《庄子口义》Vol. 2

Plain-language reading

“I am no longer a novice at butchering an ox. After three years, I no longer see the ox as a whole.”

He sets down the knife and says his craft was first understood through cultivation of the Way and only later applied to a skill—not ordinary workmanship. “After three years, no longer seeing the whole ox” means that at a glance he can see where on the ox the blade may go and where no force is needed at all.

“By now I meet it with spirit and no longer stare with the eyes; sense and knowing stop, and spirit moves on its own.”

The point of “no longer seeing the whole ox” is the same: wherever the ox should be parted, he sees it without strain, in one glance.

“I follow the natural grain, open at the gaps between the major joints, enter through the large openings, and part it along its inherent structure.”

He does not force the places where sinew, channels, tendons, and membranes run tight—still less the large bones.

“Meeting with spirit, not looking with the eyes”: the heart is on guard and in attunement (“yu” means to ward and to meet). Guan here means the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth; guan zhi zhi means that when he stands collected in spirit, ears and eyes seem to hear and see nothing—all that the sense organs could report is stilled, and shen (spirit) moves by itself, that is, spontaneously. Tianli is the ox’s natural grain. Yi is to part along that natural grain. Da xi are the places where flesh and bone meet; pi is to strike or cut. Da kuan are the large voids; kuan means empty—the gaps between joints are naturally wide. Dao is to slide the knife through those voids and part. Where flesh and bone meet and where the joints open are structures that are already so; he only parts along them. In this craft he never touches the kenqing (places where flesh clings tight to bone—pronounced “qing”); if he does not use the blade even at kenqing, how much less on da gu (large bones—pronounced “gu”)?

(The closing lines repeat the latter half of the previous paragraph; the meaning is the same: skill so refined that the knife only follows natural voids, never the tight junctions of sinew and bone, and never hacks at large bones.)

Zhuangzi Kouyi · Cook Ding Butchers an Ox (Excerpt from the Oral Commentary)

Skilled Butchers and Ordinary Butchers

A skilled cook is the master of the kitchen; an ordinary cook is the sort who handles everyday cooking and belongs to a lower level of skill. A poor cook often needs a new knife every month, because chopping heavy bone wears the blade down and can even break it. A good cook changes knives once a year, because he cuts only between flesh and sinew; he still slices here and there, so the edge still wears, but more slowly. My knife has been in use for nineteen years. I have butchered many oxen, yet the edge looks as if it had just been honed on a grindstone—almost no wear at all. Xing means a whetstone or grindstone.

Entering the Gaps with What Has No Thickness

Between the joints of an ox there are naturally spaces, while the blade is extremely thin. Using an edge that has no thickness, you enter where there is space; the knife glides through, and the room is ample—more than enough. That is why, after nineteen years, the blade still seems freshly sharpened.

The oral commentary adds: whether affairs are hard or easy, each has its own natural pattern. If a person simply follows that pattern and does not force against it, the mind stays at ease; outer things cannot harm your vital spring. That is the meaning of yangsheng—nurturing life.

The Tough Spots and the “Huo” Sound

Even so, whenever I come to a tangle of tendon and bone—a place that is especially awkward to cut—I grow alert, fix my gaze, slow my hand, and move the knife with the utmost lightness. Then there is only a soft “huo,” and the flesh comes away, as if a clod of earth had dropped to the ground. I stand there with the knife raised, look around, feel satisfied and secure, wipe the blade clean, and put it away.

Lord Wenhui

Lord Wenhui said: Well said! After hearing Cook Ding’s words, I understand how to nurture life.

This passage explains the meaning of “Cook Ding Cuts the Ox” in Zhuangzi’s “Nurturing Life” chapter, along the following lines.

Dealing with the world: smooth and rough times

Life cannot be all smooth going; there will also be hard stretches. When adversity comes, one should meet it with yielding and adaptation, not by pushing against it head-on. In good times people are often quite at ease; in adversity they easily grow flustered and even lose the composure and measure they had before—those who can truly “not disturb the heart-mind” are few. So the author here turns the discussion and uses cutting up an ox as a comparison.

“Clustered sinews” and the hard places

“Clustered sinews” (zu ju) means spots on the ox where sinews and bones knot and gather—the very places where the knife must be most careful. Though Cook Ding had already reached the stage of “no longer seeing the whole ox,” and his blade followed only the broad gaps between the major joints, whenever he hit a tangle of sinew and bone he still found it difficult and felt “chù rán”—alert, not daring to be careless.

“Jiè” is redoubled caution; “shì wéi zhǐ” means that after the eyes have fixed on the spot, he pauses briefly before moving the knife slowly—stressing extra care, not that he literally stops still. When the knife moves, it is “wēi shèn,” a light touch, not brute force.

“Huò” (same sound as “tì”) means suddenly, all at once; “jiě” here means to come apart. With very little force, flesh and bone seem to loosen on their own and fall apart with a rustle—many cuts, all smooth. When the ox is done, he stands holding the knife, looking around at ease; “chóu chú” here is composure and satisfaction, not the modern sense of hesitation. “Mǎn zhì” is contentment—that this bout of cutting has gone exactly as he wished—not smug pride.

Why content? Because he opened the ox without force and the knife was undamaged—hence “shàn dāo,” putting the knife away properly. That layer of meaning compares to a person in adversity who still responds in accord with circumstances, does not let the mind run wild, lets matters pass and dissolve, and dwells in a ease close to Wuwei (non-action), as in ordinary, uneventful days.

Link to the theme of “nurturing life”

From “In doing good, do not seek fame close at hand” onward, the text turns to nurturing life in the direct sense; the Cook Ding passage is only a parable. The four characters “dé yǎng shēng yān” at the end close the section lightly—economical in structure and on theme—so they should be read together with what precedes.

When Gongwen Xuan met Youshi, he was startled and said: What kind of person is this? Why does he have only one foot? Was he made this way by Heaven, or did people do it to him?

Youshi said: It was Heaven, not people. Heaven made him born with one foot missing. Human form is naturally meant to walk on two feet side by side; that he alone among the crowd is like this is Heaven’s doing—it is not something people deliberately made happen.

This passage is saying: Some have full use of their feet and some do not; on the surface it looks like human affairs, but at root it is also the arrangement of the Creator. When people are in hardship, they should likewise accept and bear it as it comes.

A marsh pheasant takes ten steps to peck once and a hundred steps to drink once; it does not seek to be shut in a cage. Even if, in a cage, it were treated as a “sacred bird” and fed like a king, it would still think that a bad life.

The earlier talk about accepting hardship in affliction is of the same line as Cook Ding’s “whenever I come to where sinew and bone meet, I see the difficulty” in Butcher Ding Cuts Up an Ox; here the wild pheasant is used as a image: in the world, adverse circumstances are often many—like “being king in a cage” is not really good either. Better to be in the wild: though hard, one is free.

The preceding passage concerns accepting adversity with equanimity. Each time Butcher Ding encounters a tangle of bone and sinew, the author takes that moment as a cue and illustrates the point with the image of “the pheasant in the marsh.”

The pheasant’s situation

A wild pheasant living in the marsh may take ten steps to peck one mouthful of food and a hundred steps to find one drink—meaning how hard it is to forage and slake thirst in the wild. If you keep it in a cage with ample food and water, it may look vigorous and well fed, yet the bird itself does not want that life. Hence the line “it does not wish to be kept in a cage” (bu qi xu hu fan zhong): qi means “to wish,” and fan is a cage.

Why it refuses

In the cage, though it eats its fill and its spirit seems to flourish (“wang” here reads as “wang,” vigorous), it is still not at ease—“the spirit may seem kingly, yet that is not good” (shen sui wang, bu shan ye). “Not good” (bu shan) means uneasy in heart, not free in oneself.

What the metaphor is driving at

In essence: cherish yourself and do not let worldly affairs drag you under; all the more, hold to your own place and guard your spirit and mind. Like the pheasant that would rather peck every ten steps and drink every hundred than live caged with full bellies yet “spirit kingly yet not good”—bearing outward hardship is still better than seeming prosperous in the arena of fame and gain while inwardly ill at ease. This is in the same key as “treading on a tiger’s tail” and “playing in Yi’s bow-range”: life often meets adversity, but that still beats bending to an unfree “fullness” that fits self-care and keeping oneself whole.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi

Qin Shi Mourns Old Dan (Laozi)

After Old Dan (Laozi) died, Qin Shi came to mourn at the bier, cried three times, and left. A disciple asked: “Weren’t you the Master’s friend?” He answered: “Yes.” They asked again: “Can mourning be like that?” He answered: “It can.”

Qin Shi said: At first I took him for that kind of person; now I know he was not. When I went in just now, the older ones wept for him as for a son, the younger as for a mother. That they would “guard against” him yet also be moved—there must still be attachment in their hearts: words that should not have been spoken were spoken, tears that should not have fallen fell. That goes against Heaven’s principle and turns away from one’s original feeling; they forgot the portion they originally received from Heaven. The ancients called this “the penalty of evading Heaven” (dun tian zhi xing). “Bei” and “bei” (turning the back) mean the same: both are turning away.

(Kouyi note: Zhuangzi’s teaching grows from Laozi; here Laozi is gently lowered from the pedestal of “sage” first, to pave the way for later stripping down Yao, Shun, and Confucius. I hold no private favor toward Laozi—still less toward others.)

“Cried three times and left”: no hollow sentiment. The disciples’ question: Laozi and Qin Shi were friends—why mourn so “without feeling”? “Master” (fuzi) in the text refers to Qin Shi. “At first I took him for that kind of person; now I know he was not”: at first he thought Laozi was a transcendent man; through this mourning he saw he was not truly beyond—once Laozi died, disciples young and old wept so bitterly, which shows Laozi had not fully shed worldly traces and could still move people by emotion, so speech and weeping all happened “without intending to.” What Heaven bestows originally has no trace to grasp; if people still bond through emotion, they forget what they first received from Heaven—evading Heaven’s principle and turning from what is real—both can be called offending Heaven, hence “the penalty of evading Heaven.”

Accepting the Time, Following What Is Right, and the Sovereign’s Suspended Release

“Coming was your master’s time; going was your master’s following what is right. Settle in the time and rest in what follows—then sorrow and joy cannot enter. The ancients called this the Sovereign’s suspended release.”

Coming was when the master should come; going was when the master should go. At ease in the time and aligned with fate, grief and gladness cannot get into the heart. The ancients called this “the Sovereign’s suspended release”—as if the Sovereign above had undone the bonds that hung one in midair.

(Kouyi note: After the passage on Qin Shi, the principle of life and death is fully stated here to close the chapter.)

After the passage on “Qin Shi” (Qin’s Loss), the text develops the theme of “seeing through birth and death” to close the chapter: one must understand that birth and death are natural, and that the heart is not tugged by them—only then can one speak of “nourishing life.” Here “fuzi” (the Master) is an honorific for one who has attained the Way. Between heaven and earth, those who possess the Way come only by chance and go only by chance; one need only follow the season and yield to circumstance. Once one knows that coming and going each have their proper “shi” (fit), one need not rejoice greatly at arrival nor grieve deeply at departure. “Cannot enter” means (birth and death) cannot penetrate the heart; “xuan” (suspension) means the heart is bound and obstructed; “di” (Emperor) refers to Heaven. If one knows that heavenly principle is so of itself, even the Emperor of Heaven cannot bind one with birth and death—Heaven itself cannot prevail over one; hence “di zhi xuan jie” (the Emperor’s suspended release).

“Pointing at the firewood that is burning and yet not seeing that it will burn out”—this uses birth and death as a comparison: like pointing at the wood to see the fire; the wood has a time when it is exhausted, yet the fire of the world has continued from antiquity to the present without ever being seen to run dry. These three lines of text are strikingly bold. The principle of birth and death cannot be fully stated; the preceding exposition ends with a metaphor—precisely where the writing excels.

Inner Chapter Four, “Renjian shi” (The Human World). The previous chapter treated nourishing life; this one treats the human world: once one has this body and dwells in the world, how can one wholly cut off human affairs? Yet one must live well within the world. From this angle, Zhuangzi is neither impractical nor indifferent to affairs; what is called “handling affairs” shares the same intent as the outer chapter’s “nothing is worth doing, yet one cannot fail to do it.”

Yan Hui visits Confucius and asks to travel. Confucius asks where; he answers: to the state of Wei. Asked what he will do there, Yan Hui says: I hear the ruler of Wei is young, arbitrary, rashly deploying state business without seeing his faults, rashly conscripting the people to death—the dead are as numerous as reeds in a marsh, if one measures by the population of the realm; the people truly have no way out.

This passage explains two layers of meaning in related Zhuangzi chapters: the “young ruler who acts alone” and “Yan Hui’s plan to go to the state of Wei.”

On a young ruler who lightly regards the people

“Their years are still young and their conduct is solitary” means someone still young yet insists on going his own way, heedless of what others say. He readily mobilizes the power of the state yet does not know he is at fault; he treats the people’s lives lightly and kills and maims. Count those killed throughout the realm before and after, and they are as numerous as banana plants in a great marsh—an image for seeing the people as worthless as grass and chaff. Xunzi’s “Rich Country” chapter has a similar expression, “measured by the marsh,” which aligns with this sense. The original wording is “like banana in the marsh”; here it is inverted to “the marsh like banana,” a stylistic inversion in composition. It also says: the marsh is a marsh like Yun and Meng; Yun and Meng were ancient marshlands, and later there was soil that could be farmed—one does not say “Yun and Meng soil is cultivated,” but “Yun soil, Meng is cultivated”; “kuang” is fine hemp, and “kuang” also means fine—one does not say “kuang kuang xian,” but “kuang xian kuang”—again this kind of inverted syntax. As for “when he goes, the people have none to turn to,” it means the people have no one to rely on and nowhere to go.

Yan Hui asks to go and Confucius dissuades him

Yan Hui once said to Confucius: I have heard you say that in a state that has the Dao one should assist it, and in a chaotic state one should try to set it right; many patients gather at a physician’s door—I wish to use what I have heard and think of a way; perhaps Wei can still be saved? Confucius said: Alas, on this journey you will probably suffer punishment. The Dao abhors mixture; when mixed, affairs multiply; when they multiply, there is turmoil; when there is turmoil, there is worry; when worry is deep, nothing can save you. The ancient utmost person first establishes himself, then influences others; if he is not yet settled in himself, how can he have surplus strength to manage how a violent man acts? Do you not know that De (virtue/power) is scattered by reputation, and that “zhi” (clever knowing) shows itself as outward contention? Those who fight for fame undermine one another; clever knowing is the tool of contention; fame and clever knowing are both dangerous instruments—they cannot be used to “fully act” (jin xing) according to the ideal before a violent man. Moreover, even if one’s virtue is thick and one is sincere, upright, and firm, one still may not understand human feelings; even if one’s reputation is good and one does not contend, one still may not understand people’s hearts—yet you would forcibly apply the cord and ink line of ren and yi (humaneness and righteousness)—rules and standards—before a violent man. That is to meet his “beauty” with your “ugliness”; others will call you a “zai ren” (one who brings calamity). Called a zai ren, he will surely turn and harm you; you will probably be treated as a calamity and meet disaster.

This oral exegesis links Xunzi, examples of inverted composition, and the warning in “Man in the World, Associated with Other Men” when Yan Hui asks about going—the core point: not having perfected yourself yet while you forcefully “perfect” others, especially preaching ren and yi to a tyrant, turns fame and virtue into dangerous instruments.

“When there is Dao, one appears; when there is no Dao, one hides” is what sages often say; Zhuangzi turns it around: when the state is already at peace, then go and govern; when the state is already in chaos, then go and set things right—like a skilled physician who waits until patients are piled up at the door before he will act. If the state were already well governed, why insist on going?

You probably mean to take what you learned from your teacher and tell the ruler of Wei, so that he may reflect and reform by these principles and perhaps Wei will be stabilized. But if you go rashly like this, you will very likely be executed.

“The Dao does not want mixture”: if the mind is not single-minded and clear, it cannot truly save others. If you still harbor thoughts like “Since he is like that, how should I save him?” that is accommodating the mind—the mind is already mixed. How can you save others when you are not pure yourself? When mixed, there is multiplicity; with multiplicity, disturbance; with disturbance, sorrow—you are confused and suffering first; how can you save anyone?

The ancients first had to establish what is kept within themselves—firm their own foundation—before they could admonish others. If what is kept within oneself is not yet settled, and you yourself are not yet steady, how can you spare strength for others? When the other person acts with violence and wickedness, you can barely endure your own distress; how can you care for him?

De (Virtue) is natural and inherent; zhi (knowledge) often means private cleverness and scheming. Once there is a desire for reputation, inherent De disperses; once private cleverness is used, contention arises—hence “De is scattered by reputation, knowledge emerges from contention”—those who contend undermine one another, and knowledge becomes a tool of strife. Reputation and knowledge in the world are often ominous; they cannot be fully acted upon; acting on them too much always brings disaster.

“Gang” means thick or solid. Thick De and thick trust mean genuine virtue and trustworthy conduct; but if you have not reached that person’s nature and temperament—you cannot fathom his character and qi; you have not understood his heart—you cannot see through his mind, yet you thrust words of benevolence, righteousness, and law (shengmo, the line and ink of rules) before a violent and wicked person, he will detest you and think you are boasting of your own excellence. “Shu” here is the same as “shu” (to state)—to lay out doctrine. “Zairen” means one who harms others and brings disaster—he will call you a disaster-bringer; once you have that name, calamity falls on you instead. If you go, you will likely first be harmed by others—how then can you transform the ruler of Wei and save the state?

If you only put on a show of “loving the worthy and hating the unworthy,” why bother making yourself look different from everyone else? If you stubbornly keep silent and refuse to speak plainly, kings and lords will turn your cleverness against you in their rivalry: your eyes will dart away, your expression will be artificially calm, your mouth will turn things over and over, your face will be a mask, and your mind will plot how to “pull it off”—which is like fighting fire with fire or water with water; it only makes things worse. Follow that beginning to its end and there is no limit; you are like someone walking through danger.

If the other person can already tell the worthy from the unworthy and truly loves the former and hates the latter, what is left for me to do? Why should I move my mouth, my face, my performance, or my scheming again? Likewise, heaping fire on fire and water on water only piles up more; start down that road and the trouble never ends—you are again risking yourself in a situation of distrust—and however fine your words, you still will not escape dying before a violent man.

Context for reading Zhuangzi: This passage belongs to the discussion of how to face tyrants and cruel rulers (in the same vein as Yan Hui asking Confucius about going to Wei). The core warning is this: before a tyrant who already knows how to distinguish the worthy from the unworthy, if you still use flattery, performance, and clever stratagems to “preach loving the worthy and hating the unworthy,” you not only achieve nothing—you seem to feed the other’s violent temper—and in the end you cannot even keep your life. The deeper difficulty is that when the other already “knows the worthy and is pleased, knows the unworthy and detests them,” for you to repeat the lesson is only redundant, dangerous self-display.

If the other person could tell the worthy from the unworthy—delighting in the former and loathing the latter—what would they need you for? Why would you need to strive to be different from them? It is precisely because they cannot tell worthy from unworthy that they act as they do.

Since they do not even know who is worthy, how could they recognize you as worthy or trust what you say? In the scripture, “summoned to an audience” (zhaozhao) means being called to court; “if it were someone like you” (ruo ru ye) means a case like yours—the Lord of Wei never summoned you, which is why the text says ruo (“as if,” “in such a case”). You went on your own without being summoned. The other sits in the rank of king or duke; in the gaps between your words he is sure to contend with you, each side trying to get the upper hand. Jie means winning the argument. When you are trapped in that, your eyes will dart and flicker; your face must still look calm—that is using expression to placate him and humbling yourself to seek reconciliation; your mouth will be busy explaining and saving yourself; in bearing and gesture you cannot help showing fear and the posture of kneeling and holding up your hands; inwardly you must keep yielding to him and perform submission through and through. Emperor Wu of Liang’s rebuke of He Chen fits the image of this hexagram: unable to win the dispute, you can only submit.

The other was already prone to violence, and once he wins the argument, your defeat makes his arrogance burn hotter—like fighting fire with water or fire with fire: the more you “help,” the worse it gets. Yi means increase; yi duo means the evil piles up. Follow that path and his wickedness has no end; his brutality only grows heavier. Hou yan means words spoken with great weight and depth. You have not yet made him trust you, yet in the status of one who is not trusted you speak deeply and gravely before a violent man—you will certainly be killed by him.

Furthermore, in the past Jie killed Guan Longfeng and Zhou killed Prince Bi Gan: they cultivated themselves, yet below they catered to the people and above they went against the ruler, so the ruler used their “self-cultivation” to push them aside—that is the type who chase a good name. In the past Yao attacked the states of Congzhi and Xu’ao, and Yu attacked Youhu; the countries were emptied and ruined and many were killed—(such deeds) belong to the same kind of pattern.

In antiquity Jie killed Guan Longfeng and Zhou killed Prince Bi Gan. They had cultivated themselves and, from below, humbled themselves to soothe the common people, yet from above they went against their rulers. The rulers therefore used their reputation for “loving goodness” as a pretext to push them aside and destroy them. That is the price of craving fame.

Long ago, in allegory, Yao attacked the states of Congzhi and Xu’ao, and Yu attacked Youhu. The countries were emptied, the people were ruined, and the rulers themselves suffered punishment. They never stopped resorting to arms, seeking only reputation and tangible gain. All of this belongs to those who chase name and profit. Have you never heard? Longfeng and Bi Gan cultivated themselves, cared for the people, and remonstrated with their lords, yet they failed to see that the people already belong to someone: as ministers below, they humbled themselves to comfort the subjects of Jie and Zhou. Jie and Zhou did not love the people, yet they loved people who still belonged to Jie and Zhou. That is to oppose what is above from below, and for that they were killed. What they practiced was “goodness,” but the ruler turned their love of goodness against them—exclusion and wrath—and all of that counts as the fault of loving a good name.

Congzhi, Xu’ao, and Youhu are names from fable. When a state becomes a wasteland, the dead become vengeful ghosts—without descendants, without a home for their spirits. Those countries came to such an end because war never ceased and name and profit were pursued. When real gain is not secured and words cannot be borne, even those who speak for fame and private advantage are more than Yao and Yu—in the story—can tolerate, to say nothing of the annihilation of a state. How much less can you?

On the reading “sheng,” Yao and Yu never actually did any of this; the whole account is allegory.

“Even so, you must have some plan. You might as well tell me.”

Yan Hui said, “To be upright and empty-hearted, diligent and single-minded—would that do?”

Confucius said, “No, no. When yang qi fills you and the colors at your face’s openings shift without rest, when you do not go against what ordinary people do and you follow whatever emotion others show in order to win acceptance and harmony—that is called virtue that wears away day by day. Virtue consumed little by little cannot succeed; how much less can great virtue? You will be held to a form that never transforms, agreeing outwardly while dissenting inwardly. How could that be forced to work?”

Another passage in paraphrase: If you mean to go and see him, you need some workable approach. Try telling me what you have in mind.

“Upright in bearing and empty in mind”: the body is straight and composed, the heart clear and uncluttered. “Diligent and unified”: exert yourself without slackening, from start to finish as one. If you can be like that, will it work? “How could it?”—decidedly not.

“When yang fills the openings”: when someone has got his way, yang qi is at its peak—bearing is buoyant, spirit high, presence expansive. “The flush of pride is not fixed”: the look of arrogance does not stay the same. Ordinary people often dare not resist; they can only comply and fear. When the other sees that everyone fears him, if you try to move him with words, he will only want you to yield and flatter him so he feels pleased—hence “seeking ease for his heart.” Rongyu (ease and compliance) means taking one’s own pleasure; keep that up and De grows smaller and smaller. To call people like you possessors of small De is already too much—how much less great De?

“Clutching one’s views without transforming”: stubbornly holding to one’s own ideas, unable to adapt. If it is so, outwardly you use upright emptiness to seek harmony with others, inwardly you cling to your own “diligence and unity,” thinking you have no fault within and your tricks go no further—can you take yourself to be in the right?

Then: I am straight within and curved without, mature in accomplishment and likening myself to the ancients.

Straight within means being a companion of Heaven. To be a companion of Heaven is to know that the Son of Heaven and oneself are alike sons of Heaven—why insist on pushing only your own will? If others say it is good, call it good; if they say it is not, call it not—if you can be like that, people will call you like a child; that is what being a companion of Heaven means.

Curved without means being a companion of others. Holding the hands together, kneeling, bending the fists—these are the rites of a subject; everyone does them, and would I dare not? Doing what others do, others find no fault with you—that is being a companion of others.

Mature in accomplishment and likening oneself to the ancients means being a companion of antiquity. The words may sound like admonition, but in truth they were already there in antiquity—not invented by me alone. If it is so, even blunt speech is no harm; that is being a companion of antiquity.

If it is like this, will it do?—Would that be acceptable?

Since that is the case, the text below again has Yan Hui answer in three parts. “Inner uprightness” (nei zhi): inwardly use this principle to hold fast to one’s authenticity; here the word “upright” (zhi) is close in meaning to “true” (zhen). From the Son of Heaven’s supreme rank down to those on a level with myself, all are born of Heaven, all arise from nature—how could one dare to be selfish by one’s own whim, treating what people approve as right and what they disapprove as wrong? Without this selfish mind, one is as unselfconscious as a child; then one joins with Heaven, hence “a companion of Heaven” (yu tian wei tu).

“Outward bending” (wai qu): outwardly one fully performs the ritual of holding the hands and bending the fists in salute; everyone does so, and I follow; toward me others likewise find no fault or blame. This comes from the etiquette of bowing low. Though it goes against the crowd, I still arise from the lower place. (Note: discussions of this sort aim to satirize the Confucian school.) Thus one joins with people, hence “a companion of people” (yu ren wei tu).

“Completion” (cheng): one completes one’s own account—bi he means matching and agreeing: matching what one has established as one’s view with the words of the ancients, citing the ancients as proof. Though one borrows the ancients’ teaching words, one is stating right and wrong face to face, and there is real reproof in it; the point is that what I say did not originate with me—the ancients already said it. If so, then even blunt exposure of conduct and laying bare what people do, people still do not treat it as offense, hence “though upright, it does not harm.”

“A companion of the ancients” (yu gu wei tu): the account aligns with the ancients. If it is so, then is it acceptable—can one speak this way to serve the lord of Wei?

Confucius said: No! How could that work! Too many rules and corrective devices without subtle fit (bu die); though rigid, there is still no crime in it. Even so, it stops at that—how could it reach transformation! It is still shi xin—relying on one’s own mind as teacher.

Brief note: This passage belongs to the Zhuangzi chapter “Human Affairs in the World,” around Yan Hui’s request to go to Wei and Confucius’s discussion of “heart-mind fasting” (xin zhai). Commentators explain Yan Hui’s “inner uprightness, outward bending, and completing one’s speech,” and quote Confucius’s rejection—“How could that work! Too many rules and corrective devices without subtle fit… still shi xin”—meaning that formal uprightness, courtesy, and citation of antiquity alone still “teach from the heart-mind” and do not attain xin zhai.

On Governing and “Transforming Others”

What is meant by “affairs of government,” “laws,” and “methods” is that the names and methods you speak of for doing things and establishing rules are too many, and in the end you still cannot find peace. Diedie (a reduplicated form, i.e. chuchu, uneasy and anxious) means the heart never settles. Even if you can manage all three, you are not necessarily guilty—but you only save yourself and avoid disaster. How can you transform others? Hence: “How can one reach the level of transforming people?” Where is the flaw? In these three lines of teaching you have learned the mind of youwei (deliberate, purposive action)—when the heart keeps calculation and traces, it is no longer without trace and is not the way of nature (ziran), so you cannot transform others.

Yan Hui Asks about “Direction”; Confucius Explains “Heart-Fasting”

Yan Hui said: I have nothing left by which to advance further; may I ask what path there is? Confucius said: First fast, then I will tell you. If in your heart you still think, “I must act with purpose,” is that not too easy? Once you feel it is “easy,” you no longer match the spirit of Haotian (the vast, natural Heaven). Yan Hui said: My family is poor; I only go without wine and meat for a few months—is that fasting? Confucius said: That is fasting for sacrifice, not xinzhai (Heart-Fasting). Yan Hui asked: What is Heart-Fasting? Confucius said: Unify your intent in one point; do not listen with the ears—listen with the xin (heart-mind); do not listen with the heart-mind—listen with qi (vital energy). Listening with the ears stops at the ears; listening with the heart-mind, the heart stops at “matching” outer things; qi is empty and used to receive what is outside—only the Dao (Dao) can gather in emptiness. Emptiness (xu) is Heart-Fasting.

Elaboration in Oral Commentary

“Wuyi jin” (nothing by which to advance further) means: there is no higher step left to climb. “You er wei zhi qi yi ye” means: you feel you have this skill and want to “do” something—is that really so easy? The moment you stir a thought of taking it lightly or casually, you no longer align with Haotian’s intent; hence “if it seems easy, it does not suit Haotian”—these two lines are very practical in daily life. Sacrificial fasting is on the outside of the body; Heart-Fasting is within the inner mind. “Yizhi” (one intent) is one mind without mixture. Listening with the ear keeps hearing outside; listening with the heart keeps hearing “here” in the self; listening with qi, there is no fixed opposition between thing and self. Listening with the ear stops at the ear and does not enter the heart; listening with the heart, outer things must correspond one by one with “me”—that is opposition between thing and self. Qi follows nature and responds to things through emptiness; emptiness is where the Dao abides, hence “only the Dao gathers in emptiness”—this word xu (emptiness) is Heart-Fasting.

Yan Hui said: “Before I was truly ‘set in motion’ [by teaching], there was still a ‘Yan Hui’; once I was in a situation of being set in motion (taught, entrusted), there was no longer a stubborn ‘Yan Hui’—can this be called xu (emptiness)?”

The Master said: “You’ve said it all.”

“Being set in motion” means truly receiving instruction and being awakened. This is Yan Hui speaking after enlightenment: before instruction, there was still a “self” in the heart; after instruction, that clinging “self” had dissolved. Forgetting the self is xu. The Master’s “You’ve said it all” affirms that Yan Hui had put the point exactly right.

“I say to you: if you can enter the cage and play there without being tugged by reputation.” What follows is about how to live in the human world.

People in the world are like birds in a cage. To enter and roam yet not be moved by empty fame—where there are traces, fame follows; once there are traces, the heart is pulled. Living without contrivance leaves no trace; no trace, and the heart is not stirred by outer things. Hence “roam in the cage without being touched by its name.”

“When they open the door, speak; when they do not, stop”: when the other’s door is open and they can hear, speak; when it is shut and they cannot, hold your tongue. The idea is close to the Analects line about speaking when it is right and staying silent when it is not—only Zhuangzi’s phrasing is more striking.

“No gate, no poison”: where there is a fixed place, there is a “gate”; with no fixed place, there is “no gate.” Bias and attachment are like a “poisonous taste”; without bias or clinging, there is “no poison.” These are all images of no contrivance, no trace.

“Take ‘the One’ as your dwelling and lodge the heart in what cannot be avoided”: make the undivided One your home, and settle the heart in the measure of what must be done—no forcing, no overreaching; stop when it is time to stop. Then the main points of living in the human world are nearly complete. “Nearly” (ji) means “almost fully there.”

“Erasing traces is easy; walking without touching the ground is hard.”

“Traces” are footprints. Standing still, wiping away footprints is still relatively easy. Walking yet leaving no mark on the ground—that is, moving in the world without clinging to appearances—that is hard.

The earlier “no gate, no poison; one dwelling in the unavoidable” says: not hiding in empty stillness, but in a world with gates and poison, with the unavoidable, still keeping empty roaming. “Walking without touching the ground” goes a step beyond “erasing traces”: moving without fixed place, the heart not dwelling in signs—that is what is truly difficult.

Vernacular Interpretation of Zhuangzi Kouyi (Zhuangzi Explained in Oral Commentary)

On “Traces (footprints)”

“Traces” means footprints. If you stand still and do not walk, you leave no footprints at all—that is easy. But how can a person not walk? To walk upon the ground yet leave no trace upon it—that is hard.

The point is like this: if you do nothing at all, that is easy; but in human life, what is not an affair? How can one do nothing? Only wuwei (non-action) while “doing nothing yet leaving nothing undone” is the difficult practice.

“Serving as a human agent” and “serving as Heaven’s agent”

“Serving as a human agent” easily mixes in falsehood; “serving as Heaven’s agent” is hard because not a speck of falsity is allowed.

Going further: driven by human desire, one easily falls into deceit and pretense; if one guards the mind and heeds only the mandate of transformation, hypocrisy has no room. “Human agent” means human desire; “Heaven’s agent” means the working of heavenly principle in daily life.

The words “hard” and “easy” carry depth: what is easy easily turns false; what is hard is hard because it tolerates no trace of pretense.

Having wings and wingless flight, having knowledge and unknowing

We have heard of flying by wings, not of flying without wings; we have heard of knowing by what is already known, not of knowing by unknowing.

The first line uses the bird as a metaphor: a bird must fly with wings; to fly without wings is swift without haste, arrival without walking—close to a “spiritual” state. That line sets up the next: to know by what one already knows is ordinary method; to know what one does not know—that is “knowing by unknowing”—and that is the subtle entry to the Way.

“Gazing at that empty gate” and “sitting while racing”

“Gazing at that empty gate”—looking toward the vast, open doorway; “empty room gives birth to white light”—in an empty chamber light arises of itself; “auspiciousness rests in resting”—blessing lies in stopping and settling; “if it still will not stop, this is called sitting while racing”—if the mind still refuses to stop, it is called “sitting yet galloping within.”

Here “empty room” stands for the mind: if the mind cannot empty, clarify, and settle, the body may sit in stillness while the inside still chases outer things—that is “sitting while racing.” (Note: some transmitted versions have textual disorder around this passage; interpretation should take “empty the mind, stop thoughts, and guard against sitting-while-racing” as the main theme.)

The gist of this passage from Zhuangzi Kouyi (Oral Explanations of Zhuangzi) is as follows:

Look at a room with gaps or openings—light shines in through those gaps, as if the light were born from empty space. The commentary compares “a room with openings” to the heart-mind (xin). The point is: when the heart-mind can be empty, it is like an opening in a wall; clear light naturally enters. From emptiness, whiteness and brightness can arise; Zhuangzi deliberately says “giving birth to whiteness” rather than “giving birth to brightness”—that is his characteristic way of putting it. This realm of empty clarity is exactly where the ten thousand things gather. “Auspiciousness rests only where it should rest” (jixiang zhizhi): fortune and blessing settle only in the place where they ought to stop; the second “rest” (zhi) refers to the place of empty stillness. When you can rest, you become empty; when you are empty, clarity arises—this aligns with the sequence of precepts, concentration, and wisdom (jie, ding, hui): first still clinging and wandering thought; when the mind is empty, wisdom is born. If the mind is still stuffed with stray thoughts and cannot stop on its own, the body may be sitting but the mind runs outward—that is “sitting while galloping” (zuochi); how then can there be “sitting in forgetting” (zuowang)? The commentary uses the two characters zuochi from the negative side to explain what zuowang means.

What the ears and eyes see and hear all converges in the heart-mind. If the heart-mind holds nothing and receives nothing, it allows what ears and eyes perceive to enter without being turned by outer conditions; the mind does not race outward—then even when one follows the ears and eyes, seeing and hearing flow inward without disturbing inner knowing, and ghosts and spirits will come to attach and dwell there, to say nothing of ordinary people. This empty, still openness is precisely the hinge on which the ten thousand things are transformed and nurtured—the pivot that Yu and Shun guarded, the ultimate path that Fuxi and Jixu practiced. As for those whose minds scatter and thoughts tangle, they should all the more take this as their direction home.

Section one (on the heart-mind and transforming influence)

What the ears hear and the eyes see all reach the heart-mind; yet if nothing in the heart-mind is filled up by these, the heart-mind can stay unobstructed—what is heard and seen may enter inward, but in knowing they seem to remain outside the heart-mind. What does “outside the heart-mind” mean? It means the heart-mind is not pulled by outer things, so outer things cannot get in. Though one still hears and still sees, the heart-mind does not fix on hearing or seeing. When the heart-mind can be empty to this degree, it can connect with ghosts and spirits—how much more so with people? Hence “ghosts and spirits come to lodge” means utmost sincerity is like spirit; within this heart-mind there is from the start a ghost-and-spirit that connects with creation and transformation, hence “come to lodge.”

Having said this, one line gathers it up: this is “the transformation of the ten thousand things”—the pattern of creation and transformation, the hinge from which the ten thousand things issue; what Shun and Yu saw was no more than this. Fu Xi and Jilü lived their whole lives in this way—how much more so people on a lower level? “San” refers to ordinary people.

From “jue ji” (severing traces) downward is another layer of meaning; it cannot be read as continuous with what precedes.

Section two (Ye Gong Zi Gao asks Zhong Ni)

Zhulian was Ye Gong’s name; Zigao was his style. Sending Zhulian on a mission was a weighty charge. Qi would probably treat the envoy with respect but without urgency—ordinary people are already hard to handle, how much more feudal lords? I am very afraid. You once said to Zhulian: in affairs large or small, few succeed smoothly without the Dao; if the affair fails, there will be trouble in human relations; if it succeeds, there will also be yin-yang (favorable and adverse, gain and loss) worries. Whether it succeeds or fails, only one with De can afterward be free of lingering harm. I eat only coarse food, do not seek flavor in cooking, and do not demand that the cook be clean—yet now I receive orders in the morning and by evening I am drinking ice; is my inner self not burning? Before I have touched the real situation of the affair, yin-yang worry is already there; if the affair fails, human trouble must follow—pressed from both sides. As a minister I cannot bear this commission; do you have something to tell me?

Zhuliang was Ye Gong’s personal name, and Zigao was his courtesy name. Sending Zigao on a mission refers to this embassy to Qi—a weighty and difficult assignment.

“Very respectful but not urgent” means that as envoy he was punctilious in ceremony, yet when asked about official business his replies were often unhurried. In ordinary exchanges, if someone responds but does not really answer, you can still do little about it—how much more so with feudal lords? So Zigao was inwardly afraid and cautious.

Here “zi” means Confucius. Zigao said: Confucius once taught me that affairs great or small rarely succeed without words that harmonize and carry the day. “Guo” means “few”; “bu dao” means not to speak or not to open one’s mouth. When planning for the state fails, punishment follows—this is the calamity of the human way (ren dao zhi huan). If one toils in calculation and even succeeds, one often falls ill from worry—this is the calamity of yin and yang (yin yang zhi huan), harm to body and mind through anxiety and overwork. If one wishes that whether things succeed or fail, no calamity follows afterward, only a person of virtue (you de) can manage that. All of the above quotes Confucius.

Zigao also said: Since I accepted the mission, at meals I cannot taste flavor; coarse food does not feel coarse, fine food does not feel fragrant—“zang” here means “fine, good,” yet even coarse fare seems like delicacies (because the mind is not on eating). Usually I ate heavily and the kitchen fire never went cold, so the cook could not rest the stove; now worry is so heavy and I eat so little that the stove is often cold. Moreover, the morning I received the charge, my chest felt scorched; by evening it was already like drinking ice (yin bing)—an image of inner bitterness and crushing burden. “Qing” here means “in fact”: though I have the commission, in truth I have not yet truly enjoyed one proper meal.

(The following repeats the earlier passage in substance:) Usually the stove never went out; now, with much worry and little food, it is often cold. Since the commission, my heart has labored as if drinking ice. If I guard against falling into this illness even when the mission succeeds, and if failure brings punishment, that is a double calamity. To be a minister in such a state is truly unbearable. Zigao asked: What words will you teach me?—that is, how should I conduct myself in the response? “Lai” is a sentence particle.

Confucius said: Under heaven there are two great laws that must not be violated—one is ming (fate, what heaven assigns), the other is yi (righteous duty).

Children loving their parents is ming: it is inborn; this feeling cannot be set aside for a single day—hence it is said to be “not to be released from the heart.” Ministers serving their ruler is yi: the foremost human obligation; all under heaven is the king’s land—wherever one goes one is the king’s subject; there is nowhere between heaven and earth to escape—this is called the great precept (da jie).

Therefore, one who serves parents seeks peace of mind without picking a place—that is the height of filial piety; one who serves the ruler seeks to fulfill duty without picking the task—that is the height of loyalty. In one’s own heart, when joy and sorrow come one does not change one’s measure; knowing there is no alternative yet accepting calmly, as if receiving a mandate from heaven—that is the height of virtue (de).

As minister or son, there are necessarily things one cannot refuse: only act according to the facts and do what must be done, forget self-interest—then where is room to cling to life or hate death? When Confucius said “My lord, you need only go”—here “my lord” refers to Duke Ye (Ye Gong): do what ought to be done; do not hesitate further.

Note (commentary by the author of the oral interpretation)

This passage is very plain and right-minded; it speaks of ruler and subject, father and son in worldly affairs—not empty grand talk. So one cannot say Zhuangzi only knows how to speak lofty, impractical doctrine.

Great precept (da jie) means a law that must not be broken. Ming comes from heaven and is innate; in serving parents this heart exists from birth and cannot be left for a day. Yi is the share of conduct owed in the world; serving the ruler as minister is the first thing to fulfill among human obligations. Once there are names of ruler and subject, all under heaven are subjects—hence “what place is not the ruler’s?” Once one is minister or son, where under heaven and earth can one flee?

To serve parents with full filial piety is to obey the parents’ wishes in every direction—not first to choose a “safe” place and only then be filial. Once the heart is set on loyalty, joy and sorrow before one cannot alter that resolve. Affairs may be hard or easy, or bring fortune or harm; once it is the ruler’s command, it is what one must do—this too is heavenly mandate; there is no alternative but to accept and follow. To be able to do this is to be a person of utmost de. As minister or son one must also see what one meets; if unluckily one meets hard affairs, that too is unavoidable—one only seeks to make the matter solid (qing shi, to act according to the facts, steadfastly); one cannot care only for oneself; even if disaster reaches life and death, there is still no help for it. Hence “My lord, you may go”—you have no choice but to go. Here “my lord” refers to Duke Ye.

Plain-Language Interpretation

Qiu (Yan Hui) asked to go on from what he had just heard: whenever you deal with people who are close to you, you must build trust through real day-to-day contact; when you deal with people who are far apart, you must show good faith through what you say. And for speech to reach the other party, someone in the middle always has to carry it.

Words spoken when both sides are pleased, or when both are angry, are the hardest in the world to pass on faithfully. When both are pleased, the go-between tends to make the good side sound better than it is—“overflowing praise” (yimei). When both are angry, the go-between tends to make the bad side sound worse than it is—“overflowing blame” (yie). Whatever goes too far is not true; when it is not true, the hearer will not really believe it and will only grow suspicious. Once suspicion appears, the one who carried the message pays the price. So the old book Fayan says: pass on only the ordinary, honest part of what each side means; do not pass on language that is inflated or overheated—then the messenger has a fair chance of coming through unscathed.

Background

This comes from oral commentary (kouyi) related to the Zhuangzi. It is about the person stuck in the middle who relays messages: those nearby trust through shared living; those at a distance trust through words; and words always pass through someone else. When both sides are elated or both are furious, the go-between easily “fills out” the joy or the anger; the listener does not believe, and trouble lands on the messenger. Hence the warning to “transmit the usual truth, not overflow language”—a reminder not to embellish when repeating what others said, so as not to fail both parties and bring harm on oneself.

People who rely on cunning and brute force to contend with others often begin by talking as if everything were open and fair, yet they frequently end in secret scheming; once they go too far, every sort of crooked trick and odd expedient comes out.

Those who drink according to ritual still keep order at first, but toward the end the gathering often dissolves into disorder; once the wine has gone too far, strange music and improper amusements multiply.

Most affairs follow this pattern: at the outset people still speak of good faith, but in the end things often turn coarse and petty; what began simply, as it nears completion, is inflated into something vast and showy.

Words are like wind on water—stir them and everything moves; when action loses solid sincerity, danger is close. That is why anger flares without clear cause, and polished speech is so often one-sided argument dressed as truth.

A dying beast no longer cares whether its cry is pleasing; its breath breaks up in haste, and at that moment the heart easily fills with spite and harshness together. When ritual and rule are pressed too tight and pushed too far, the heart answers with thoughts that do not fit what the rites were meant to cultivate—and the person may not see how it happened. If one does not even grasp how it happened, who can say how far things will run before they stop?

This passage can be summarized as follows.

Zhuangzi uses both yuyan—indirect, admonitory speech that does not speak straight—and everyday affairs as analogies; every line stays close to human feeling. That is his usual way of writing.

Competing in skill—like wrestling or grappling today: outwardly cheerful, inwardly not necessarily so. At first they only spar casually, as play; by the end it often turns into real fighting and grabbing. When the play goes too far, it easily crosses the line; when that crossing reaches an extreme, the moves become strange and excessive (“tai” means going too far).

Agreeing to drink together—at first they still observe ritual and keep seats in order; when they drink to excess, there is shouting and chaos. When drinking goes wrong, pleasure often sours and even turns into quarrels. Much else in the world works the same way.

From these general examples he turns to “words” and “conduct”—once people deal with each other through speech, trouble stirs. “Wind on the waves” means floating and disorderly. As soon as one speaks of “conduct,” there are reputation and traces; once there is a name, the reality is lost. When reality is lost, harm is easy to invite. “Wu you” means without cause. Words spoken in anger are mostly improvised on the spot; at first there is no root, hence “anger’s inventions have no cause.” “Pian ci” is one-sided speech; clever talk often takes only one side, hence “clever words are one-sided speech.” “When a beast is about to die, it does not choose its cries”: as an animal nears death, its cries no longer heed propriety—a image for people who, heated in dispute, no longer guard their words; as the proverb says, “when people curse each other, there are no kind words.”

Once anger rises—“qi xi fu ran” is anger; “li” and “lang li” are fierceness and savagery. When anger comes up, a savage heart follows. If I treat others this way, they often respond with an unworthy heart; sometimes it goes as far as mutual injury and harm—and all of it is driven by anger, without the person noticing. Once one is driven by anger without knowing it, how can one still think of consequences?

All of the above describes worldly feeling: because liking can turn into disliking, the discussion moves through examples of anger, speech, drinking, and wrestling.

The ancients put it this way: Do not on your own initiative alter the lord’s command, and do not force affairs to completion—going beyond your role and chasing extra advantage often backfires. Changing what you say or pushing hard to “make it happen” turns the mission risky. Good relations take time to settle; bad ones flare up quickly and are hard to undo in time—so caution matters all the more.

Getting along with people is extremely hard; ruining rapport is easy. Hence one must not act lightly.

If you follow things as they naturally are and let the heart move freely within that, responding only from what you cannot but do, and thereby nurture inner centeredness, you have already reached the utmost. Why do more for the sake of extra reward? Better to carry the lord’s mandate to Wei as it truly is—this “delivering your life with sincerity” is itself a hard thing. Here another “hard” is added: even that step is not easy.

Not altering the command means not changing your message because of private desire; if, once entrusted, you are eager for success and revise your words, that will not do. Whether the affair succeeds, let it be—do not force it. That is not forcing completion. In ordinary life, the slightest thought of “I should get a bit more” is the mind of seeking gain—already excess (overstepping what is fitting). Altering the command and forcing completion are both excess; scheming in that way is dangerous, hence endangering the affair.

What is finely made lasts long: mutual regard needs months and years to fix. What turns bad may outrun correction: one harsh word or one snag, and enmity can form at once—and be hard to reverse quickly.

If I ride the natural course of things to set the heart free, and rely on what is unavoidable to nurture centeredness, that is enough—why act further for repayment? Repayment here means fulfilling the mandate and returning. Acting means excessive seeking of benefit. Delivering one’s life means bringing the lord’s mandate to Wei with truth and without pretense. On this journey, nothing surpasses simply delivering that mandate honestly and not over-calculating success or failure—to manage that is already difficult; and here “difficult” is stressed again: even holding to this is hard.

Wandering in the middle ground: gou means the middle region. This chapter is titled Human World (Renjian shi)—it speaks precisely of the difficulty of living among others.

Read this passage and it exhausts the twists of worldly feeling; without Zhuangzi’s thoroughly open heart, it would be hard to unfold such complexity. Some say Zhuangzi and Laozi see only that “the mind of Dao is subtle” and miss that “the human mind is perilous”—judgments of that sort differ among readers; yet if one reads without savoring the text, it is easy to dismiss it in that broad way.

Yan He was about to become tutor to the crown prince of Duke Ling of Wei. He asked Qu Boyu for advice: “There is a man who is violent and bloodthirsty by nature. If I leave him unchecked and set no rules, I will harm the state; if I discipline him strictly and impose rules, I will harm myself. His cleverness is only enough to spot others’ faults, yet he does not understand why people err. When faced with this, what should I do?”

Qu Boyu said: “Well asked! Be alert and cautious, and first set yourself straight. Outwardly, it is best to go along with him; inwardly, it is best to keep harmony. Even so, both approaches still carry risk: go along outwardly, but do not truly join his wrongdoing; keep harmony inwardly, but do not parade all your views. If you only follow him on the surface yet must stay close to him, you may meet overturning, ruin, collapse, and a fall; if you only keep inner harmony yet must show yourself, you may turn into empty display, rivalry for fame, odd behavior, and bringing disaster on yourself. If he acts like an infant, you go along and seem infant-like too; if he has no bounds and acts recklessly, you go along without drawing hard lines (but this is not truly sharing his evil); if he knows no limit, you go along without forcing a stop. Only when you can grasp these measures can you enter ‘wu ci’—no inviting disaster, no leaving a handle against you, and no truly corrupting yourself.”

Plain-Language Interpretation

Yan He was about to become tutor to the crown prince and sought advice from Qu Boyu. Qu Boyu said: This man (the crown prince) is like someone whose virtue has lost its clear mirror—sha here means to wear away or dissolve, as autumn frost kills grass and trees; his moral nature has been eroded by the workings of fate. He acts without measure, devoted to breaking rules and corrupting conduct, yet is left unchecked; the state will surely be endangered. If you try to set him straight, disaster will strike you first. The crown prince is clever: he can see others’ faults but does not notice or correct his own—you cannot manage him by ordinary means.

Straighten yourself first: Begin with your own person. Jiu means to go along with; he means to harmonize and gently lead. Outwardly show deferential compliance; inwardly do your utmost to harmonize and guide. Hence the saying: outwardly, nothing beats going along; inwardly, nothing beats harmonizing—moruo means there is no better method than this.

Yet there is a deeper layer: he and jiu are two different things. Merging entirely through blind compliance is jiu, sinking in deep; having a guiding intent while your edges show outward is he, holding back. Jiu pushed to the extreme—you lose your own footing—hence overturning, extinction, collapse, and stumbling; he pushed until your name spreads—the other party will resent you and calamity follows—hence becoming noise, reputation, strangeness, and harm. This passage is extraordinarily subtle.

“Infant”: Like an ignorant child. Wu tingqi is having no boundaries; wu ya is having no limit—describing someone who acts without thought for consequences, reckless. The infant’s wu tingqi and wu ya both depict that kind of ignorant, reckless person. Since he is so ignorant and so reckless, you temporarily go along with him—hence yi yu zhi, join him in letting him run wild. When he shows the slightest opening for insight, add a touch of guidance so he may suddenly awaken—perhaps then he can reach the state of wu ci. Da means awakening; wu ci means without fault.

Aixuan (Lin Aixuan) once cited a Putian example: Someone’s father died and he would not bury him; he squandered the family land and indulged his desires until the estate was nearly gone. Relatives pooled money to help him bury his father; he agreed on the surface, but once he had the money he behaved as before, and the kin grew angry. One clansman went to associate with him and let him do as he pleased. One night, after drinking to the height of merriment, the clansman clapped him on the back and said: “Others cannot bear such distress, yet Hui did not change his joy.” The man suddenly came to himself, wept his way home, buried his father, and in the end became a good man. That is exactly the principle taught here.

Have you never heard of the mantis? It raises its forelegs in anger to block a chariot wheel, not knowing its strength is nowhere near enough—that is exactly the kind of trouble that comes from thinking one’s own abilities are great. Take warning: those who always parade their talent and strong points and use them to butt against power are not far from disaster.

Have you never heard how people who raise tigers behave? They dare not feed them live prey, for fear of stirring up their killing nature when they pounce; they dare not toss them a whole carcass either, for fear of the same rage when the tiger tears it apart. They feed according to its hunger and fullness and learn when it is about to turn fierce. Tigers and humans are not of the same kind, yet once habituated and when they know how to please, they submit; but once they begin to kill, they often turn against the one who raised them.

Then there are those who love horses: they use bamboo baskets for droppings and shells for urine. If a mosquito or gadfly happens to land on the horse and you reach out to swat it at the wrong moment, the horse may break the bit, smash its head, or shatter its chest and ribs—the heart meant love, yet love is lost. Can one fail to be cautious?

Plain-Language Reading

Several more analogies are used below to explain the point.

The mantis blocking the chariot wheel: The mantis thinks its body is handsome and its skills considerable, and tries to stop the wheel with its forelegs. This stands for someone whose talent is small yet who rates himself highly and takes on great tasks—such people rarely avoid failure. “Repeated boasting” means boasting again and again; “nearly in danger” means coming close to harm. Someone who keeps flaunting his looks and ability and does what the world forbids will soon bring disaster on himself—hence the line: those who boast of their beauty and violate taboos are in danger.

Nurturing a tiger: A tiger is naturally quick to anger; whoever raises one must soften its temper and remove its rage. A tiger will also grow fond of and attached to its keeper. There is no secret beyond going with its nature; go against it and you will surely be hurt. Hence: those killed by tigers are people who went against the tiger’s nature.

Loving a horse and being hurt: Using bamboo baskets and mud-lined vessels for the horse’s dung and urine shows great care for the horse. If gnats and flies settle on the horse and you do not brush them off in time, the horse may break its reins and smash the bridle, headstall, and forehead ornaments. Then anger flares up and all that earlier “love” is forgotten.

“Pupu” and gathering by affinity: “Pupu” (going along in haste) and gathering by affinity mean the same as “perishing” and “forgetting.” The idea is roughly this: good things need time to last; when something bad breaks out, it is too late to fix and one can only let go. Among people, some keep company for a lifetime yet turn into enemies over a single remark—that is how hard it is to get along in the world.

Read the passages about Lord Gao of Ye and Yan He, and you will see why the chapter Ren Jian Shi (The Human World) was written and what its main theme is.

Zhuangzi Kouyi (Oral Exposition on the Zhuangzi) · Carpenter Shi and the Oak of the Shetu Shrine

Carpenter Shi, a craftsman who made his living by hewing timber, went to Quyuan in the state of Qi. There he saw an oak that served as the tree of the local earth-god shrine—a sacred tree of oak wood on which the villagers relied when worshipping the god of the soil. The trunk was so massive that several oxen could shelter beneath it; measured around, it was a hundred spans in girth; it towered almost to the mountaintop, and only at a height of ten ren (each ren is about eight feet, so ten ren is roughly eighty feet) did branches begin to spread. From its sides one could take more than ten pieces of timber stout enough to build boats. The crowd of onlookers was as dense as at a market fair.

Carpenter Shi did not so much as glance at it. He walked straight on without slowing his step.

When his disciples had seen enough, they caught up and asked, “We have followed you with our axes for a long time, and we have never seen wood this fine. You would not even look at it, and kept walking—why?”

Carpenter Shi said, “Enough—say no more about it. This is useless wood (sanmu, timber that is no good for any purpose). Use it for a boat and the boat sinks; for a coffin and it rots quickly; for utensils and they break soon; for doors and windows and the sap runs; for pillars and worms eat them. This is wood of no worth (bucai zhi mu, a tree with no “timber-use”), good for nothing at all—so it has been able to live so long.”

After Carpenter Shi returned home, the oak of the shrine appeared to him in a dream and said, “What do you compare me with? Do you compare me with those ornamental, fruit-bearing trees (wenmu, useful trees with patterned grain and harvestable fruit)—such as zha, pear, orange, and pomelo? When their fruit ripens, it is picked; once picked, they are shamed and abused—large limbs are broken off, small branches torn away. It is precisely because they are “useful” that they torment themselves all their lives; they cannot live out their full span but die halfway, all battered by the world. Is it not so for all things? Moreover, I have long pursued ‘being useless for everything’; I almost died, and only now have I preserved myself. You take me to be greatly useful—do you think I have lived this long because I am useful? Besides, you and I are both things—why must you be right and I be wrong? You are a useless man (sanren, one who is no good by worldly standards, who does not fit conventional measures of worth)—how could you understand the principle of useless wood (sanmu)?”

“Quyuan” is the name of a mountain; “li” (cork oak) is the name of a tree. At the center of the community altar (she) stood just such a great cork oak. The Analects says that in the Xia dynasty they used pine for the she tree and in the Zhou they used chestnut; in ancient times a large tree had to be chosen in the she grove as the main tree to which the she spirit attached. Measuring the trunk with the arms, one full wrap counts as “one girth”; among trees that could be girth-measured at a hundred wraps was this cork oak. It was about ten ren high; the branches were thick enough to serve as boat timbers, so one can imagine how massive the trunk was. “Those who tire of looking” means people who come to look again and again and only leave when they have seen their fill.

“Sanmu” (scatter tree) means a tree with no use, abandoned and neglected. Its sap oozed and dripped steadily. “Shuzhu” (tree pillar) means a piece of wood set upright in the ground as a pillar—hence “tree.” “Wenmu” (patterned/cultivated tree) means a tree that looks fine and can be put to use. The she oak appeared in Carpenter Shi’s dream and said to him: You treat me as sanmu because you measure me by the standard of wenmu. The fruits of catalpa, pear, orange, and pomelo are all edible wenmu, so people break branches to pick them—precisely because they are “useful,” they harm themselves. “Neng” means the capacity to be taken and used. The oak said: I have pursued “nowhere to be used” for a long time; only now do you understand. It also scolds Carpenter Shi as “ji si” (almost dead)—like people today who curse someone as “half-dead.”

“For me, great use lies in this” means that for me, being useless is precisely great use, and so I can preserve my life. If I were truly useful, I would have been cut down long ago—how could I have grown this huge? Here “qie” is only a modal “qie,” with an extra “ye” at the end of the sentence.

“If you and I are both things (wu)”: Carpenter Shi is a person and the oak is a tree; both are things in heaven and earth—why do you single me out and mock me with the word “thing”? So it says: you and I are both wu. Why must we treat each other with the eye of “things”? Using four “ye” and one “zai” in one sentence is a hallmark of Zhuangzi’s extraordinary prose. You too are a “sanren who almost died” (a useless person who barely survived)—how could you understand the principle of sanmu?

Plain reading

After Carpenter Shi woke, he explained the dream to his disciple. The disciple said, “That tree was set on being ‘useless’—so why did it still need people to spare it and make it the village altar tree?”

Shi said, “Quiet—don’t talk nonsense.”

Serving as the village altar tree was only a place to lodge itself; it never expected that people who did not understand it would treat it as an altar tree and revile and shame it. Even if it had not been an altar tree, how would it have been almost cut down? The way it kept to was always unlike everyone else’s, yet you judge its praise and blame with moral reasoning—that is already far from what it meant. “What it holds to” (suobao) is what it steadfastly preserves. In “and how could it almost be cut?” (qie ji you jian hu), ji is close in meaning to dai (on the brink, nearly).

Nanbo Ziqi was strolling at Mount Shang when he saw an extraordinarily shaped tree. Several carriages could park side by side under it for shade. Ziqi said, “What kind of tree is this? It must have wood of some special quality.” He looked up at the fine branches—they were twisted and crooked, unfit for beams and rafters. He looked down at the trunk—it was hollow and split like a loose axle hub, useless for coffin boards. Lick a leaf and your mouth festers; smell it and you feel drunk for three days without waking.

Ziqi said, “This tree has grown so large precisely because its wood is ‘useless.’ Ah—it is by such ‘uselessness’ that the divine person (shenren) also preserves himself.”

In the state of Song, a family named Jing planted catalpa, cypress, and mulberry. When trunks were as thick as an arm-span, they were cut down to tether monkeys; at three or four arm-spans, they were cut for coffins of those who chase fame; at seven or eight arm-spans, they were cut for the coffins of the rich and noble. So before living out their full span, they were felled mid-life by the axe—such is the disaster of timber that is “useful for material.”

Therefore at the xie sacrifice, oxen with white foreheads, pigs with turned-up snouts, and people with hemorrhoids are not offered to the river—the shaman-priests all know this and call it “inauspicious.” In the eyes of the divine person, however, this is precisely great auspiciousness.

This passage continues the same theme as the previous one, with a few sentences added in the middle to explain it from another angle.

The text describes seeing an exceptionally large tree, so big that it is unlike ordinary trees. Even if a column of a thousand chariots and horses took shelter under it from rain and sun, its canopy would still cover them all—so in the line from the classic jiang bi qi suo dai, bi means to shelter or shield from above, and dai means to come to me seeking protection.

It also says this tree is hollow in the middle, not solid, like taro stems. If you lick it as if it were paper, your tongue will rot; if you smell it with your nose, you will feel as if drunk—that is a way of saying its odor is extremely foul.

Precisely because it has little “use” and does not count as “timber”, this tree can preserve its life and grow to such enormous size. What the ancients called shenren (spiritual or perfected persons) who can preserve themselves also rely on this kind of “bu cai” (lack of useful talent or timber-worthiness)—not relying on talent or showing off ability, so they can avoid disaster and endure. So it is said that the shenren too depend on this “bu cai.” “Jie hu” is an exclamation of sighing or admiration.

Background: This is the great useless tree parable from Zhuangzi: because the tree is “not timber,” no one fells it and it can live out its natural span; if people learn from the shenren, showing less edge and not being useful everywhere, they can instead preserve the body. Kouyi is later commentary that explains Zhuangzi line by line in plain language, which is why it breaks down readings such as zhou jie, bi, and dai.

Plain-language reading of this passage from the Oral Exposition on the Zhuangzi

“Jing” is a place name. The qi, cypress, and mulberry are all kinds of timber that are “useful”—the earlier discussion concerned trees good for food; here the topic is trees good for practical use. All of them are what the local soil and climate suit best.

“Yi” is a wooden stake; “li” is a ridgepole or beam used in building a house; “gao” denotes a well-known great household. “House of rank and renown” (gaoming zhi jia) literally suggests high standing and a shining lineage. Some commentators note that “gao” and “ming” are close in meaning and only differ in pronunciation and written form. There is also “chan” (the catalpa), often used as side boards alongside a coffin. The overall point is that trees well suited to that region—whether small enough to span in one’s arms or large enough to measure three or four, or seven or eight arm-spans around—cannot escape being cut down. It is not that you can keep them if you wish; precisely because they are “useful,” they invite this kind of harm.

Texts on divination and ritual used by shamans and scribes (works in the tradition of the Jie, and the like) say that an ox with a white forehead, or a pig with a broken forehead and an upturned snout, must not be offered to the river. In antiquity there was also the evil custom of human sacrifice to rivers—events such as Ximen Bao’s abolition of “the River Lord’s bride” in the Warring States period. Zhuangzi therefore deliberately adds remarks about “hemorrhoids” and the like; he loves startling turns of phrase and often piles on such details. “Shi” means “to go” or “to proceed”—these things simply cannot be led off to the river as offerings.

In the eyes of shamans and scribes, an ox with a white forehead, a pig with a broken forehead, or a person afflicted with hemorrhoids counts as “inauspicious.” They do not realize that it is precisely this inauspiciousness that spares them from slaughter. From the perspective of the shenren—the person who has attained the Way—such inauspiciousness is in fact great good fortune.

The two long sections above both speak to how hard it is to get by in the world: wanting to stand out and make oneself conspicuous often brings disaster. Zhuangzi uses trees cut down because they are useful, and sacrificial victims spared because they are “inauspicious,” as images for this lesson.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi (Oral Exposition of Zhuangzi)

Zhilishu (“Limb-Scattered and Sparse”—a personal name suggesting a body broken apart and loosely arranged) had his chin hanging down to his navel, his shoulders arched higher than the crown of his head, his hair bound in a topknot pointing skyward, the openings of his five viscera all facing upward, and his two thighs pressed together like ribs. He made a living mending and washing clothes, and by winnowing rice—sifting away the chaff and keeping the fine grain—he could produce enough polished rice for ten people to eat. When the state conscripted warriors, he could wave his arms in the crowd and no one would bother with him; when there was major corvée labor, he was exempt because of chronic illness; when the state gave relief to the sick, he could still receive three zhong of grain and ten bundles of firewood.

Plain-language glosses and meaning:

Zhi li means a body in scattered, irregular pieces without a tidy form; Shu is his given name. Yi is the chin; when it reaches below the navel, the torso is bent extremely. Shoulders higher than the crown means the shoulders are hunched so they rise above the head. Fang cuo is a chignon—the hair gathered on top of the head. The five openings upward: the orifices of the five viscera (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and so on) normally belong to the back; when the back is bent, those openings turn upward. Two bi like ribs: bi is the thigh; with the back bent and the lower body contracted, the thighs lie side by side like the rib cage. The passage is painting a person with severe deformity.

Cuo zhen zhi xie is sewing and laundering clothes—he lived on that trade. Gu fang bo jing is using a winnowing basket to shake the rice, screening out coarse bran and keeping fine grain—hence “bo jing”; that it was enough for ten people means he worked very quickly. Summoning warriors means recruiting soldiers and picking men for battle; rang bi yu qi jian—raising his arm among them—still never got him chosen.

Major corvée is large-scale forced labor; bu shou gong means he was not assigned work. Gong here is like the Zuo Zhuan phrase about Jin building the walls of Qi and “levying gong on the feudal lords”—assignment to labor and public works.

For conscripting warriors and major corvée, he slipped through because of his “illness”; the grain and firewood meant for the sick he received by virtue of his “lack of talent”—his uselessness preserved him.

Someone who scatters his form (zhi li qi xing) can still nourish himself to the end and live out his natural span—how much more so someone who scatters his De (zhi li qi de)? Scattering one’s De means the sage’s virtue is like Zhilishu’s: taking “uselessness” as the greatest use. That matches the later idea of the “uncultivated tree” (bu cai zhi mu) that completes its years—a person or thing deemed without utility is left alone and thus reaches its full term.

When Confucius went to Chu, the famous “Madman” Jie Yu (said to feign madness to withdraw from the world, a reclusive adept) wandered by the gate of his lodging, singing:

“Phoenix, phoenix—how has your virtue fallen so low! The age to come cannot be counted on; the past cannot be recovered. When the realm holds the Dao, the sage can accomplish great things; when the realm lacks the Dao, the sage can only barely preserve life. In times like these, people are lucky to escape punishment. Good fortune is light as a feather, yet no one knows how to carry it on the back; misfortune is heavy as the earth, yet no one knows how to step aside. Enough, enough—using virtue to press down on others and display oneself is perilous, perilous indeed. To run on ground that is only painted, to rush blindly in dazzling sunlight—do not block my path; my way was meant to wind. Do not harm my feet.

Trees in the mountains harm themselves by being useful; grease burns itself up because it can serve as fuel. The cassia is cut down because its fruit can be eaten; the lacquer tree is gashed because its sap is useful. Everyone knows the use of what is ‘useful,’ yet no one understands that ‘uselessness’ also has great use.”

This passage borrows sayings from the Analects to mock and criticize followers of the Confucian school.

There is no relying on a next life, and what is past cannot be recovered. Having been born in this age and as this kind of person, when the times are wrong one ought to restrain oneself and hide one’s abilities. In such a situation still to harbor a heart set on saving the world is not truly to know the times. Hence it is said: virtue and the Way are in decline. When the world is in order, the sage can accomplish merit; when the world is without the Way, the sage seeks only to preserve life. The present is an age of disorder—merely to escape punishment is already fortunate; how could one dare hope for more? Hence it is said: in the present age, seek only to escape punishment. To preserve body and life in chaotic times by “escaping punishment” is a blessing as slight as a single feather, yet you cannot bear or hold even that; when disaster strikes, it often goes as far as execution—a weight greater than the earth—yet you do not know how to avoid it. The Han Shi says: glory has not yet filled the eyes, but calamity is already as large as a house—this is the sense.

“Enough, enough” (yihu yihu) is like saying “let it be, let it be.” To tower over others by one’s virtue is a path that invites disaster. “Perilous!” (daihu)—how dangerous. “To hurry along within lines drawn on the ground” (huadi er qu) describes binding oneself tight and inviting suffering, as if one could walk only inside a line someone has drawn. “Yangming” refers to the brightness inherent in human beings. Human nature is originally bright; when you lose or obscure it, you walk through the world and are harmed. “Quequ” means twisting and turning, evading and shrinking back—unable to follow one’s true nature and the straight Way. Such evasion and detour in the end must injure the foot—that is, the road will not hold. Trees in the mountains are cut because they are “useful”—they invite the axe by their usefulness; tallow and grease are consumed because they give light—they invite being burned; the cassia is felled because it can be eaten; the lacquer tree is gashed because it is useful—all are images of failing to keep oneself hidden, going out into the world to seek a name, and thereby inviting calamity. Hence it is said: people only know the use of what is useful; they do not know the use of what is useless.

Correspondence between signs and reality (inner and outer responding to each other) must be realized in oneself: only when there is inner foundation can one respond appropriately to outer circumstances; when De (virtue, inner sufficiency) is enough in one’s own heart, whatever situation arises, one naturally matches it and accomplishes what is called for.

In the state of Lu there was a man named Wang Tuo, whose feet were maimed (an “amputee” figure). Those who studied with him were about as numerous as those who studied with Confucius (Zhongni). Chang Ji (a disciple of Confucius) asked Confucius: Wang Tuo is a crippled man, yet those who follow him and those who follow you, Master, are each about half of Lu. He neither lectures standing nor discusses sitting; disciples go with empty minds and return full of gain. Can there really be teaching without words and achievement of the heart without visible traces? What sort of person is he?

Confucius said: This master is a sage. I (Qiu) am merely lagging behind and have not yet gone to pay my respects. Even someone like me ought to take him as teacher—how much more those who fall short of me? And this is not only in Lu—I (Qiu) would even lead the whole world to study with him.

Chang Ji said: But he is a cripple—and Master Wang (Wang Tuo)—this line means Wang (Tuo) surpasses you, Master. Someone like him differs vastly from ordinary people. If it is really so, his mind is uniquely focused—how does that work?

(Note: “Split Lu down the middle”—in Lu, followers of Confucius and of Wang Tuo were roughly equal in number. “Stands without teaching, sits without discussing”—he does not instruct while standing or debate while sitting. “Empty going, full returning”—they leave with empty hearts and return having gained something. “No form yet the heart is formed”—no concrete visible method, yet the heart is naturally moved and completed. “How could it be limited to…”—not confined to one place. “Lead the whole world”—to bring everyone under heaven to follow him. “Ordinary”—common people. “The Master”—here, Confucius.)

Confucius also said: Life and death are a great matter too, yet (I) cannot transform and change along with him…

(Note: The line “life and death are also a great matter” is a recurring theme in the Zhuangzi; linked here with “vastly unlike ordinary people” and “even Confucius calls him Master,” it means that in the great matter of life and death, Wang Tuo’s attainment is such that Confucius admits he cannot yet keep pace or transform with him—the source text here appears incomplete.)

Plain-language reading

The five words “death and life are a great matter” are a major thread running through the Zhuangzi; one could also say that the whole Buddhist canon grows out of this same insight. The saying “death and life are the great affair, as urgent as saving one’s head from fire” means that birth and death are enormously weighty—so pressing that one must act as if rescuing one’s head from flames.

The next line, “this is also what cannot be made to change along with it,” means that although the upheaval of birth and death is vast, the inner person does not churn along with it, and the outer world cannot force one to turn with it. Here “also cannot” (ye bu de) means “simply cannot”; “what changes along with it” (yu zhi bian zhe) means turning and shifting together with circumstances.

Zhuangzi puts these words in Confucius’s mouth—it is Zhuangzi’s parable, not historical Confucius speaking. Confucians criticize Buddhism, Daoism, and other “heterodox” teachings for seeming not to clarify other matters and for spending a lifetime fixated on this one issue of birth and death; that criticism is not entirely groundless. Yet Buddhist teaching is aimed mainly at the dull, addicted, and hard-to-awaken: it uses fear of death to restrain them and push them toward good conduct. The doctrine differs from Confucianism, but the will to save people is earnest. Confucians must refute the doctrine, yet they ought not to ignore this sincere intent.

They hold that everyone, high or low, fears death most of all, and therefore they want to use birth and death to coerce people into the path. Some say Buddhism built its system merely because it fears death—that misreads their real purpose.

“Even if heaven and earth were to overturn and collapse, this would still not be lost with them; dwelling in clarity upon what is unfeigned, not migrating with things, entrusting oneself to the transforming of the ten thousand things while guarding one’s root”—even if sky and earth capsized, “this” would not be cast away with them; resting in the unfeigned without drifting with outer things, allowing the myriad things to transform while keeping to one’s fundamental anchor.

The earlier phrase about heaven and earth “collapsing and falling” is hyperbole: it imagines that even if qian and kun—the cosmos as heaven and earth—were destroyed, the person described would not fall along with them. This matches the earlier images of “entering water without getting wet” and “entering fire without being burned”: Zhuangzi’s style deliberately pushes language to extremes; it is not a literal claim that the world will cave in.

Reading Zhuangzi is not like reading Mencius. Zhuangzi often uses extreme statements and exaggeration; his wording frequently goes “too far” on purpose—that is his method, and one should not take every line at face value.

“Shen” means clear discernment; “seeing it to the end” means seeing through completely; “without falsity” means genuine and not hollow—such phrasing shows Zhuangzi’s skill in word choice and coinage. If one rewrote it in flat terms like “clear about reality,” the effect would become clumsy.

Phrases such as “not shifting with things,” “with that which cannot be given yet is given in change,” and “not being abandoned along with things” all point to not being tossed about by outer things and not being dragged along by change.

“Taking charge of the transformation of things” suggests that however the ten thousand things change, it is as if command issues from “me”—somewhat like the Chan saying: when the mind is deluded, the Lotus Sutra turns you; when the mind awakens, you turn the Lotus Sutra. In delusion you are spun by the scripture; in awakening you spin the scripture yourself.

“Zong” refers to the origin of all things; “guarding its zong” means what this person holds to is precisely the beginning of the ten thousand things, in the same vein as the earlier line, “There is a beginning; there is a not-yet-beginning that has a beginning.” In Zhuangzi, a word like “zong” can be glossed on the surface as “beginning,” yet in lived reading it is more than “start” alone; only that kind of reading brings out the finesse. “Guarding its zong” leans toward substance and root; “roaming in its harmony” leans toward function and moving freely within harmony.

Chang Ji asked: What does this mean?

Zhong Ni (Confucius) answered: From the angle of difference, liver and gall bladder can be as clearly separated as the states of Chu and Yue; from the angle of sameness, the ten thousand things are originally one body.

Ordinary people do not know that all things come from one source, so they even split liver and gall into Chu and Yue; once one knows the single source, one sees that the ten thousand things and oneself were never two.

These two sentences should be read with Zhuangzi’s habit of opening, closing, and turning—the kind of rhetorical pivot later writers often imitate. Zhuangzi is not only deep in doctrine; his prose is unmatched among the masters, which is why he stands out so sharply among the philosophers.

People like that need not deliberately decide how the ears and eyes ought to be used, yet the mind moves freely in the “harmony of De (Virtue/Power)”: the ears hear when hearing is called for, the eyes see when seeing is called for. To be like this is not merely “using the ears to hear and the eyes to see”—it is what Chan Buddhism calls “the six functions, one source.” How can sound be “contemplated”? Yet we speak of Guanshiyin (“Contemplating Sound”)—though that is another tradition’s language, it too carries deep meaning. The “harmony of De” keeps pace with heaven, earth, and the four seasons; this “harmony” is not merely the “hitting the right measure” kind of harmony in the Doctrine of the Mean. To read the Zhuangzi, one must bring a different eye to it.

The myriad things (wu) see only the one thing they jointly uphold; they do not see what is lost or lacking. They treat a misstep as earth falling away of its own accord, without noticing—reading the passage on the centipede (qiu) is exactly this point. One may also turn the case around on the talk of “Xuan” and “Jie” in “The Human World.” “Leaving the earth” (yi tu) is like earth dropping away by itself, without any awareness of doing so.

Chang Ji said: He “cultivates the self” (wei ji), by his knowing he obtains his heart, by his heart he obtains the constant heart; among the myriad things, why is he supreme?—“Cultivates the self” means cultivating the person; “by his knowing” means that since humans possess cognitive understanding, they can cultivate this body and obtain the heart. “By his heart” means that with the heart that perceives, one can obtain the original heart. The original heart and the perceiving heart are not two—they are only distinguished in speech this way. The point is that everyone has knowing and everyone has a heart; if one fully realizes this, one can cultivate the self and obtain the heart—something ordinary, hence “obtaining the constant heart.” Zui here means “supreme” or “highest”; the text does not say “honored” (zun) but says “supreme”—again the Zhuangzi’s striking style. Wu here means people and things.

Zhongni (Confucius) said: Do not take flowing water as a mirror; take still water as a mirror. Only stillness can still the stillness of the multitude. Flowing water and still water both figure the heart: what flows cannot stop itself; what can stop is the heart—therefore the heart is supreme. Again the text says “supreme” rather than “honored”—another touch of the Zhuangzi’s strangeness. Wu means people and things.

Confucius said: when a person looks at a reflection, it cannot be seen clearly in running water—only in still water can it be seen clearly. Only “stopping” (zhi) can make every kind of “stopping” settle and hold steady. Flowing water and still water are both images for the mind: someone whose mind is like rushing water and never rests cannot achieve true stillness; one who can bring his own mind to a stop therefore stands out among people. The crowd, driven by desire, seeks “stopping” but looks outward for it; only such a person can do it from within—hence “only stopping can stop the multitude’s stopping.” This line means that those whose minds are not yet settled come to learn from him; he can teach and help them settle—and when you read the six characters that follow (the reality of not fearing), is that not remarkable? In the Chan school they say, “Bring me your mind and I will put it at rest for you”: the student asks how to seek the mind, and the master answers, “I will put your mind at rest for you”—the whole passage is that idea.

Nourished by the earth’s transforming power and growing tall, only pine and cypress stay green through winter and summer; endowed with Heaven’s mandate and standing upright, only Shun could remain correct alone—using correct mandate to correct, using correctness to transform and correct the multitude.

Comparing pine and cypress to Shun, and Shun to Wang Tai, means: favored by Heaven and earth, unlike the crowd, therefore able to set right one’s own “life,” and also set right the “life” of the multitude. Here the word “life” (sheng) is sometimes read as “nature” (xing). Some ask how Shun could be compared with someone like Wang Tai—if you read it that way, it is like talking dreams in front of a fool: the text of Zhuangzi has been misread.

“Signs of guarding the beginning, the reality of not fearing”: a brave man alone dares to charge through nine armies—for the sake of fame, one who can hold himself and trust himself can even do that.

“Sign” (zheng) means verification, what proves true; “guarding the beginning” (bao shi) is holding to the first thought, the first word—there must be proof, there must be verification—the key is the word “trust” (xin). Below, after “not fearing,” the text adds the word “reality” (shi): without this reality, fear cannot be avoided. Nine armies means many troops; in Warring States usage there may have been talk of nine battle formations—one need not rigidly tie this to the old scheme of the Son of Heaven’s six armies and the feudal lords’ three. “Self-demand” means self-trust, self-possession. Men like Jing Ke and Nie Zheng, who trusted themselves for the sake of fame, held to that one trust and did not change through life or death; how much more so one who has the Way? This section can be read alongside Buddhist stories of sitting on a python cliff or guarding a tiger den—it comes down to this same “reality of not fearing.” In places like this Zhuangzi often has real insight; it is not all allegory.

First Section (On “Fearlessness” and Allegory)

All the more so for those who “take heaven and earth as their charge, treat the myriad things as a treasury, and regard the bodily frame as a mere lodging”—those who can sit calmly on cliffs where pythons coil and guard a tiger’s den without fear. What they rely on is precisely this real state of fearlessness. In passages like these, Zhuangzi often has genuine insight; he is not merely inventing allegorical tales.

Scriptural Line and Line-by-Line Commentary

“And all the more for one who takes heaven and earth as office, the myriad things as treasury, lodges only in the six limbs, mirrors ear and eye, knows within the One what knowing knows—and whose heart has never died?”

In gist: all the more so for someone who takes heaven and earth as duty, the myriad things as storehouse, treats the six limbs (the whole bodily frame) only as a place to lodge, lets ear and eye each fulfill their function without clinging, penetrates what is known within the intelligence of the “One,” and whose heart has never died along with things—can such a person fail to exist?

Guan tiandi (taking heaven and earth as charge)

Heaven covers and earth supports; heaven generates and earth completes—each keeps its place and fulfills its role. That is “guan (to govern/charge) heaven and earth.” It does not mean a person literally commands heaven and earth, but runs in tandem with their operation—not overstepping, not acting rashly.

Fu wanwu (the myriad things as treasury)

“Fu” means to gather and store. The myriad things gather as they gather; each returns to its place. This is the meaning of Zhuangzi’s “Heaven and earth were born together with me, and the myriad things and I are one.” Mencius’s “All things are complete in me” is the same kind of “the myriad things gathered in my heart”—only the thread of argument and angle differ.

Yu liuhai (lodging in the six limbs)

The six limbs are this body; yu is to lodge, to stay briefly. The body is not the whole of “I,” only a place of lodging, hence no clinging to the physical frame.

Xiang ermu (mirroring ear and eye)

In the same vein as “not knowing what is fitting for ear and eye” later: the eye mirrors the eye without stopping at “seeing,” the ear mirrors the ear without stopping at “hearing”—each uses what is appropriate without being led by the senses. Hence “xiang ermu.”

Yi zhi zhi suo zhi (the One’s knowing what knowing knows)

The upper zhi (read like zhi, intelligence) means clear awareness innate to nature; the lower zhi means the exercise of intelligence and what is known. Because nature originally possesses this clarity, within the “One” one knows all—not piecemeal learned knowledge, but one intelligence pervading all realms.

Xin wei chang si (the heart has never died): if the heart turns with things and rises and falls with circumstances, it is “dead”; if the heart does not leave this “one zhi,” it has never died along with things.

“He will choose a day to ascend and arrive—yet people follow him in this; how would he deign to take things as his business?”

Deng jia (ascend and arrive): deng is to rise; jia is to reach (commentarial readings like “jia,” “xia,” etc. are mistaken).

It does not mean “pick an auspicious day before treading the Way,” but: no need to choose a day—ascend and arrive at the Dao; the Dao is never absent for a moment—the sense of “the Dao cannot be left even for an instant.”

Ren ze cong shi ye (people follow him in this): people study with Wang Tai (Tai, pronounced tái) only by following this state of fearlessness, charging heaven and earth, and a heart that never dies—“shi” should be read with weight: it means this real realm, not some empty name.

Yi wu wei shi (taking things as business)

“Wu” here mostly means human affairs and artificial contrivance. How would he deign to treat human artifice and side issues as serious business? Those who study the Way follow the body of the Dao, not worldly sentiment and etiquette.

The line “he will choose a day” (linked to the previous sentence)

Still continuing “one zhi’s knowing and a heart that never died”: such a person would hardly pick a calendar day before “ascending and arriving at the Dao.” The Dao is reachable here and now; it is not on the almanac.

The above is a vernacular arrangement of this stretch of Zhuangzi kouyi-style commentary, faithful to the original philology (guan, fu, yu, xiang, yi zhi, deng jia, yi wu wei shi, etc.), without added personal elaboration.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi (Oral Explanations)

“Wuzhe” refers to someone with only one leg—either from foot-amputation punishment or born with one foot. Shen Tu Jia was such a person. He studied under Master Bo Hun Wuren together with Zichan of Zheng. Zichan said to him: “When I go out, you stay; when you go out, I stay.” The next day they sat in the same hall on the same mat again. Zichan said again: “When I go out you stay, when you go out I stay—today I am going out; can you stay behind? Or still not? And you do not avoid meeting the man in office—you treat the office-holder as your equal?”

Shen Tu Jia said: “Under our master’s roof there has always been someone in office—yet you talk like this! If you demand that others yield because you hold office, you raise yourself first and lower others after. I have heard: the brighter the mirror, the more clearly dust shows; wipe the dust away and you no longer reflect—you see less clearly. Stay long with the worthy and faults fall away. What you should value here is the master; to speak as you do—is that not fault?”

Zichan said: “Since you are already like this, you still compare your virtue with Yao’s? Is your virtue not enough for you to examine yourself?”

(Kouyi) “When I go out you stop, when you go out I stop” means each wanted the other to give way. Shen Tu Jia adds that Zichan did not understand their original agreement—“not violating” did not mean avoiding each other but being equal. “Man in office” was only Zichan’s own title; to say “you enter and leave with me and are like the office-holder” mistakes what “equal” means. “Putting oneself behind” actually puts oneself first—honoring self and slighting things. Learning is for broadening insight; “seek” means to pursue—you came to the master to widen your view, yet you are so narrow. “Seek the greater” is well put; “contend with Yao in goodness” is most striking—you are already a wuzhe; even if you could do good, could you match Yao? “Examine yourself” means Zichan did not know his own measure.

Background: This passage is from De Chong Fu (Sign of Virtue Complete) in the Zhuangzi: virtue outweighs appearance and rank. Beyond the dialogue, the oral commentary uses phrases like “equal means same” and “putting oneself behind means self first” to show that Zichan took yielding to the office-holder as hierarchy, while Shen Tu Jia held that in the master’s school all are equal and office need not set who goes first or last.

“Zhuang” means to state or explain clearly. “Those who confess their own faults and feel they ought not to be dismissed are many”: people who lay out their mistakes and think they should not lose their office are numerous. “Those who do not confess their faults yet feel they ought not to remain in office are few”: those who say nothing about their wrongdoing yet still think they should not stay in post are rare. “To know what cannot be helped and still rest in it as fate—only one of virtue can do this”: to see that some things are fixed, that nothing can be done, and yet remain at peace with that as ming (fate)—only the person of de (virtue/power) can manage it. Among these three kinds of person, the highest is the one who follows fate and is at ease.

The lines about “wandering in the notch of Yi’s bow” are extraordinarily striking, much like the Yijing’s image of “treading on a tiger’s tail.” Laozi says, “My great trouble is that I have a body”—where there is a body, there is trouble; those who can “remain” without tormenting themselves are already few, and only the person of de truly knows ming and follows it. The gouzhong (notch of the bow) is the spot the arrow aims at once the bow is drawn; no archer surpassed Hou Yi, and the gouzhong was precisely where his shot was bound to land—an image for a world full of hidden danger, especially apt in the Warring States era. “Yet when the shot misses, that is ming”: even standing in the bull’s-eye, sometimes the arrow does not hit; that is ming, not something human effort can fully control.

“Many people with whole feet laugh at my incomplete foot, and I used to flare up in anger.” “But when I went to the Master’s place, I returned drained and subdued”: once I came to the Master (the “Master” in Zhuangzi’s setup, usually Laozi or a similar guide), I went back empty of anger, as if all indignation had been washed away. “I do not know whether the Master washed me with goodness”: the word “xi” (wash) is well chosen—the Master’s good words and good dao (Way) worked on me like rinsing filth from the mind, though I did not realize it at the time. “I have kept company with the Master for nineteen years, and he has never treated me as a wuzhe (one with a truncated foot)”: for nineteen years he never saw me as “someone missing a foot.” “Now you and I wander together within the form, yet you seek me outside the form—is that not going too far?” Xinghai zhi nei and xinghai zhi wai (within the form / outside the form) are paired: we should meet in spirit and de, yet you pick at me in outward shape and official rank—surely that is excessive. These two lines are among the finest in earlier books, rarely matched elsewhere.

Zichan “at once changed expression and countenance and said: You have spoken rightly”—“cùrán gǎi róng gēng mào yuē: zǐ wú nǎi chēng”: he immediately altered his face and bearing and acknowledged that Zishen’s words were apt, that he alone “chēng” (deserved to be called right). Here “chēng” means the speech was fitting and worth praise, in the spirit of how the Zuozhuan praises someone as “min” (quick-witted) for a sharp reply.

In the state of Lu there was a man who had lost his feet, named Shu Shan Wuzhi. He went to see Confucius on tiptoe. Confucius said, “You were not careful before and brought this misfortune on yourself. What use is it to come now?” Wuzhi replied, “I only blame myself for not understanding what matters and for rashly ruining my body, and so I lost my feet. I come now because there is still something more precious than feet—namely human nature—and I want to keep that intact. Heaven covers all without partiality; earth supports all without picking and choosing. I took you, Master, to be like heaven and earth. I did not expect you to be like this.” Confucius said, “I am too shallow. Why not come in? Please tell us what you have heard.” After Wuzhi left, Confucius said to his disciples, “You must exert yourselves! Wuzhi is a maimed man, yet he still strives to learn in order to make up for his earlier fault. How much more should those whose virtue is whole!”

Wuzhi said to Laozi, “Confucius is still far from being a person of utmost attainment, is he not? Why must he be so deferential and receive me with the ceremony owed to a student? If he still craves to spread a strange reputation far and wide, does he not know that the person of utmost attainment treats fame as shackles bound upon oneself?” Laozi said, “Why not have him take life and death as one continuous line and what is permissible and what is not as one unbroken strand, and help him slip free of those shackles—would that do?” Wuzhi said, “That is punishment decreed by Heaven. How could it be undone?”

(Note: In this passage Zhuangzi puts words in the mouths of Confucius and Laozi to make his point; whether he criticizes or praises them is all part of the parable. The line that even Wuzhi, though maimed, still presses on in learning to atone for past wrongs—how much more those of whole virtue—also carries a note of encouragement for ordinary moral cultivation. “Life and death as one line, permissible and impermissible as one strand” is the same idea as in Discourse on Making Things Equal (Qiwu Lun): that yes and no cannot finally be split apart.)

Duke Ai of Lu asked Confucius: In the state of Wei there was a man everyone called the “Ugly One,” named Ai Taituo. Men who spent time with him wanted to leave but could not bring themselves to go; women who saw him would tell their parents, “Better be this gentleman’s concubine than another man’s wife”—and there were more than ten such cases, and it did not stop. No one heard him take the lead in singing harmony; he only ever joined in, following along. He had no ruler’s position by which to save people from death, nor gathered stipend and wealth by which to fill people’s bellies, yet with a face so frighteningly ugly he moved the whole realm; he merely harmonized and never led, and his wisdom did not go beyond ordinary human affairs. Male and female paired naturally in his presence—surely he must be someone unlike ordinary people. The duke summoned him and looked: he was indeed shockingly ugly.

The duke kept company with him; within a few months he had taken a liking to the man; within a year he trusted him. When there was no suitable chief minister in the state, the duke wanted to hand the government over to him. The man was downcast and only after a long pause agreed, as if declining; was the duke ashamed? In the end he still entrusted him with the state. Before long the man left Wei, and the duke went after him as if he had lost something precious. The duke said: Without him, what joy is there in this state? What sort of person was this?

Notes on wording in the oral gloss (to help when reading the original):

• E ren (“Ugly One”): here it does not mean a morally “bad person” but someone ugly in form (e ren zhe, xing chou zhe ye).
• Bu chang chang he: he does not take the lead or play the starring role, only joins the chorus—painting him as uncontending and without deliberate action (wuwei-like).
• Wu jun ren zhi wei: no position as ruler, so he cannot rely on rank to save lives and the like.
• Ju lu: gathered stipend and wealth; wang ren zhi fu: filling people’s bellies—making them fed (“wang” carries the sense of full or brimming, as in the full moon at “wang”).
• Zhi bu chu hu si yu: what he knows does not leave human affairs and the mundane world—it stays within ordinary custom.
• Ci xiong he hu qian: close and easy with things, neither side startled—like the Zhuangzi image of gulls unafraid when one is naturally at ease with them.
• Men ran er hou ying: gloomy and slow, only then answering.
• Si: like water spreading without being tied—no obstruction, no clinging.
• Gua ren chou hu: here chou means ashamed—whether the duke felt shame for pressing someone against his will.
• Shou zhi guo: handing over state power to him.
• Fang yan ruo you wang: pursuing him as if one had lost one’s right hand (the oral gloss compares this to the Han king who lost Han Xin and Xiao He).

Confucius said: When I was once sent on a mission to Chu, I happened to see piglets pressing close to a sow that had already died, as if they wanted to nurse. Their look was dull and blank, not like they were seriously seeking milk; their manner was scattered and unfocused, as if they had no real attachment in mind. The point here is that what people (or all things) are drawn to is not necessarily the visible body itself.

After a while the piglets seemed suddenly startled and ran off in all directions—because they could no longer find “the one they knew before,” and could no longer get milk. This shows that what they loved was not the outward corpse of the sow, but the “living something” that had been in that body before (the vitality that kept the body going and could nurse them).

Further examples in the same vein: a soldier killed in battle need not be buried with the full display of feather fans used in state funerals; for someone whose feet have been cut off, even the finest shoes are pointless—because the “root” they depended on is already gone. A ruler’s close attendants need not trim their nails or wear ear ornaments (they need not rely on outward adornment); a man newly married may be exempt from corvée duty abroad (no longer sent away on labor)—all of this says that keeping the physical form intact still counts as one kind of wholeness, so how much more so for someone whose De is fully preserved.

The text then turns to Ai Taituo: before he had even spoken, people trusted him; without performing notable service, people felt close to him; some even wanted to hand him the state, yet feared he might refuse. Confucius concluded that this must be someone whose talent is fully complete while his De does not show itself in outward form, reputation, or merit.

The commentator further explains the “piglet” image: what people like or dislike does not necessarily track physical beauty or ugliness. The piglets “startle and run” because they can no longer recognize or reconnect with their former mother—not because the shape is still there, but because “what made nursing possible” is no longer visible, so the analogy targets “whatever makes the form hold together,” not surface appearance.

The commentator also explains: “no feather fans for the war dead” does not mean ordinary mourning should be stripped down, but describes a kind of funeral that “need not rely on outward pomp”; “shoes for the amputee” means that when outward things lack an inner root, cherishing them is futile—still the same theme of De within, not outward display. Examples such as attendants not trimming nails or piercing ears, or the newly married being exempt from duty, all borrow “wholeness of form” to highlight “wholeness of De.”

The commentator also cautions: if one forces Confucian names, teaching, and ritual onto phrases like “love makes them cling to the form,” the reading becomes excessive. The ancients said “serve the dead as the living” out of unwillingness to treat kin as mere dead matter; here Zhuangzi is stacking metaphors, with exaggerated rhetoric—there is a “descriptive, figurative” quality that cannot be judged line by line against ritual code, yet one should still see that he is writing in figures, not laying down everyday rules for mourning and sacrifice.

Duke Ai asked, “What is meant by ‘complete endowment’?”

Zhongni (Confucius) said: Life and death, survival and loss, obscurity and prominence, poverty and wealth, worthiness and unworthiness, slander and praise, hunger and thirst, cold and heat—these are shifts in worldly affairs and turns of fate. They alternate before you day and night, and human cleverness cannot fix them from the start.

Therefore such outer circumstances are not enough to disturb the peace within you, nor can they enter your lingfu—the inner chamber of the spirit. Let the heart be harmonious, at ease, and unobstructed, without losing a natural joy; let day and night pass without shrinking back; in meeting the myriad things, be like spring itself, full of vitality—so that in every contact with things, the mind responds with timely measure and living responsiveness. This is what is called “complete endowment.”

This passage brings together the theme of “complete endowment without manifest virtue” (cai quan de bu xing). Earlier it was said that birth and death are weighty matters, yet one need not change along with them; here birth and death, survival and loss, success and failure, poverty and wealth, praise and blame, hunger and thirst, cold and heat, and the like are gathered into one list—this is where the exposition opens out and develops.

“Those who have rules and seek” (gui zhe qiu ye)—people who live by standards and grasping—are always reckoning with the shifts of these circumstances and the turning of fate. Day and night alternate before our eyes; however much one knows, one cannot chase down a “first cause”; one can only say: it has always been thus, naturally so.

“What is not enough to disturb harmony” (bu zu yi hua he zhe) means what cannot unsettle the harmony in the breast—the crux is “not changing along with them” (bu de yu zhi bian): not letting the heart shift with outer conditions. “What does not enter the spirit storehouse (ling fu) does not move the heart”—the ling fu is the innermost depth; for the heart to stay unmoved, the three words he, yu, and tong must run as one thread: yu is ease and glad acceptance, tong is unobstructed flow. Once the heart is unmoved, let things be natural: harmonious, accepting, and flowing, without losing dui (joy). This line is characteristic of Zhuangzi’s style.

“Harmony, ease, and penetration” (he yu tong) shares the same aim as “pervasive and complete” (zhou bian xian) in a later passage. “Day and night without ceasing” (ri ye wu que)—renewed daily, never stopping; que means to stop. “With things as spring” (yu wu wei chun)—wherever one rests, all can be spring, all can be joy; wu refers to affairs and circumstances; this “spring” matches the dui above, following the sense of “and thus life” and what comes after.

“Born in season in the heart” (sheng shi yu xin) is close to the Buddhist “respond from no fixed abode and let the heart arise.” Jie is responsive contact, shi is the present moment’s opportunity; responding as each affair touches one, without leaning or clinging—that is why it is called “born in season in the heart.”

Cai means native endowment and quality, as in Mencius’s “Heaven’s bestowed endowment.” “Complete endowment” (cai quan) is preserving one’s original nature; set against “virtue without form” (de bu xing), complete endowment stays inward and shows no outward trace—so the paragraph’s point rests on cai quan and de bu xing.

“De takes no fixed form” means that De does not stay locked into one visible shape. When water is still, it reaches the flattest level; that “levelness” can serve as a standard: inwardly holding that stillness, outwardly not being stirred by things. De is what comes from fully preserving and cultivating the harmony of one’s nature; “De takes no fixed form” means it shows up along with each person and event—it cannot be exhausted by one place or one label—hence “De takes no fixed form”: nothing is apart from it.

“Uphold the people’s discipline” is well put: it is grasping the main threads of governing; “care that they do not perish” means truly sympathizing with and cherishing the people. How could Duke Ai literally “face south and rule all under Heaven”? This is Zhuangzi writing with a heavy hand—not every line should be read as historical fact. He and Kong Qiu (Confucius) were not ruler and subject but friends who met through De, much like the “friendship” Mencius speaks of—both are parables; do not force them to match the chronicles.

The parables of Quèzhī, Zhīlí, and “no neck”

Quèzhī and Zhīlí (people with maimed bodies) went to persuade Duke Ling of Wei; Ling was deeply impressed by them, and when he looked at whole-bodied people again, he felt everyone’s neck was “just a neck” (he no longer judged by appearance). Wèngjiāng dà yǐng (the man with a huge wen on his neck who sold gruel) went to persuade Duke Huan of Qi; Huan was impressed by him too, and when he looked at whole-bodied people, likewise necks were just necks.

So: De has what it excels in; form has what may be forgotten. When someone forgets what should be forgotten and clings to what should not, that is called “true forgetting” (zhēng wàng)—having genuinely forgotten attachment to outward form).

Form and De

Bent legs and a hunched back are the look of someone “crippled” or “hunchbacked”; missing calves or lips is the extreme of a twisted, lipless ugliness. “Shoulders upon shoulders” describes a neck thin and long; “jar-like, wen, goiter” point to a neck swollen like a pot or a huge wen. All of this is metaphor: what people love or loathe is not decided outside the physical body. Hunchbacks and those with great wens may win a ruler’s favor, while so-called “perfect” people fare worse—hence where De is long, form may be forgotten: cherish the De and let the form go.

True forgetting and false forgetting

What should be forgotten is form; what must not be forgotten is De. Sincere forgetting is real forgetting. Knowing only form and not De is forgetting what should be forgotten and clinging to what should not—false forgetting.

The sage’s “ roaming” and the four “evil uses”

Therefore the sage has something to roam in—here roam means what is called xin you tian you: letting the heart move freely within heavenly principle.

• Zhi wei nie (knowing as calamity): handling affairs through cleverness becomes harm.
• Yue wei jiao (contracts as glue): binding oneself with ritual and law, stuck like glue.
• De wei jie (De as mere contact): using De only to meet others outwardly.
• Gong wei shang (craft as trade): treating skill as commerce for fame and gain.

This aligns with Mencius’s image of fretting over “one finger not matching others”: form may be forgotten, De may not; sincere forgetting is real forgetting—knowing only form and not De is still false forgetting.

When the sage has heavenly roaming in the heart, these four are seen as burdens, and so:

• Bu mou (no scheming) → no use of cleverness
• Bu zhuo (no cutting/shaping) → no use of contractual binding
• Wu sang (nothing lost inwardly) → no use of outward “De”
• Bu huo (no peddling) → no use of craft and trade

These four—bu mou, bu zhuo, wu sang, bu huo—together are called tian yu; tian yu is tian shi, tian lu (heaven’s nourishment, heaven’s stipend), like tian jue (heaven’s rank): once one’s sustenance comes from heaven, why still rely on human cleverness, contracts, De-as-contact, and commerce? Having received tian jue, one need not seek ren jue (human rank).

A Note on “Receiving,” “Life,” “Timeliness,” and on “Virtue” and “Wisdom”

In what came before, the three words “receiving,” “life,” and “timeliness” were treated in the commentary as favorable terms; in this passage, when they are linked with “virtue” and “wisdom,” the same kind of phrasing turns negative. The prose swells and surges without regard to continuity with what precedes and follows, which is why some readers class books of this sort as heterodox writings.

Main drift of the Zhuangzi passage

Some people have a human body but not the sort of “qing” (emotion/disposition) that ordinary people mean by that word. Because they have a body, they can live among others; because they lack that kind of qing, right and wrong do not harm them inwardly. What belongs to “the human” is small; what is completed solely by Heaven is great.

Huizi asked Zhuangzi: Can a person truly be without qing? Zhuangzi said: Yes. Huizi asked: If someone has no qing, is he still a person? Zhuangzi said: the Dao gives him his looks, Heaven gives him his form—how can he not count as a person? Huizi asked: If he counts as a person, how can he have no qing? Zhuangzi said: The “qing” you mean is not the “qing” I mean. When I speak of “no qing” (wú qíng), I mean that one should not let likes and dislikes injure oneself, that one should constantly follow what is natural and not artificially “add to life” (yì shēng). Huizi asked: If you do not add to life, where does the body come from? Zhuangzi said: The Dao gives him his looks, Heaven gives him his form—do not let likes and dislikes injure the body inwardly. Now you wander outside with your spirit and wear out your form with your essence. Huizi pressed again: If you do not add to life, how is there a body at all? Zhuangzi repeated his earlier reply. Huizi said once more: If you do not add to life, how is there a body? Zhuangzi again said: The Dao gives him his looks, Heaven gives him his form; do not let likes and dislikes injure the body inwardly. Now you wander outside with your spirit and wear out your form with your essence. Huizi leaned against a tree and groaned, rested on a withered sophora and shut his eyes. Heaven chose your form, yet you make your name with “hard and white”—and the commentary or quotation closes here.

Plain-language walkthrough of the dialogue

What Huizi and Zhuangzi dispute over as “qing” is really two layers of meaning: Huizi lumps joy and anger, love and hate, and the heart of right-and-wrong under “qing”; Zhuangzi excludes from the “no qing” he advocates precisely those likes and dislikes that wound one’s nature inwardly. Zhuangzi’s “no qing” is not being a block of wood; it is not letting right-wrong and likes-dislikes damage one’s nature, and not artificially “adding to life” by fussing over the body, while form and life originally come from the Dao and Heaven—yet are often drained by debates over “hard and white” (Huizi’s School-of-Names theme).

The commentator praised “receiving,” “life,” and “timeliness” earlier and criticized how “virtue” and “wisdom” are joined later: within the same oral-style exposition, praise and blame for the same sort of wording do not align, and the pen leaps about unlike a strict commentary on a classic—hence calling it an “heterodox book.” Readers who focus only on Zhuangzi’s story should keep the main point: having the human form to live with others, yet lacking vulgar qing so as not to be harmed; set against Huizi’s “hard and white” debate, Zhuangzi uses the dialogue to satirize the School of Names’ habit of exhausting the spirit.

Vernacular Exposition of Zhuangzi Kouyi: “The Great Fundamental Teacher”

The Great Fundamental Teacher means the Dao; in essence, the sage emulates Heaven, Heaven emulates the Dao, and the Dao emulates natural spontaneity.

Huizi Asks About “Form” and “Disciple of Heaven”

This passage reflects a theme common in Zhuangzi and Huizi’s exchanges: what lies below “having human form” is what Zhuangzi often says in daily discourse; Huizi presses him on it.

• To group with people: to be of the same kind as the multitude and blend among them.
• Right and wrong not settled on oneself: not tying gain and loss to one’s own person—entering anywhere without losing ease, rising above right and wrong, alone completing one’s Heaven-given nature.
• Disciple of Heaven: when a person can stand outside right and wrong and be at ease everywhere, they are of Heaven’s kind; what they accomplish is great.

“Heaven Gives Form” and “No Sentiment”

• Heaven gives form—there is a thing; the Dao gives appearance—things must have their norms: Heaven bestows form and the Dao bestows countenance; the ten thousand things each have their law.
• What I call no sentiment: not cold-heartedness, but people not wounding themselves inwardly through likes and dislikes—where there is benefit there is harm; if one always accords with natural spontaneity, there is neither benefit nor harm.
• Speaking of surplus and insufficiency is all illness; “nourishing life” is the illness of surplus: to talk of “more than enough” and “not enough” is already sickness; nourishing life (yisheng) is the sickness of surplus—if likes and dislikes arise from nature and there is no clinging, nothing is gained or lost.

Huizi asks: If you do not nourish life, how do you keep your body?—He takes nourishing life as sustaining life, which is not Zhuangzi’s point.

Huizi, the “Dried Catalpa,” and “Hard and White”

Zhuangzi and Huizi were closest of friends; Huizi was learned and fond of disputation, so Zhuangzi mocked him for wearing out the spirit and tiring the essence outwardly—outward spirit: spirit applied outside the self, like spirit not keeping to its dwelling.

Dried catalpa (gaowu): withered wood; made into a armrest; míng: drowsiness. Hard and white (jianbai): a famous disputation (Hui Shi’s “hard and white” argument). Xuan: to confer. Heaven gave you form—yet you torment yourself like this; why?—Heaven gave you a body, yet you suffer yourself so—what is it for?

From the single word “cry (ming)” alone, Han Yu once drew an entire preface—so fine is the craft—how could Zhuangzi fail to count as a master author?

Volume Two ends here; Volume Three begins with Inner Chapter: The Great Fundamental Teacher, Chapter Six.

To grasp what “heaven does” and what “humans do”—and to keep the two distinct—is already the summit of insight. “Heaven’s doing” means receiving life from mandate; “human doing” means using what one knows to nurture what one does not yet know, so one completes one’s years and does not die mid-course—that is “the height of knowing” (bringing both knowing and fate to their limit).

Even so, a worry remains: human cognition usually waits on external things and on conditions being in place before it feels “right”; yet what it waits on has no fixed measure. How can we be sure that what we call “heaven” is not “human”? Or that what we call “human” is not “heaven”?

(The passage repeats the “height of knowing” theme: knowing waits on something before it seems fitting; what it waits on is unsettled; heaven may be human and human may be heaven.)

Take “fitting” and “unfitting”: only after a matter is settled can we see whether it was fitting—the word “fitting” is used with great precision. If we attribute everything to heaven, it still seems we must seek to obtain; if we attribute everything to humans, there are times when seeking fails—hence the question: how can we be sure heaven is not human, or human not heaven?

Again: long life and short life are not two paths—both are mandate; yet we also say one who knows fate does not stand under a crumbling wall—so heaven’s doing and human doing have no fixed border. Zhuangzi sees worldly affairs most clearly; passages like this repay slow reading.

And: only after there is a True Person (Zhenren) is there true knowledge (Zhenzhi)

This line speaks of those who have the Way: only after one becomes a “True Person” (one united with the Dao, without pretense) can one speak of “true knowledge” (not cleverness, but knowing that accords with the Dao).

What Is a True Person (Zhenren)?

Paraphrase of the original

What is meant by a “true person” (zhenren)? The true persons of antiquity did not resist insufficiency or lack, did not boast when they succeeded, and did not scheme over how to act. Thus, when something went wrong they did not regret it; when things turned out right they did not congratulate themselves. In that state, climbing high they were not afraid, entering water they were not soaked, entering fire they were not burned—for they could ascend and reach through the Dao, opening into a higher dimension of realization.

“Not resisting insufficiency” (bu ni gua)

“Gua” means insufficiency, want, or lack. Not resisting gua means that even when one is short of what is needed, one accepts the situation as it is—without forcing against it or complaining.

“Not boasting of achievement” (bu xiong cheng)

“Xiong” here carries the sense of showing off or vaunting. Having accomplished something, they still did not parade their success.

“Not scheming over affairs” (bu mo shi)

“Mo” is to plan or plot; in classical usage “shi” (affairs) often overlaps with “shi” (the officer/knight graph used for “matter”). Not scheming over affairs means not calculating every move on purpose, but acting in accord with what naturally unfolds.

“When it passes, no regret; when it hits the mark, no self-congratulation” (guo er fu hui, dang er bu zi de)

“Guo” is fault, miss, or “missing the moment,” as when people today say something was “missed”; “dang” is hitting rightly, aptness, “just so”; “zi de” is taking credit or feeling smug about oneself. Success or failure alike are left to nature—no brooding over mistakes, no exulting over success.

“Climbing high without fear, entering water without soaking, entering fire without burning”

This portrays the true person as at ease wherever they are, without ordinary fear of height, water, or fire and without ordinary harm from them. It is a metaphor for a mind aligned with the Dao, not a claim that they performed miraculous stunts.

“Their knowing could ascend and reach by the Dao” (zhi zhi neng deng jia yu dao)

“Zhi” overlaps with wisdom; “jia” here is read as “reach” or “rely upon.” Their insight had gone deep into the Dao, so they could “deng jia”—rise and arrive—in a state consonant with the Dao.

“The two ‘ruo ran zhe’ passages”

This is Zhuangzi’s rhetorical pattern: the two phrases “ruo ran zhe” each introduce a block—first the line on no regret and no self-congratulation, then the line on height, water, and fire—mirroring each other: one layer on inner attitude, one on realized bearing.

Brief summary

This oral gloss presents the true person as one who accepts lack, does not flaunt merit, and schemes little; who does not cling to success or failure; and whose heart matches the Dao, so there is neither terror nor stuckness. The heart of it is “entrusting oneself to nature” and “advancing deeply in the Dao,” not chasing outward feats or sensational powers.

Plain-language commentary

On the daily life of the zhenren (true person)

When a zhenren sleeps, they do not dream, because the spirit is settled and the inner mind is clear—this is what the ancients meant by “the utmost person has no dreams.” When they wake, they are not weighed down by worry: in dealing with the world, they do not quarrel with others in the heart or fight with themselves. At meals they do not chase flavors; they eat only to still hunger, not to eat their fill. That aligns with what Chan circles call “plugging hunger and sores”—treating hunger and injury as ordinary, without extra craving.

Breathing should be deep and long. A zhenren’s qi rises from the heels all the way to mouth and nose; an ordinary person’s qi stops at the throat and breaks off. Daoist books on cultivation root themselves here: when the spirit is calm, inbreath and outbreath run deep and long, ascending from the heels—hence methods such as “counting the breath.” If the spirit is not nourished, breathing stays in the throat—shallow and restless. The gap between stillness and agitation shows in the body too: for example vomiting or choking—without genuine insight within, words float at the lips and one easily yields to outer circumstances. Chan speaks of “toad Chan”—one jump and it is finished—and of a frog that croaks once and gives in; that is the same kind of case.

“Shi yu” means human desire; “tian ji” means the principle of Heaven. Speaking of “deep and shallow” is what earlier masters meant: the principle of Heaven and human desire each wax and wane according to its own measure. In this passage, each line is one thread running through many sayings in the Daoist canon and Buddhist scriptures; the source can be traced back here in the Zhuangzi, which shows how much the Zhuangzi holds on its own and should not be skimmed past. It is a pity one cannot see figures such as Dahui Zonggao or Zhang Boduan debate this layer face to face with Zhuangzi.

The ancient zhenren (sense of the classic text)

The zhenren of old did not especially rejoice in living or especially hate death. Going out, they did not arm themselves on purpose; coming back, they did not resist on purpose—coming and going were free and at ease. They did not cling to where they came from or force a final destination. What they received they accepted with open joy; having forgotten, they could accept again. This is called not using the human heart to harm the Dao and not using human effort to stand in for Heaven—only then is one a zhenren.

This passage focuses on life and death: Birth and entering death—coming and going with ease; not forgetting where one began, not seeking where one ends; receiving form and rejoicing, forgetting and returning to it—that is what the two words “life and death” mean. “Not resisting” means not going against the flow; “at ease” means going along with it. Not forgetting the beginning and not seeking the end is what is called tracing the origin and grasping the end—hence understanding the doctrine of life and death. Someone asked Master Zhaozhou: “Where will the master go after a hundred years?” Zhaozhou replied: “After the fire burns out, a single stalk of reed grass remains”—that is not seeking the end. “Receiving” means receiving one’s form; having it from Heaven, how could one not rejoice? “Returning” means going back; returning whole, with nothing held in mind—hence “forgetting and returning to it.”

“Do not abandon the Dao with the heart”—the heart is the Dao; there is no Dao outside the heart. “Do not use human effort to assist Heaven”—long life and early death are fated; human power cannot add to them. These ten characters repay close reading. “Not abandoning” means never leaving it even for an instant.

“If so:” the mind has its aim, the countenance is still, the forehead broad—“aim” means having something to master and thus being settled. The wording of this book cannot be read with the methods used for the Mencius. An earlier master said that when Buddhist talk of nature only reaches as far as the mind, and one calls that heterodox, how can one still read our book’s terms that way? “Still” means quiet stillness; sitting facing the wall for nineteen years is that still countenance. Kui means large; sang is the forehead; the head held straight, so the broad forehead shows. “Grieved as if autumn, warm as if spring”—joy and anger harmonize with the four seasons, fitting each thing appropriately, with no one knowing their limit.

“Limit” means stopping place; “things” means affairs. Responding to affairs as they come, each finding its fit, with no fixed stopping place—that is what is meant by “meeting birth through contact and timing it in the heart.”

“Therefore when the sage employs the army:” he may destroy a state yet not lose the people’s hearts; his benefit and grace extend for ten thousand generations, without doing it out of partial love for people—

Using military force to subdue the world is a harm to the world; spreading kindness and caring for the world is a benefit to the world. Yet whether one uses arms or bestows grace, the work should be done in a spirit of “no deliberate mind”—without claiming merit, without self-promotion, without tallying the deed as one’s own. Then even people whose states were destroyed will not heap all their resentment on the one who acted; those who received favor will feel, as the old song puts it, “What has the Emperor’s power to do with me?”—as if life were simply meant to be this way, not as if someone had specially favored them. The Zhuangzi says something of the same kind: the highest state is to have done great things yet seem not to have done them.

Zhuangzi’s style, however, loves hyperbole; his descriptions often go to extremes. When he says that grace extends through ten thousand generations yet is not called benevolence, or that benefit reaches all things yet is not called righteousness, he is still describing the same realm of wuwei (non-action) without fame—do not read that as rejecting benevolence and righteousness themselves.

Therefore: to take joy only in “being one with the ten thousand things” does not make one a sage; to favor only one’s kin does not make one truly benevolent; to chase the season and seek timely fortune does not make one truly worthy; to misjudge what is heavy or light in gain and loss does not make one a junzi (noble person); to pursue reputation and lose one’s original heart does not make one a shi (scholar-official); to wear out the body while the inner mind is untrue does not make one a fit “servant” (one used by others). People such as Wu Guang, Boyi, Shuqi, Jizi, Xuyu, Jita, and Shentu Di are often praised by later ages—but in Zhuangzi’s view they mostly acted as “servants serving others’ errands”: they conformed to what others judged “fitting,” without a “fitting” they could rest in for themselves; what they did was “doing the errands of those who serve others,” not “finding their own fitting ease.”

These lines mock the "sage, worthy, gentleman, and scholar" to set off the True Person (Zhenren) as beyond reach: if there were no True Person in the world, no one would know what the utmost Dao is; from the sage downward, regardless of rank, none measure up to the "True Person."

"Taking the thorough passage of things as joy" means the sage takes joy in each thing finding its place—"thorough" (tong) means each attaining its due. Yet not keeping the rise and fall of things in mind while taking this "thoroughness" as joy still falls short of being a sage.

Only "no-mind" (wuxin) has no near and far; once there is distance and closeness, there is "having mind"; having mind is not benevolence. Acting in accord with the times and knowing heaven's seasons, the worthy can do this, but if one prides oneself on this alone, one is still not a True Person. Seeking benefit and avoiding harm, the gentleman can do this; if one cannot see benefit and harm as one, the gentleman is still insufficient.

The scholar must seek fame; fame is the guest of substance—being a guest means losing one's own self, hence they are not called true scholars. The True Person is naturally wuwei (non-action); not knowing the natural, yet toiling body and mind to ruin one's life is being enslaved by others, not mastering others. The above are all pushed to the extreme in argument, so below, from "Hu Buxie" onward, even Boyi, Shuqi, Jizi, and the like are mocked as enslaved by others, losing their own self—hence "not self-suiting their own suitableness." The words are biased, but the literary force is artful.

Hu Buxie, Wuguang, Xuyu, Jita, and Shentu Di were all ancient worthies, yet they were "not self-suiting, not self-attaining."

Plain-Language Explanation

Main idea of the original passage (Zhuangzi’s portrait of the “ancient True Person”):

In antiquity, the True Person who had attained the Way looked upright and impartial, as if somewhat lacking yet never servile or fawning; moved with ease, like the corners of a square vessel yet without harshness; open-hearted and empty like a valley, without showiness; gentle and at ease, as if pleased though not caught in ordinary joy; modest and restrained, as if responding only when there was no choice; full and gathered, with natural color showing in the face; leisurely and self-possessed, with virtue resting within rather than rushing outward; stern in bearing, as if no different from people in the world; lofty and hard to fathom, as if beyond control; continuous and deep, as if fond of closing in; vague and absent-minded, almost forgetting what had been said.

The commentator’s explanation:

This passage uses a chain of images to sketch the True Person’s bearing. The wording has a refined, warm polish, but the images pile up densely—a layered, cumulative style often seen in Buddhist scriptures.

• “yi er bu peng” (upright yet not partisan): Standing straight, neither leaning nor taking sides.
• “ruo bu zu er bu cheng” (as if insufficient yet not submissive): Seeming to fall short, yet not belittling oneself or flattering others (“cheng” suggests compliance and self-abasement, as in the Zuozhuan usage where the secondary says “cheng”).
• “yu hu qi gu er bu jian” (easy like a gu’s corners yet not hard): “Gu” is an angular vessel, a metaphor for the edges of virtue—having angles without cutting others.
• “zhang hu qi xu er bu hua” (expansive like emptiness yet not flashy): “Zhang” is ease and openness; “xu” is seeming presence and absence; inner fullness without outward display.
• “bing bing hu qi si xi hu” (bright and easy as if pleased): Amiable like joy, yet not the joy of common emotion.
• “cui hu qi bu de yi hu” (lofty-low as if with no choice): “Cui” suggests lowering and gathering; engaging the world as if only when unavoidable—also like holding back, then answering.
• “chu hu jin wo se” (gathered, advancing my color): “Chu” is gathering and fullness; inner delight naturally shows in the complexion (what is called “sui ran jian yu mian”—serenity appearing on the face).
• “yu hu zhi wo de” (at ease, stopping my virtue): This is the idea of “xu shi sheng bai, ji xiang zhi zhi”—in emptiness and stillness, virtue rests and is self-sufficient.
• “li hu qi si shi hu” (stern as if of the world): “Li” is severity; from afar one looks as stern as anyone, yet inwardly there is the “no choice” modesty—hence only “si” (seems) worldly.
• “ao hu qi wei ke zhi” (lofty as if uncontrollable): “Ao” is a bearing too high and deep to measure.
• “lian hu qi si hao bi” (continuous as if fond of closing): Coherent and inward-turning, as if preferring to shut up and speak little.
• “man hu wang qi yan” (dazed, forgetting one’s words): Light on speech, almost forgetting what one has said.

The lines that follow—“yi xing wei ti, yi li wei yi, yi zhi wei shi, yi de wei xun” (taking punishment as the body, rites as wings, knowledge as timeliness, virtue as the path)—carry another layer:

• Yi xing wei ti (taking punishment/law as the body): Taking norms and measure as the root of personhood, hence “chuo hu qi sha”—when cutting is needed, it is done with breadth and due measure.
• Yi li wei yi (taking rites as wings): Rites as support, so one can move and live in the world.
• Yi zhi wei shi (taking knowledge as timeliness): Using discernment to hit the right moment, responding only when things arrive and there is no alternative.
• Yi de wei xun (taking virtue as the path): Virtue as what one follows; some say it is like someone with feet walking up a hill while onlookers think it is mere toil on the road—a metaphor for following virtue while outsiders see only the outward track, not the root in de.

The commentator holds that the earlier descriptive phrases, though fine, run on with excessive fullness and repetition; the four lines on “xing, li, zhi, de” (punishment, rites, knowledge, virtue) point to the structure: outwardly much like the world, inwardly rooted in de, and responding to things only when there is no choice.