Nieque understood and rejoiced and told Puyi; Puyi then spoke of the traces of wuwei (non-action). The scripture says the Youyu line summoned humaneness and righteousness to stir up the people under heaven, and also that Youyu had medicine for sores while Shun had the stink of flesh and fish—all of this was hiding humaneness and demanding that people follow. From the Dao’s perspective, that was already not pure, so it says “had never stepped out from non-human.” Taishi, by contrast, forgot both things and self and was bound by nothing: call me an ox and I am an ox, call me a horse and I am a horse; what was known was faithful sincerity, what was attained was very true—in the Dao, pure and undiluted—so it says “had never entered into non-human.” As for Taishi’s lapse, Laozi says, “I thought you were human, but now you are not”—the meaning of “non-human” is roughly this.

Commentary by Bi Xu

The sage teaches through “not speaking,” so the four questions and four answers of “I do not know” in the text are the pivot of the chapter “Respond to the Emperors and Kings” (Ying Di Wang). You Yu Shi stands for “having knowledge”; Tai Shi stands for “no knowledge.” When one hides benevolence and virtue to win people over, distinctions of good and evil arise. “Has not yet stepped outside the non-human” means still dwelling in the mundane world and going along with common custom. “Now taking oneself for a horse, now for an ox” means not clinging to a fixed divide between “self” and “things,” understanding that nature is not artificial, hence acting with plain sincerity; without guard or pretense, virtue stays genuine. “Has not yet entered into the non-human” means having already gone beyond the dust of the world.

Commentary by Zhao

Confucius said, “Do I have knowledge? In truth I have none”—one must reach “no knowledge” before there is true knowing. Nie Que suddenly understood and ran to tell Pu Yizi. Pu Yizi said: You have understood too late. You Yu Shi took benevolence as good and sought the people’s favor—that is “the human in harmony,” not yet leaving “Heaven”; Tai Shi slept and woke at ease, content whether called horse or ox, joy and anger not following outer things, self and things forgotten—that is the way of the true person. His “knowing” is sincere and trustworthy, covering and bearing cold and heat without error; his “virtue” (De) is utterly true, without a trace of artifice. That is “Heaven in harmony,” not yet leaving “the human.” You Yu Shi beside Tai Shi is like Yao beside Xu You.

Commentary by Yan Zhai

Four questions and four non-answers embody what the Vimalakīrti Sūtra calls “entering the gate of non-duality through not speaking.” Nie Que grasped this “teaching without words” and gladly told Pu Yizi. Pu Yizi said: Only now you understand? Tai Shi was an ancient emperor who embraced benevolence to bind hearts and could still win people—yet that was only “taking Heaven as companion,” not “the human is Heaven,” hence “has not yet stepped outside the non-human”: “has not yet stepped out” means “no more than that”; saying “non-human” instead of “Heaven” is a striking turn of phrase. Taking oneself for horse or ox, he lets either name stand and does not ask—however others call him. What he knows is all solid principle; the virtue in him is all natural truth. At that point even “Heaven” is not enough to name it—leave it to spontaneity, yet it rises above creation itself—hence “has not yet entered into the non-human.” The earlier phrase uses “step out,” the later “enter in”—note how finely the commentators choose their words.

Qièquē asks Wáng Ní—the same four questions as in the “Discourse on Equalizing Things”; placing them again at the opening of this chapter shows that the flip side of genuine knowing is “forgetting knowing”: only by forgetting knowing can one “know without limit”; the way of the true ruler should especially forget knowing and let things be themselves—let the sharp-eared listen, the clear-eyed see, the clever plan, the brave defend, while the ruler sits upright in wúwéi (non-action) and the realm governs itself—is that not great?

So Qièquē was pleased with Wáng Ní’s answers and told Púyīzǐ. Púyīzǐ said: you have only just learned that Yúyú falls short of Tàishì—taking benevolence (rén) as good, one cannot avoid “yú” (worry and fuss) in governing; that is not truly issuing from “not-human” (Heavenly) dé, only matching human custom. Tàishì awakened and rested in himself; knowing and dé were both genuine and did not fall into “not-human”—then the Dào accorded with Heaven and people gathered to him. That is the first theme of “The True King.”

(Note: In older texts zāng (good) was sometimes written as cáng (to store); Cuī’s commentary read “harboring benevolence and righteousness to bind people.” Chéng Xuányīng, Lǚ Huìqīng, and many others follow Lǚ on zāng as “good”; Lín Xīyì, Chén Jǐngyuán, and others largely agree. Some say zāng and cáng are borrowed forms; in Hanshu “Food and Money” “slight and easy to zāng” borrows zāng for cáng, but that does not justify replacing zāng with cáng everywhere. Most current editions keep zāng, glossed as “good,” which fits best.)

Jiànwū visited Kuáng Jiēyú. Kuáng Jiēyú asked: what did rì zhōng (midday? day’s beginning?) just tell you? Jiànwū said: he told me that as ruler, if you impose on others the norms and measures you yourself set up, who would not obey, who would not be transformed? Kuáng Jiēyú said: that is deceiving dé; using it to govern the realm is like crossing the sea by digging a river, or making a mosquito carry a mountain. Does the sage govern the realm by governing externals? Straighten yourself then act; if you can barely get things done, stop there. Birds fly high to escape arrows; field mice dig deep in sacred mounds to escape smoke and digging—even these two creatures “know nothing” yet preserve themselves—how much more so for human beings?

Main idea: “The True King” opens with Qièquē–Wáng Ní–Púyīzǐ to mark “Tàishì’s forgetting knowing” as superior to “Yúyú’s practicing rén”; then Kuáng Jiēyú rejects what Jiànwū transmitted—“imposing on others norms and measures of one’s own making”—as deceiving dé, with metaphors for the impossibility of governing the realm that way, and uses birds and mice knowing nothing yet preserving themselves to ironize the vain use of human cleverness.

This passage elaborates the Zhuangzi themes of “how an emperor governs” and “the two insects each preserving themselves”; the three commentators’ readings are largely aligned. In plain terms:

Guo Xiang’s point is that if people entrust each their proper place to the inherent nature of each thing and do not meddle beyond what is needed, things will naturally take their own forms. If one tries to rule the world from a single personal body, achievements will be hard to complete and the burden of responsibility cannot be borne. The sage’s governance of the world is nothing more than letting each person keep their role and each life-nature find its rectitude, and not doing what lies beyond one’s capacity. Even birds and beasts each have their own way of self-preservation; therefore the emperor lets things follow their nature, does not act rashly, and allows the myriad beings to transform and complete themselves on their own. Are you really less capable than those two small insects, each preserving itself without waiting for someone to teach them?

Lü’s reading is that a ruler’s verbal teaching can serve as law and personal conduct as a measure, but if in every matter one “takes rules one has devised as canonical doctrine and measures others by one’s own intentions,” that is only the use of cleverness, not the true canonical meaning of “commanding things to transform and nurture.” What is called “canonical” and “doctrine” may not truly be canonical doctrine and easily slips into deceiving virtue. It is like crossing the sea yet digging a river, or making a mosquito carry a mountain—fundamentally beyond what can be borne. The heaviest thing in the world and the sacred vessel of authority (the position of power), which must not be moved lightly—if governed by “taking one’s own output as canon and measuring people by doctrine,” one only treats the surface. One must first rectify oneself and then act, and only when one can truly bear the role is one not merely treating the exterior. Then there is no partiality and people cannot see which way one leans; without private likes and dislikes, people have no way to flatter or evade. Whatever is done arises from xuantong (mysterious unity with the Dao, free of private bias), and truth and falsity in the world become clear on their own—who would still dare to wield power to probe the ruler as if seeking the pearl under the jaw in the ninefold abyss? Birds and mice fly high or burrow deep to escape harm—can one say the two insects are without knowledge? If people cannot be self-sufficient and self-preserving like the two insects, but instead demand that they be “knowing” enough to cater to one’s wishes, then people are worse off than those two insects.

Lin’s reading is that using one’s own intentions to set laws and govern the world can never succeed—as with crossing the sea by digging a river or making a mosquito carry a mountain, it shows the task cannot be borne. The wisdom of the ancients still fell short of the two insects: if people cannot forget the self and let the other exist on its own, but instead want the other to show gaps that can be exploited, then people are indeed inferior to the two insects.

Someone commented as follows: if one tries to govern the world with laws and standards one has made up oneself, success will never come—like trying to cross the sea by digging a river, or asking a mosquito to carry a mountain on its back: the point is that such a burden cannot be borne. In antiquity, when sages governed the world, they let the people settle in peace and all things fulfill their own nature; why exhaust oneself over external systems of law and regulation? The meaning is that sages follow the nature of people and things: whoever can do a task is given it, each keeping to their proper place. Birds fly high and mice dig deep burrows to avoid harm—they need no teaching to do so; human beings too have a constant nature, and as long as they are allowed to fulfill their roles, that is enough. Why set up separate scriptures, ritual forms, benevolence, righteousness, and legal codes to disturb that nature?

The Xiangdao commentary says: one who governs the world does not meet the myriad things with scheming, nor lead the multitude with what is dark and unclear. If one relies on scriptural doctrines one has invented oneself, does not adapt to things with flexible response, and yet sends people to enforce those ritual forms and benevolence and righteousness, it is like trying to cross the sea by digging a river—not following the constant way—and like asking a mosquito to carry a mountain—not measuring capacity. Not following the constant way is not what is meant by “first rectifying oneself, then acting.” Not measuring capacity is not what is meant by “entrusting tasks only to those who can fulfill them.” Even small creatures such as birds and mice know to fly high or burrow deep to avoid harm; how could a sage governing the world invite disaster by issuing doctrines of his own?

The Bixu commentary says: “bringing forth the arts of ordering the world” refers to governing by the way of benevolence and righteousness; failing to measure capacity likewise means not entrusting work only to the capable. Birds and mice still know how to avoid harm to preserve life—how much more so human beings? It also points out: to cultivate others without cultivating oneself is called deceiving virtue and placing the governance of the world in outward form alone; one must first govern within, and only after rectifying oneself can one act outwardly—what is crooked cannot lead the multitude. Though birds and mice are insignificant creatures, they still know to shun harm to preserve their natural life; how much more so human beings? What is called issuing scriptures, forms, and righteousness is merely an instrument for ordering the world, not the foundation on which one who holds sway over all under heaven should rely.

Zhao’s note: At midday he began to explain to Jian Wu how the sage governs the world—establishing classics and laying out laws and standards as norms for ten thousand generations, so that no one under heaven fails to submit. Jie Yu (the “Jie Yu” of Chu—the recluse who sang the “Phoenix Song”) said: The sea is boundless, yet you would dig a river to ford it; a mosquito larva is tiny, yet you would have it carry a mountain—this is a metaphor: with a mere handful of doctrines, rites, and measures, you expect to put all under heaven in good order and make everyone turn toward instruction; there is simply no such principle. The sage only says, “I take joy in stillness and the people correct themselves; I practice wuwei (non-action) and the people transform of themselves”—nothing more than fulfilling what is properly his own share; how could he treat “governing external things and setting up rules” as the main task? Birds and beasts already know to seek safety when danger threatens, without waiting to be taught; to teach and transform the masses is not even as clear-sighted as those two kinds of small creatures (figures for those who rest in their nature and find their own peace).

Yizhai says: “Classics,” “models,” “righteousness,” and “standards” all issue from the self—using the virtue of one body to become the transformation of all under heaven; what is called “guiding people” is precisely guiding and transforming the populace. The phrasing of “classics, models, and righteousness” connects with expressions like “harmony and ease.” “Deceiving virtue” (qide) means deceiving oneself about virtue—it is not genuine virtue. What is meant by “governing externals” is that using the body to influence others necessarily leaves traces; one must first rectify oneself, then act, acting in accord with the principles of nature and life (xingming). What is meant by “one who can fulfill such tasks” is one who carries through what belongs to such tasks by nature. That birds and rats avoid harm means that whenever there is deliberate action and visible trace, entanglement must follow—it is not as lucid as those two small creatures (who complete themselves by following their nature).

When the sun has already reached its zenith, one only then begins to seek light—this is like those who study the Way under duress. Jie Yu therefore told Jian Wu: if the way of ruling is like that—using rules, doctrines, and laws one has devised to press down on people—those who appear upright may keep the law on the surface, yet the common people cannot settle their innate nature and feelings of life within; who would truly listen and be transformed? In that case, others obey only outwardly, not from the heart. So Jie Yu called this “deceitful De”—not genuine Virtue; it deceives others and oneself alike. Governing the world in this way, fabricating from nothing, cannot succeed or bear great responsibility.

When the sage governs, why fixate only on outward words, doctrines, and laws? Those are tools for governing the “outside”; one must first stand firm in “uprightness,” and only then can affairs be handled. What is meant by effective action is the Way of Virtue and the principle of nature and life, within oneself; taking the root as the task and establishing oneself inwardly, one may then extend this to ordering the family, the state, and all under Heaven. Moreover, birds and rodents know to fly high or dig deep burrows to escape harm—how much more should one who would be ruler invite disaster through deceitful De? Such a person is inferior even to those small creatures. Therefore the ancients who took the throne in accord with Heaven’s mandate were without desire and practiced Wuwei (non-action); the world naturally transformed and nurtured itself. If one acted through cleverness and ability, the ruler toils above and the people are in turmoil below—how can one speak of great order?

If one uses doctrines and laws of one’s own devising, who among the people would dare not listen and be transformed?—Most commentators punctuate from the character for “classic” or “doctrine.” Lin Xiyi, Zhao Yi, and others treat the passage “Without desire and without action, the world transforms of itself; if one relies on knowledge and ability to act, the ruler labors above and the people are chaotic below—what hope is there for order? Using doctrines and patterns of righteousness and measure that issue from oneself, who among the people would dare not listen and be transformed?” as one continuous sentence. The Bixuzi and Zhang Junfang editions read “using doctrines and patterns of righteousness and measure that issue from oneself, who among the people would dare not listen and be transformed.” A later collation of the Wumen official edition has “using one’s own devised classic” with the character for “devise” alone differing. Comparing many editions, Lin and Zhao’s punctuation is preferable; this translation follows it.

Tian Gen was traveling in the region of Yinyang when he came to the upper reaches of the Liaoshui. There he met a nameless person and asked him: “How should one govern the world?”

The nameless person said: “Go away, you shallow fellow—why ask such an ill-timed question! I am about to join the Creator in nurturing the ten thousand things and becoming human in accord with circumstances. When I grow weary, I will ride again on that bird of primordial chaos, fly beyond the six directions, roam in a realm where nothing exists, and dwell on a vast, open plain. Why must you disturb my mind with questions about governing the world?”

Tian Gen asked again. The nameless person said: “Let the mind wander in simplicity and indifference; let qi merge with emptiness and stillness. Follow things as they naturally are, without hoarding private desires, and the world will be at peace of itself.”

(Guo Xiang’s reading: To open by asking “how to govern the world” shows one has not yet risen above the primordial beginning or stopped short of the state before chaos. “Becoming human” together with the Creator means letting each person be human in their own way. The bird Miaomiao stands for scattered fragments; riding it and racing along, one can pass in and out of the ordinary and move freely—there is no need to govern deliberately for the world to settle itself. Following genuine feeling yields indifference; guarding one’s nature in stillness and stopping there, one acts from nature and is impartial. When the heart seeks to add and gain, that is selfishness. Clinging to the private cannot complete life; only following the impartial can preserve it.)

This passage summarizes several traditional commentaries on the Zhuangzi passage about Tian Gen (Heaven’s Root) and wuming (the nameless).

Lu Huiqing’s commentary says that “wuming” refers to someone whose body is united with the Dao. One who embodies the Way originally has no likes or dislikes; the joy and weariness spoken of here follow ordinary people’s preferences and aversions. When the heart is glad, one moves among people like the Maker of things; when the heart is weary, one rides the image of Manghong—the bird that can fly far—and goes out beyond the Six Extremes (the limits of heaven, earth, and the four directions). Why? Because for the sage as “person,” life and death, survival and perishing, are in one’s own hands; coming and going leave no trace. Who would take governing the realm as a burden to shoulder? On what grounds would you bring up “governing the realm” to stir my heart? What is meant by “the mind wanders in plainness” and “utmost without private bias” is precisely the path of wuwei (non-action) that still responds to the rule of a true king.

Lin Xiyi’s commentary (aligning with the latter part of Lu’s note) stresses: Who would take the realm as his task? Why use “governing the realm” to move me? To move me, better to let the mind wander in plainness and achieve utmost freedom from private bias—that is the principle of the realm ordering itself when there is no deliberate busyness.

In the Tian Gen section, question-and-answer further explains: questioning begins from the root to answer the branch; one emerges from obscurity to tend toward clarity. Asking about “governing the realm” is how the nameless one shows contempt. If one is already “person” together with the Maker of things, one has already touched on “having business”; when weary, one rides Manghong and goes out beyond the Six Extremes to wander—not staying fixed in one place. Kuanglang (vast open ground) is a metaphor; Manghong stands for the mind—riding it to wander is “the mind wanders in plainness, the qi merges with the vast calm”: following things without selfishness. If it is like this, one does not govern the realm yet the realm governs itself—why rely on laws and standards to rule?

Xiang Dao’s commentary says: “Tian Gen” speaks of the root; “wuming” speaks of the sage. Tian Gen rises from the root to respond to the branch, from darkness to tend toward light; asking about “governing the realm” is why the nameless one despises it. Being “person” with the Maker of things already involves intentional self-making and touches on having business; when weary, one rides Manghong out beyond the Six Extremes to wander—not a fixed abode. Kuanglang figures the realm; Manghong figures the mind; riding it to wander is the mind wandering in plainness and qi merging with the vast calm, following things without selfishness. Thus one does not govern the realm yet the realm governs itself—why need governance by law?

Bixuzi’s commentary says: being “person” with the Maker of things is intentional self-creation; riding Manghong out beyond the Six Extremes is treading the subtle beyond Yin-Yang; wandering in “what is there?” and dwelling in kuanglang is entering the domain of fashioned Dao and residing in empty sameness. Following things naturally without private bias—private bias loses naturalness.

Tian Gen here means the natural root and the lord to whom all things look up; the nameless one is the title of the sage or perfected person. “Where Yin flourishes bright” and “the sparse waters of the Liao” sketch a kind of setting. The Maker of things covers heaven, supports earth, and carves the myriad forms—yet not from deliberate intent. I (the sage Zhuangzi speaks through) already weary of such fuss and roam beyond visible things—why should “ordering the world” stir my heart?

The nameless one asks again, and the answer follows the way things naturally are: whatever is done with deliberate intent cannot help mixing in private aims. The trouble with Tian Gen’s question lies in that word “doing”—if there is non-action, the world will each find its place on its own.

Yi Zhai says: unite with the Maker of things; in the world, conduct yourself by yielding to nature. Roaming in the world is enough—how much more to roam outside the Maker’s workshop: that vast, formless qi, the boundless void of the Great Limitless—why use “ordering the world” to stir my heart? (In Cui’s text, yu is read as “acting as”; it can also mean “why.”) Indifferent, formless qi is like human nature; this heart and this nature both accord with the natural. Earlier it says “do not listen with the heart—listen with qi”; here qi should be read together with xing (nature). Follow the Maker without private aims, and the world transforms itself—why cling to “doing for the world”? The nameless one is only a fictional stand-in.

Tian Gen stands for the root of nature: it should stay hidden, nurturing, letting things transform on their own; now it turns toward display and eager outward action—hence the question about ordering the world. The nameless sage therefore despises it and says: why does your question displease me? Then he sets out the way of non-action and free wandering. The person (the nameless one) is likewise a fictional device.

Passages Related to Yihai Zuanwei (Collected Subtleties of the Ocean of Meaning on the Nanhua Zhenjing)

(Earlier section: On “Heaven’s Root” and governing the world)

“Heaven’s Root” stands for nature’s own root: it should stay dark and nurturing, letting the ten thousand things transform on their own. Today people prefer what shows itself, strong feeling, and striving for deliberate action, so Heaven’s Root asks how to govern the world. The nameless sage scorns such questions because they miss what he holds dear. The sage then describes the joy of wuwei and carefree ease, and from the angle of guarding transformation and being “of one substance with the Maker of things” explains: moving with the work of transformation, following fate without pushing (not forcing). Vast and dim like the void—the image of the bird is flight without trace; the open wild (kuanglang) suggests emptiness and release. The point: I am this free and at ease—what law or measure of governing the world could stir my heart? Heaven’s Root asks again; the nameless one tells him: let the heart roam in plainness, without craving; let qi merge with the broad calm, without partiality; follow things as they naturally are, without private designs. If the heart is set on the world under Heaven, there is selfishness and nature is lost—that is called “governing,” yet it is the start of disorder. There is no other way to govern the world than to restore the natural root well; then the person is cultivated and the world is governed. Heaven’s Root does not know to turn and seek within himself—treasure in hand yet lost. Pitiable.

“Fit for Emperors and Kings,” Chapter Two

Yangzi Ju visited Laozi and said: Someone is quick in response, strong and resolute, penetrating and clear-sighted, and never slack in learning the Way—is such a person fit to compare with a clear king? Laozi said: In the eyes of a sage, that is someone tied up by easy skills, wearing out body and alarming the heart (xu: mutual; yi ji xi: bound by tricks). A tiger’s or leopard’s pattern invites the hunter; an ape’s agility invites the cage; the keen hound (lai gou) invites being borrowed—how can that compare with a clear king? Yangzi Ju was uneasy and asked: May I ask how a clear king governs? Laozi said: A clear king’s rule—merit fills the world yet seems not to come from himself; he transforms and bestows on the ten thousand things yet the people do not depend on him; he has “nothing to lift up as a name” (mo ju ming)—he lets things delight in themselves; he stands in what cannot be fathomed, and roams in non-being.

Guo Xiang’s commentary (main drift): “Xu, yi ji xi, lao xing chu xin”—such arts and ways of holding the body are not enough to compare with a sage-king; to be tied by ornamental skill is not to use empty pervasion to master the formless.

Guo Xiang’s commentary:

When people swap crafts and tie their skills to themselves, they wear out the body and unsettle the mind—Guo Xiang says such “artistry” can barely settle the self, let alone compare with an enlightened sovereign. For ornament and technique bind a person; that is not the path of one who enters still emptiness and rides the unbounded Way.

If there were no enlightened sovereign in the world, the people would find it hard to truly “rest in their own peace.” Yet the sovereign’s merit lies in wuwei (non-action): handing affairs back to the world so everyone bears their own share. It looks as if it were not the sovereign’s achievement, and the people do not feel they depend on anyone; though influence covers all under heaven, it is not flaunted. All things think they accomplished it themselves and rejoice. Such a one stands on the path of change, ever renewing without fixed form; shares one body with the ten thousand things, and what they roam is emptiness. Since one cannot “guard against things,” how could there be leisure to roam emptiness for its own sake?

Lü Huiqing’s commentary:

“Hurrying to get things done” is rushing into affairs; “being forceful and unyielding” is not softening things and fully resolving them; “guarding clarity” is not true unknowing—rather, clarity is not born from that kind of “guarding.” If study of the Way never wearies, one can daily diminish until one acts for the Way; once there is skill, the body is worn; when the mind is tied to something, the heart is alarmed—like artisans exchanging according to long, short, presence, and absence; that is not how the sage “emerges” from the Way or “employs” all under heaven.

When tigers, leopards, gibbons, and dogs are used for hunting, it is because they have something others can borrow; then wearing out the body and alarming the heart, being used by the world, is what the forceful and the “guardian of clarity” bring on themselves. “Borrowing” means clever strength is borrowed by others. Having strength yet not claiming it, transforming and nurturing yet not relying on it—whatever one has, one does not raise as the name of “me”; one only lets the ten thousand things rejoice for themselves. The reason is this: standing where nothing can be measured, roaming in what is without being. So to compare it earlier with an enlightened sovereign—was that not too loose a comparison?

Lin’s commentary says: What is meant by “ming” (illumination) is the dispersal and manifestation of divine spirit; what is meant by “wang” (king) is the rise and movement of the sage in action. One who responds to Heaven’s mandate and comes forth to govern the world is the ancient enlightened king (mingwang). Therefore, if one treats “Xiang Ji, Qiang Liang, and Fang Ming” as a question-and-answer device to compare with the enlightened king, how is that different from those skilled at trade, bound by craft, who weary the body and harm the spirit? Tigers and leopards are hunted for their splendid pelts; apes and monkeys are tethered for their agility—can such things be used to compare with the enlightened king?

Ziju (Yan Hui) asked in astonishment: How does the enlightened king govern the world? The answer: His achievements cover the world yet he does not claim them; he nurtures and bestows upon the ten thousand things yet does not rely on that for self-importance. The ancients said the enlightened king does not deliberately set out to govern the world, yet the world naturally turns to him; with the highest spirit he operates, manifesting Heaven and Earth’s virtue (de); with flexible heart-and-mind he responds to the myriad changes of the ten thousand things—none of these roots begin anywhere else.

Thus, though his great merit is not used to establish a name, and nurturing the ten thousand things is not taken as grounds for self-congratulation, the world attributes merit to him and the ten thousand things feel joy of their own. He stands in a height beyond measure; yin and yang cannot constrain him; he roams in the realm of “non-being” (wu), and the ten thousand things cannot burden him.

Xiangdao’s commentary adds: Xiang Ji and Qiang Liang differ from one who is soft and compliant “like an infant”; Wu Che and Shu Ming differ from one for whom “the Dao that is bright seems obscure” (ming dao ruo mei); studying the Dao without weariness differs from “when learning is abandoned, there is no worry” (jue xue wu you). The enlightened king is the sage; the sage practices wuwei (non-action) and the world transforms of itself. To exert force on the three types (Xiang Ji, Qiang Liang, Fang Ming and the like) and contend with outer things is like relying on craft and trade for profit—not only does it weary the body and alarm the heart, outer troubles follow as well. The enlightened king’s way of governing: merit without claiming it—what force has “I” exerted on the people? Nurturing without self-reliance—what have the people received from “I”? Hence the name is not broadcast, traces are not shown, solid gain is not hoarded, and calamity cannot reach him. He takes emptiness as the sovereign of the multitude of beings and wuwei as the supply for the ten thousand things.

Bixu’s commentary says: If the direction one seeks abhors “Ji” and “Qiang Liang,” one cannot tolerate what is not good; penetrating and mastering things, acting without displaying traces or hoarding solid gain—calamity also cannot touch one. Likewise: taking emptiness as the sovereign of what is real and wuwei as what the ten thousand things seek.

Main idea of the Bixu commentary:

“Xiang” means what the heart turns toward; “ji” means disliking slowness and demanding speed. “Qiang liang” means fierce and overbearing—unable to tolerate the slightest friction. When one insists that everything must go smoothly and be fully understood, exalts clever contrivance, and replaces what is naturally so with artificial wit, people compete in skills and tie one another in knots, wearing out the body and agitating the mind. Tigers and leopards are hunted for their pelts; gibbons and macaques are leashed for their dexterity—talent draws disaster, as if one never reached the state of “forgetting the self.” The way of the enlightened king (ming wang) is different: he benefits the people, yet they do not lean on him (forgetting his merit); he achieves merit without parading his name (forgetting fame); his mind roams in “wu you”—neither clinging to being nor to name and achievement. Such is the rule of the enlightened king.

The Zhao commentary’s reading:

“Xiang ji” can mean guarding against the slightest fault and rushing everything; “qiang liang” means hard, bold action—seeing clearly in affairs and pushing ahead without slack. The question: does that count as an enlightened king? The answer: the Dao values softness, concealment, and wuwei (non-action). If one is always busy and flaunts ability, one turns against the Dao and is burdened by “talent”—not only toiling the body and fraying the mind, but inviting harm. Like tigers and leopards hunted for their markings, or dogs and apes snared for their cleverness, ability becomes a curse; that is not enough to govern the world.

Ziju asks again about “geng” (such as zu geng):

In gist: some are sharp at purposeful action, while Laozi rests in wuwei—hence the reply that merit may cover the world yet is not claimed as one’s own; the ten thousand things transform themselves without being treated as one’s personal power; each finds its place, and no one can monopolize the credit for the work—as when Confucius praised Yao: “The people cannot name his virtue, yet how majestic was his achievement!”

Yanzhai:

Again stresses: when the work is done, do not possess it; when things emerge, do not rely on them as your doing; no one can name the merit—same drift as above.

Yanzhai adds:

Though “xiang ji” and “qiang liang” do not name anyone outright, they carry a barb at the Confucian line; “xu xing tu” and “yi geng” are old expressions, like “zu geng” in Han speech; “using craft to bind and burden those skilled in technique”—learning thus wears out body and mind; like tigers and leopards hunted for ornament, apes snared for convenience—a metaphor of sharp censure. Ziju asks again; the final answer: merit seems to cover the world yet does not issue from the self; things are left to rejoice and be content on their own—that is “achievement without possession, what need to add the emperor’s force?” Standing in what cannot be measured is “roaming in wu you.” These passages all unfold the meaning of that chapter (the Ming chapter).

Brief notes on terms:

• Ming wang: An ideal ruler who transforms the people through virtue and governs in a way close to wuwei.
• Qiang liang: Hard, violent, overbearing.
• Wu you: A phrase for doubly forgetting being and non-being, self and things—a state of roaming beyond fixed categories.
• Zhao commentary, Bixu commentary, Yanzhai: Different exegetes on the same passage in the Zhuangzi.

Xiang ji (responding to things with haste): commentators disagree, and phonetic and semantic notes in the literature record the variants. Gong gai tianxia (one’s merit covers all under heaven) yet seems not to come from oneself, even to the point of letting the ten thousand things each find their own joy—that is the sense of gong cheng er bu ju (accomplishing the work without claiming it) and di li yu wo he you (“what has the emperor’s power to do with me?”). Li yu bu ce (standing in what cannot be fathomed) is likewise you yu wu you (wandering in non-being)—at this point the commentators’ brush already shows real insight. The passages above all explain the aim of the “Destiny” (ming) chapter.

Xiang ji: interpretations differ; phonetic notes record that Emperor Jianwen of Liang read xiang as xiang (echo), as in the Cook Ding passage’s huoran xiangran, taking xiang as the sound of a stroke. But weighing the chapter’s main drift, Lü Huiqing, Lin Xiyì, Bixu zi, and others prefer the word’s basic sense. The proposed reading: xiang ji means responding to things too urgently and forcefully—that is not shou rou (holding to softness). Wu che means seeing external things too clearly and completely—that is not bao guang (preserving inner light). Study of the Dao values wuwei (non-action), yet if one treats “never tiring at tasks” as merit, it is like exchanging skills and constraining one another—bound to weary body and unsettle mind, showing what is sought is not the Dao. Moreover, when it asks “can one be compared to the enlightened king?”—that is La Dan’s (Laozi’s) rhetorical challenge: if the earlier talk of xiang ji, qiang liang, and the like could “compare to the enlightened king,” then tigers and leopards caught for their markings, apes and monkeys tied up for their agility, and dogs used because they can zhi li (hold/train the li, a small hunting animal)—would that not also suffice to “compare to the enlightened king”? Ziju then awakens, startled, and asks how the enlightened king governs the realm; La Dan tells him that only by forgetting merit, shan dai (giving generously without holding on), fleeing fame, and hiding form can one speak of the enlightened king’s governance. What Ziju discusses stays mostly on outer traces; what La Dan discusses is inner—mind and traces have long been distinct. As for zhi lai and zhi li, commentarial phonetics give lai two readings, li and lai; an ox of the greatest size—how could a dog zhi (hold/control) it? Li’s edition writes li (the hunting animal); that reading should be followed.

In the state of Zheng there lived a spirit-medium named Ji Xian who could foretell a person’s death or life, ruin or survival, fortune or misfortune, and length or shortness of life—even down to year, month, ten-day period, and day—as if he had divine power. When people of Zheng saw him, they would scatter and flee. When Liezi met him, he was captivated; he went home and told Master Hu, “I used to think your Dao had already reached the utmost peak; now I see there is something even higher.” Master Hu said, “I only told you the outer skin and never got to the root, yet you already think you have attained the Dao—like having only the female with no male, what would you hatch? And you take the Dao to compete with the world for superiority; you are bound to be caught out when someone comes to read you. Try bringing him here and let me see him.”

The next day Liezi brought Ji Xian to see Master Hu. Master Hu went out to meet him. Ji Xian said to Liezi, “Alas, your teacher is as good as dead; he cannot live much longer. What I saw was an uncanny sign, like damp ashes.” Liezi went in, wept until his collar was soaked, and told Master Hu. Master Hu said, “Just now I showed him ‘earthly pattern’ (diwen)—earth qi not yet released, in a sealed state: stirring but not quaking, upright but not moving. He probably saw me with my virtue-mechanism closed off.”

They arranged another meeting. The next day Liezi again brought Ji Xian to Master Hu. Master Hu went out. Ji Xian said to Liezi, “Lucky for your teacher that he met me—he can be saved; he looks fully alive. I saw him with the mechanism of expedient response shut down.” Liezi went in and told Master Hu. Master Hu said, “Just now I showed him ‘heaven and earth’ (tianrang)—name and reality not entering, yet the mechanism issuing from the heel. He probably saw me in the aspect of my good virtue-mechanism.”

They arranged another meeting. On the third day Liezi again brought Ji Xian to Master Hu. Master Hu went out. Ji Xian said to Liezi, “Your teacher’s spirit is not settled; I cannot read him. Wait until his spirit is settled, then I will read him again.” Liezi went in and told Master Hu. Master Hu said, “Just now I showed him ‘Great Vacuity, nothing can overcome it’ (tai chong mo sheng)—great emptiness in harmonious balance, with nothing that can prevail. He probably saw me in a state of balanced qi. The salamander-like creature makes deep water its nest; still water and flowing water each have their abyss—there are nine names for abysses; here only three are mentioned.”

They arranged another meeting. On the fourth day Liezi again brought Ji Xian to Master Hu. Before Master Hu had even stood firm, Ji Xian panicked on his own and ran away. Master Hu said, “Chase him!” Liezi chased but could not catch him, and returned to report to Master Hu. Master Hu said, “Just now I showed him ‘not yet having left my root’ (wei shi chu wu zong)—I met him with emptiness and yielding transformation (xu er wei yi); he did not know who I was and took me for a trace that bends with the wind and flows with the water, so he fled.”

After that Liezi understood he had not truly studied yet. He stayed home for three years without going out, cooked for his wife, fed the pigs as if serving guests, no longer divided the world into close and distant, carved ornament gave way to plain simplicity, and he stood alone in his bodily form—self-enclosed amid turmoil—and lived out his life that way.

Plain-Language Reading of This Passage from Collected Subtleties of the Ocean of Meaning on the True Scripture of Southern Florescence

This passage treats the story of Liezi, Huzi (Pot Master), and Jixian in the Zhuangzi, gathering annotations by Guo Xiang, Lü Huiqing, and Lin Xiyi to explain how the perfect person (zhiren) responds to things and why the physiognomist Jixian could never “get a fix” on Huzi.

Main drift of Guo’s note:

Someone not yet united with the Dao clings to one fixed stance and wants to appear definitively right in the world, so others can read each other’s minds. When the perfect person is still, they do not parade themselves as “correct”; they are quiet like damp ash—that is the phase when the perfect person has no reactive feeling. In motion they are like heaven, in stillness like earth, in walking like water, in stopping like a deep pool; though movement and rest differ, all are wuwei and naturally one. When Jixian saw Huzi in “corpse-like sitting and forgetting”, he thought death was near; when he saw “spirit stirring and heaven following”, he thought life had returned—yet that was simply responding without measuring things through private intent, rising and falling with transformation and taking the world as one’s measure, enough to be master of things—not something a face-reader can gauge. That is the gist of “responding as a true sovereign.”

Three layers of “showing appearance”: Earth Pattern, Heaven’s Soil, and Great Surge:

• Earth Pattern (diwen): The pivot of de does not issue forth—this is du quan (holding the spiritual pivot in check). The work of heaven-and-earth’s covering and bearing lies here; one layer “outside” Earth Pattern is this responsive bearing. Dwelling in what is natural and covering-bearing, the heaven-pivot responds, and adornments of fame and profit can all be dropped.
• Heaven’s Soil (tianrang): The pivot issues from the heel (symbol of where breath arises), always at the utmost height; once it issues and “excels toward the other,” the other can then see it. Dwelling at the extreme of Great Surge (taichong), vast and without deliberate mind, one with the myriad directions, victory and defeat cannot wedge in. Things are inherently not uniform; mixed, they become one. A narrow tube view sees only one side, hence the appearance of “not uniform.” Deep and silently still: flowing water, still water, great salamanders coiling, dragons leaping—all remain deep and self-possessed without losing silent stillness. Though the perfect person’s taking up and letting go differ, in silence they are one; hence three different modes are offered to clarify this.
• Though nine transformations surge like waves and order and chaos tangle, whoever dwells at the extreme stays calmly wuwei, roots deep and keeps to stillness, empty and weiyi (yielding and winding)—without mind, following things, not knowing who is who, drifting without attachment; change sinks and fades, worldly affairs like waves, going nowhere without suiting the occasion. Eating pork like eating people—forgetting noble and base; toward affairs neither intimate nor distant, only following what meets one; stripping ornament and taking the real, in movement the genuine does not scatter, one thread running through to the end, letting the ten thousand things each finish their natural span.

Lü’s supplement:

When pattern is not exhausted and reality is not exhausted, “reality” lies in not knowing, not cognizing. The Dao originally has no fixed form; empty void matches nothing, like many females without a male—if I do not respond to things yet harbor something inside, it is like no male yet eggs—so the Dao and the world seem opposed yet “must be trusted,” which is why people can read faces. When earth shares de with yin it cannot be seen; only by showing Earth Pattern can one be seen. Without stirring there is no movement; zheng (uprightness) is guarding the one, the body at ease; without uprightness it is not one, hence Earth Pattern. De has a pivot yet du (blocked)—it does not issue, and the other does not know. Heaven shares the wave with yang and cannot be seen; only by showing Heaven’s Soil can one be seen. Name and reality do not enter, hence wuwei; the pivot issues at the heel to show this—the soil is where things are born, the heel is where breath arises, hence knowing “there is life” and what excels is the ji (pivot). Earth Pattern: yin overcomes yang; Heaven’s Soil: yang overcomes yin; Great Surge then nothing overcomes yet nothing is biased to one side, hence doubt that things are not uniform; what nothing overcomes is level, hence called heng (balance) and qi ji (breath-pivot). Three abysses image the heart: good abyss (shanyuan)—flow and stop, salamander coiling never not abyss-like; Great Surge where nothing overcomes is the same. When it reaches “not yet having left my root”, hiding in heaven, showing what cannot be shown, Jixian could not see and lost himself and fled. Jixian used mind to read mind; I have no mind, so what he read had no footing—hence “lost and extinguished,” irrecoverable. Empty and weiyi, not knowing who or what—then no mind and wuwei; in stopping like a younger brother’s collapse, in motion like surging waves, between motion and rest seeking me finds nothing—so Liezi wanted to flee. Eating pig like eating people, forgetting self and things; in affairs no partiality, reaching the extreme of emptiness; carving and returning to simplicity, block-like and standing alone, the ten thousand affairs in turmoil yet the bounded domain unchanged.

Lin’s supplement:

Liezi saw Jixian and doubted his master was not Huzi’s equal; Huzi said: substance appears through pattern, the Dao is in events—you only spoke the “pattern” to the end, not the “reality” to the end; how can you get the Dao? “Yu still like many females without a male”—without a male how produce eggs? You had not fully learned the reality of my Dao; the Dao still opposed the world yet was trusted, so Jixian could read you. Damp ash images the omen of approaching death; showing Earth Pattern—without showing there is no pattern. Without stirring, silence; zheng guards the one; without uprightness, not one, hence Earth Pattern. De has a pivot yet du does not issue—the other does not know. Heaven’s Soil is covering-bearing work; reaching things is still the pivot of de issuing from the root—name and reality not yet entered. Heel is the lower extreme of form; shan (good/excellence) is what can be desired; what the other saw they called ji, Huzi himself called quan (expedient show—coarse appearance, subtle preservation). At first du ji at utmost silence—the reader suspected death; then issuing the pivot at the utmost peak—the reader suspected life; yet neither moving nor still, neither dead nor alive, uneven and not uniform, no mark to grasp. Great Surge: utmost empty yet centered, nothing overcomes—that is what Liezi called mo zhen (no trace of me); heng is utmost level. Responding to things then uneven and not uniform; qi empty awaiting things, still not leaving the pivot. Huzi hid spirit in utmost empty mo zhen; movement, rest, yin, yang uneven yet still heng responding to things—Jixian could not read him. Ni (salamander) is a great fish, huan coiling; still water as abyss images Earth Pattern, flowing water as abyss images Heaven’s Soil; the great fish coiling as abyss, clear deep and swift rush uneven and not uniform, shows Great Surge, mo zhen. Liezi had nine abysses; here three are cited to clarify Huzi. Great Surge still had not left the breath-pivot; when it reached not yet having left my root, then one with heaven—Jixian lost himself and fled. Without mind following things, empty and weiyi, not knowing who; the other was younger-brother collapse, was wave surge—Huzi’s transformations were in himself. Liezi saw Huzi’s Dao, felt he had not yet learned, went home and cooked for his wife; eating pig like people, forgetting noble and base, not enslaved by tasks, stripping ornament for the real, block-like and alone, the ten thousand things in turmoil yet the bounded domain as before.

One-sentence gist:

Huzi, through the successive concealments of “Earth Pattern—Heaven’s Soil—Great Surge—not yet having left my root,” withdrew the heaven-pivot so Jixian, who used mind to read mind, could not pin him down; the commentators use this to show that the perfect person responds to things in wuwei, guards the one in abyss-like silence—that is the true “way of the sovereign,” not something outer movement or stillness can measure.

This passage explains the anecdote in the Zhuangzi in which Huzi and Jicheng practice face-reading, and Liezi awakens to the Way, unfolding the meaning line by line.

Traveling with the Dao, mingling with the world

When one walks with the Dao, the mind holds nothing fixed, so the hinges of life and death, fortune and misfortune fade within, and no one can “read” you from the inside out. When one is entangled with the world, the mind is burdened, and signs of life and death, fortune and misfortune show on the outside, so others can read you from without. That is why Jicheng seemed marvelous with ordinary people yet could not read Huzi at all.

The several “states” Huzi showed Jicheng

Diwen (Earthly Pattern): like the earth—yin, soft, settled—with the work of covering and nurturing all things; this corresponds to “skillful response”—beautiful and flowing, called the “mechanism of the adept,” like the abyss of flowing water.

Taichong (Great Surge): the surging harmony between heaven and earth—neither moving nor still, seemingly dead yet alive, neither above nor below, centered like a balance; called the “mechanism of equilibrium,” like the abyss of the newt’s dwelling (water sometimes still, sometimes flowing—or like the newt’s pool: in the abyss, all is one). Huzi sometimes sealed himself off, sometimes revealed himself, sometimes showed Taichong; the principle is the same: one who knows how to observe water looks at its depth; one who knows how to observe people looks at their Dao.

Liezi’s awakening

Liezi understood Huzi’s Way, knew he fell short, and kept mourning for his wife as if he had forgotten the mourning; he ate pork like anyone else, as if he had forgotten things. Forgetting self, there is no inside or outside; forgetting things, there is no high or low; the mind like dead ashes, the body like withered wood—outside noisy, inside sealed and firm, unmoving and unchanged.

Commentary by Bixuzi

“Principle” is like substance; “affairs” are like pattern. Huzi said: you and I (Liezi) do not yet have that layer of “pattern” (outward form); you have not grasped the substance yet cling to thinking you have attained the Dao—like having the female without the male, how can there be generation? Now with Jicheng’s kind of “pattern,” Huzi’s “substance” can finally show. Treating the Dao as something possessed and opposing things, one will be read by technicians of form.

Meanings of Diwen, Tianrang, Taichong, and the rest

Taking non-movement as “pattern,” one sees deep roots and quiet extremity—neither shaken nor stilled, movement and rest unrevealed, Dao stored and thoughts stilled: that is Du de ji (blocking the mechanism of expedient change—the abyss of still water).

“What departs from the constant is expedient; blocking expedient returns to the constant”—heaven takes generation as “soil,” showing outward brilliance; the true person’s breath rests in the heels; when one breath moves, surging harmony fills the body, issuing from the root—not merely between the brows. Your (Liezi’s) teacher (the Huzi you saw then) was not whole; Jicheng saw only form.

Taichong mo sheng (Great Surge cannot be overcome): great emptiness has no victory or defeat, yet people do not know why; heng qi ji (mechanism of equilibrium) keeps heavy and light level—one cannot fix it as moving or still. Vast waves on the surface, yet the abyss mirrors—this is oneness; the perfected person’s spirit-store is empty and open, reflecting through; the face-reader has no technique left.

“I have not yet shown you my root”

If one uses form and words to show others, one has already left the zong (root, fundamental source). Dimi (pliant like a younger brother), boliu (flowing like waves)—neither can be measured; shi shi ru ren (eating pork like others)—seeing others as one sees this lump, standing alone without peer; fen er feng zai (noisy outside yet sealed within)—outside chaotic, inside self-clarified and sealed; yi yi shi zhong (thus to the end)—and so for a whole lifetime.

(The figures Huzi, Liezi, and Jicheng appear in Zhuangzi, “The Normal Course for Rulers and Kings”; Diwen, Tianrang, Taichong, heng qi, and terms such as Du de ji, shan zhe ji, heng qi ji, and the abyss of the newt’s dwelling, the abyss of flowing water, all use the water’s depth as a metaphor for the heart’s responsive yet unmoved state.)

Zhao’s commentary (on the Liezi episode): Liezi regarded the diviner Jixi’s arts as superior to those of his own teacher Huzi (Huizi). Huzi told him: When I first agreed to let you bring someone to read my fate, I was only putting on a complete outward show—you never learned the substantive skill. You thought you had attained the Dao, yet you were like a hen without a rooster—Yin and Yang incomplete, so how could an egg hatch? The point is: whatever has traceable form belongs to the Yin side; there must be something formless governing from behind. Yet you used the Dao to compete with the world for prestige, bent on making others believe you—not acting without contrivance in accord with things—so others could probe you. The first time, I showed diwen (earth-pattern)—outwardly still, inwardly unstoppable; stirring before anything has stirred, the surface unmoved, yet righting the right and moving the moving—this is what is called du de ji (blocking the outlet of De, hiding one’s edge). Laozi’s “Block the openings, shut the doors” means exactly this.

Tianrang (Heaven’s domain) contrasts with diwen: Kun is still while Qian moves. Name and reality do not mesh, yet ji (the pivot of response) stirs from the heel—treating the ten thousand things as straw dogs, yet surging with vitality; this is shan zhe ji (skillfully releasing the pivot). Laozi’s “empty yet not exhausted; in motion, ever more emerges” means exactly this. Jixi’s first visit made him think (Huzi) was near death; the second that there was life again; the third that he was already dead—life and death shifting beyond measure, so he took it as bu qi (not uniform, not fathomable). Tai chong mo sheng (the text Liezi uses mo zhen): showing great emptiness, vast with no trace of self, yet within it there is ji jian (the secret pivot). Laozi’s “dark and obscure, yet within it there is essence (jing)” means exactly this.

A great fish coils—taking stillness as an abyss, yet within it there is movement—this is heng qi ji (the pivot of balanced motion). Still water as abyss is du de ji; flowing water as abyss is shan zhe ji. Showing “I have not yet let my root appear”—amid endless responses to change, the original nature always remains. Liezi has di mi, also mao mi—mao mi like waves in flow is yielding and winding with things (sui shun, bending and stretching). Liezi regretted that his learning had not gone deep enough, so he stripped away ornament and returned to substance, his form like withered wood; though amid turmoil, what he held to did not shift—and so he remained all his life.

When Zhuangzi discusses fitting kings to rule through this episode, the depth of intent is great: governing a state rests on benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music; if these leave no trace at all, people think the state will perish; yet when policies and orders are issued, they cut cleanly with what hearts desire, and people think the state will rise. As for lodging martial awe within cultural virtue, and carrying rank and reward outside punishment—then those who spy on the fate of the state cannot read it. This is the subtle way of the sage governing the world; Zhuangzi casts it in the tale of the diviner’s face-reading.

Yizhai says: Using “cloud” to stand for the outer and “pattern” for the inner—you have not yet fully seen the substance, yet you think you have attained the Dao? “No male, how hatch?” means even traceless mind has not yet left a mark. The line says his heart has not yet been transformed and nourished, so he still shows himself through form; thinking the Dao is above the world and demanding that people believe is leaving traces for others to read you. “Wet ash” means vital breath is about to die out; “earth pattern” (diwen) is a term in Chan contemplation practice, sprouting from a sense of “as if there, as if not,” neither shaken nor moved. “Not upright” cannot be fixed to one meaning—this “not upright” shares virtue with Mencius’s “there must be engagement, but do not force uprightness.” “Ji” (trigger/mechanism) is living impulse; closing that mechanism so it does not move, with the look of living impulse about to die, is taken as not being a live thing; within deep closure the mechanism already shows, so it is again taken as having living breath. “Heaven’s soil” (tianrang) is also a contemplation name; “heaven’s field” (tian tian) is the natural field—like today’s cultivators taking the tongue tip as “heaven’s ford” (tian jin) and similar labels, which in truth do not enter being or non-being, both are dismissed. “The mechanism stirs from the heel” means qi rises from below; “good” is the mechanism, as if the place where nature moves; “Great Surge” (taichong) is Great Void, unsurpassed and unfathomable; “balance” (heng) is level and also half—when the movement of qi reaches level halfway and stops, that is half moving half still, hence “not even.” “Salamander” (ni huan) in still water and flowing water—Buddhists often treat these as contemplation names for examination and trust. Only here does Huzi (Pot Master) break through: what he showed Ji Cheng before were all these “depths”; of the nine depths he has shown only three. “Great Surge unsurpassed” and “not yet emerging from my root”—still contemplation names. Ji Cheng, reeling and staggering, surging and chaotic, loses himself and runs away.

From “cooking for his wife” onward, all is the idea of dropping the body and silencing cleverness—no need to repeat.

Li Shibiao comments: Ji Cheng uses my heart to feel others’ hearts, my view to move others’ views, so false names like fortune, disaster, long life, and early death arise. Names being false, he speaks of them falsely again; people in the world stuck on appearances and unable to guard against the false again receive them falsely, taking them straight for real, hence he abandons and flees. The perfected person treads form on the table of the formless, transcends number before countless number—how could he be read by appearances? So first showing earth pattern, Ji suspects death; next showing heaven’s soil, he suspects life—without knowing that form’s life and death and mind’s arising and ceasing are one; mind’s arising and ceasing is the presence and absence of views. Huzi never had a mind: in stillness he shares virtue with yin, in movement he shares wave with yang; in surge, neither yin nor yang is surpassed, heaven and earth are level. Myriad dharmas are one consistency, originally without high and low; seeing them as not one, he calls it “not even.” All three are called “ji,” because their subtle movement can be seen. When it is “not yet emerging from my root,” he shows by not showing—the other invests reality in me while this is empty, the other receives with being while this is without; the other raises mind and enslaves views to what has limit, this leaves humanity and enters heaven without limit, hence self-loss and flight. Huzi says: seeing my three mechanisms is still standing the empty of self and other and yielding—who knows who is who? Then I too am forgotten—who shows? Who sees?

Zhuangzi, discussing “heeding emperors and kings,” reaches this: emperors and kings responding to the world—only by silent stillness are they moved and then penetrate, only by retreating and hiding in the secret do fortune and misfortune share the same affliction. Once one emerges from one’s root and busily takes the world as business, people can read you. Ancient emperors and kings were vast and the people could not name them—for this reason.

Wang Dan, a renowned minister of the Northern Song, observed that in antiquity, when emperors governed the realm, they necessarily used methods ordinary people could scarcely fathom, so that no one could measure them by a fixed standard. Confucius said that the noble person (junzi) has three transformations: seen from afar, he is solemn and dignified; when one draws near and interacts with him, he seems warm and approachable; when one listens to him speak, he appears stern and incisive. How, then, could one judge him by a single countenance or by physiognomy alone?

Yao was like this: the realm acknowledged him alone as sage ruler. People drew close to him as if turning toward the sun; viewed from afar, he was like clouds and colored mist. His benevolence was as vast as heaven; his wisdom as penetrating as a spirit. A sage is thus many-sided and changeable. Given this, when a sage comes forth to govern the realm, he deliberately keeps people from “reading” him through one fixed image—surely that is itself the great Dao of winning the realm and putting it to use.

Jixian was a physiognomist who tried to read people by “matching heart to heart.” When the Great Dao must contend with the everyday world, it is hard not to stir the mind; once there is mind, traces remain that others can pick up and use to read and judge you.

The first time Jixian saw Huzi, he mourned that Huzi would soon die. At that moment the sage’s inner state was still as cold ash; Jixian’s technique of sympathetic sensing had nothing to latch onto.

The nature of Earth is steady and does not quake without cause; the work of Spirit is to move and does not cease. What is called “incipience” (ji) is the trace Huzi deliberately showed—something still visible: in the state of “sealing” (du), like a bolt shot home, outsiders cannot peer in; in the state of “incipience,” only a faint sign appears that can be seen. This shows how the sage hides virtue within; its depth is not something those who trade in tricks can measure.

The second time Jixian saw Huzi, he rejoiced, thinking Huzi had “come back to life,” and said he had seen “du with leverage” (du quan). “Quan” is a step more revealing than “ji”—what had been almost wholly sealed now shows slightly, so Jixian thought he was reviving. “Heaven and earth” (tian rang) means the root of natural growth in the cosmos. When name and fact do not enter the heart, the heart does not stir. Only at utmost stillness does vitality rise from the deepest lower body, nourished into vast Qi (hao ran zhi qi), extending to others as humaneness (ren)—that is the functioning of “continuing nature” (ji xing): ceaseless generation without end.

The third time Jixian saw Huzi, he again doubted that his stillness and movement could be pinned down—showing that the sage’s subtle use had already outrun what numerology and arts could reach. “Great Surging Void” (Tai chong) is emptiness pushed to the limit, so no omen can be seen; “balance” (heng) responds well through equanimity, and “qi” enters well through emptiness—both are without deliberate intent toward things and accord on their own without waiting for outside provocation. Here the word “ji” names the levels Huzi used to instruct.

“Three abysses” and “nine abysses” liken deep pools to the depth of the three kinds of “ji” shown before: he had only displayed three layers, and Jixian’s skill was already exhausted. The sage was not trying to crush him with odd moves; he only showed that he “had never left the root teaching”—even that “showing” was teaching without a fixed teaching; in the end it is still emptiness—where is any “going out” or “coming in”? So the closer Huzi’s display came to the real, the farther Jixian’s reading strayed from truth; that he lost himself and fled was only natural.

Jixian was both “ extinguished” and “lost,” and on Huzi’s side there was also “nothing”—the whole business of face-reading no longer applied to the sage. Where was Liezi to turn next? From this he understood that what he had studied before was mostly dregs; now he had met the genuine transmission, so he “sealed” his old learning and kept this one insight to the end of his life, declining into single-minded guarding of the One—that is the sense of “the Dao exhausted” (dao jin).

This chapter uses Jixian’s physiognomy to set off Huzi’s way, aiming at the deep point of the chapter “Adaptation of Emperors and Kings” (Ying di wang): to wake those later generations lost in minor arts. The lines “I, you, and Xu” and “I and Fang” mean the same (different versions differ slightly in wording)—both are Confucius speaking, paired with Fang (or Xu), in the same kind of context.