《庄子口义》Vol. 3

Opening section (on “mianhu,” “tiben yifu,” and related phrases)

“Great” here means not submitting to anything in the world, hence “cannot be controlled”—not subject to external force. “Fond of closing” means liking to keep the mouth shut and not speak lightly; “lian” is continuity, “mi” is tightness. Before one has spoken, it is as if one had no wish to speak at all; after one has spoken, it is as if one had never spoken—hence “mianhu qiwang yan,” the posture of bowing low and leaving words behind. These two lines express the same idea.

“Tiben ye, yifu ye”: take the root body as foundation and what attaches as wings. The sage’s side says “clear about the five punishments to assist the five teachings”; here it says “take punishment as root and ritual as attachment”—both invert the usual order, with the same intent. “Chuohu qisha zhe, sui sha zhi er chuochuohu”—when executing, be ample and unhurried; even when carrying out the death penalty, one does not violate the inner heart. “Xing yu shi yi li xunsu”—move in the world by letting ritual follow custom. “Shihu yong zhi ze yong zhi”—sometimes one must use cleverness; that is the unavoidable response to changing circumstances. “Xunde zhe” follows the virtue of the Way of Heaven naturally; “xunhu ziran er wu suo rong li”—follow nature without adding extra force. It is like climbing a small hill: with feet, one can go up by oneself, without first thinking “I must strive to climb” before moving; the mind need not apply deliberate effort, and action naturally arrives. That is the image of “no room for the mind.” “Qiu” is a small hill.

Main text (Zhuangzi on the True Person)

Therefore: what is liked is one; what is disliked is also one. Treating “one” as one, and treating “not-one” as one as well. What aligns with “one” is of the same kind as Heaven; what aligns with “not-one” is of the same kind as humans. Heaven and humans do not overpower each other—such a person is called a True Person.

“One” means nature and the transforming process; “hao yu fu hao” is liking and disliking; “qi yi” is as one body, as sameness (linked to the “hill” image above, meaning return to one nature).

“One” here means what is naturally so as it is. As creation and transformation run their course, what we like and dislike is what people call good and bad. Where things agree, there is oneness; where they diverge, there is difference. Whether in agreement or in conflict, liking and disliking never step outside the scope of creation and transformation—hence the talk of “its oneness” and “its not-oneness.” “Its oneness” means a person can treat likes and dislikes as a single whole and thereby know Heaven, becoming kin with Heaven. “Its not-oneness” means splitting likes and dislikes into two camps, knowing only the human and not Heaven, becoming kin with the human. You cannot use human intent to override the Way of Heaven, nor use the Way of Heaven to override human nature. The True Person has neither likes nor dislikes, neither sameness nor difference, and draws no boundary between Heaven and the human—only moving with what is natural. This is akin to the Buddhist idea of “dispelling both being and non-being,” and to Laozi’s “the two emerge from the same source yet differ in name; both are called dark mystery.” Thus Heaven and the human do not conquer each other, and oneness and not-oneness are ultimately one at the level of root reality—that “one” is what the “Great Master” of The Great and Venerable Teacher (Dazongshi) points toward.

Death and life are fate; the alternation of day and night is Heaven’s constant pattern. What human effort cannot alter is the real condition of the ten thousand things. People already treat Heaven as a parent and cherish their own bodies—how much more should they do so toward what is loftier and more primordially real, the “transcendent” (zhuo)? People already hold a ruler more precious than themselves and still die for bodily life—how much more should they rely on the “authentic” (zhen), natural genuineness, to which they ought to entrust themselves?

Death and life are like the shift from night to day. The Book of Changes (Yijing) speaks of penetrating the way of day and night and thereby clarifying principle. “Real condition” (qing) means factual reality—not something human power can arrange in advance. That is the genuine pattern of Heaven, Earth, and the ten thousand things; what is called fate and what is called Heaven both refer to this layer of reality. These lines use the mandate of Heaven in life and death to deepen the earlier meaning of “oneness” and “not-oneness.” Father and ruler are the most honored in ordinary life, yet this Way is greater still—above ruler and father—so the text speaks of “the father of all fathers” and says that within it there is a “authentic ruler.” “Transcendent” means supreme and beyond reach; “authentic” means what is natural and genuinely so. The point: people all know ruler and father, yet fail to see that the Dao should be taken as the “Great Master.”

When the spring dries up, fish crowd on dry land, moistening one another with breath and saving one another with spit—far inferior to each returning to the rivers and lakes and forgetting one another there. Rather than praising Yao and reviling Jie, better to forget both sides of right and wrong and return together to the Dao. The great clod (dakuai) of Heaven and Earth gives me form, uses life to wear me out, uses age to settle me, uses death to rest me—so to settle this life well is to settle its death well.

Moistening each other with foam. In a drought, fish crowd together and wet one another with foam from their mouths, barely staying alive. Zhuangzi uses this to say: people in the world who depend on one another through contrived “action” (youwei) would do better to forget each other as fish do when they return to the great rivers and lakes and swim freely without fuss—rather than wrestling in blame, praise, and slander, forget both sides and leave it to nature: let the Dao transform things.

The line about “praising Yao and condemning Jie” sounds like random judgment of sages, but it is one of Zhuangzi’s distinct insights: without Jie there is no Yao, without ruin no rise, without evil no good, without slander no praise—praise and blame, rise and fall, good and evil exist only in relation. Instead of ranking one side over the other, forget both and hand it to nature. Buddhist phrases such as “the Dharma is equal, with no high or low,” “discard both being and non-being,” and “the Great Dao has no difficulty—only picking and choosing is the problem” point the same way: do not pick and choose, do not set up opposites.

“Two clay oxen fight their way into the sea; from then until now, no word of them”—two clay oxen battling until they sink into the ocean and vanish without trace—pictures the scramble for fame and rank, contrived striving: once you go under, there is no sequel. In oral exegesis this is often marked as a keen saying.

The Great Clump (heaven and earth as one mass): form comes first, then life; once there is life, toil cannot be avoided; when sinews weaken with age, it is natural to rest—to cease. One who is good at preserving this body is one who is good at giving life to oneself—in the sense of “if one hears the Dao in the morning, one may die in the evening without regret.”

Hide a boat in a ravine, hide a mountain in a marsh, thinking it secure—yet in the middle of the night a mighty one (creation, zaohua) carries the whole thing away, and the dull do not know. Small hiding and great hiding each suit their place, yet something always escapes—there is always what cannot be hidden. If you hide the world within the world, then nowhere to flee—that is the great constant of things (heng wu zhi da qing). To rejoice merely because one has got a human body—when that body stands amid myriad transformations without end, how could the joy in that be counted! So the sage plays where nothing can escape, and preserves all: good at early death, good at old age, good at beginning, good at end—ordinary people still wish to follow that; how much more the realm to which all things are bound and which every transformation awaits (the domain one with the Dao and with transformation)?

Valleys can hide boats, and marshes can hide mountains—one might say such hiding is deep and secure. Yet in the dead of night they can still be lifted and scattered by a great force (namely Creation). The point is: however carefully people plan, they sometimes still lack freedom—like “forging an iron door sill”: foolish people see others clapping and laughing and never grasp what it means. Small and large, boat and valley, mountain and marsh: when a valley is vast enough to hide a boat and a marsh vast enough to hide a mountain, hiding the small within the large is fitting. “Dun” (dispersal, escape) means being lost and scattered. To hide the world within the world is to hand it over to nature: whatever is under Heaven is entrusted to Heaven, and then there is nowhere to flee. The true abode of the myriad things is often like this, hence it is called the great constant truth of things (chang wu zhi da qing). People are always pleased to have a bodily form and do not know that the human body changes without end or where its rest lies. If one can know this, then the myriad things are all complete within me, Heaven and Earth and I are one, and the joy is beyond counting. The sage lets the heart roam in nature, so there is neither gain nor loss; hence it is said: roaming where things cannot escape, and yet all can be nourished and preserved. Being good at Heaven, good at old age, good at beginning, good at ending—all this is the power of Creation (zaohua). To say Creation can do this is already to speak highly; people still take it as a model—how much more so Dao!

What the myriad things are tied to is Dao; what a single transformation relies on is also Dao—this is what is meant by the Great Master (Dazongshi, the Zhuangzi chapter title: Dao as the ancestor of all things and teacher of humanity). Layer upon layer rising higher—this is the momentum of Zhuangzi’s prose.

Dao has trustworthiness and has “qing” (reality, responsiveness); it is wuwei (non-action) and formless. It can be transmitted yet cannot be directly taken in hand; it can be awakened to yet cannot be seen with the eyes. It is self-rooted from its own root; it was firmly there before Heaven and Earth were born. Spirits, ghosts, and the Lord on High (shen, gui, shen di) are produced by it; it gives birth to Heaven and gives birth to Earth. It is prior to Taiji (the Supreme Ultimate) yet does not deem itself lofty; it is below the six extremities yet does not deem itself deep; it is before Heaven and Earth yet does not deem itself long-lasting; it is older than high antiquity yet does not deem itself aged.

In the commentary Zhuangzi Kouyi, the word “Dao” is deliberately withheld until this point, where it appears for the first time in the discussion of the chapter “Great Master” (Dazongshi). Here “qing” means how things really are, and “xin” (faith/trust) likewise means what is genuinely so. Wuwei (non-action) has no fixed place to start from; “formlessness” has no fixed shape.

“Can be transmitted yet cannot be received; can be attained yet cannot be seen”—these two lines are hard to grasp unless one has truly awakened to the Dao. Guan Yinzi has a chapter that explains “transmission” very well: tracing back from the root and from the origin to where the Dao first begins, one finds that before Heaven and Earth existed, the Dao was already there. This is what is often called “the Limitless giving rise to the Supreme Ultimate (Taiji).” The traces of creation, the Sovereign, and the spirits all depend on this Dao to come into being; Heaven and Earth too exist only because of the Dao—hence “giving birth to Heaven and giving birth to Earth.” The Book of Changes says, “There is Taiji; it gives birth to the Two Modes (Yin-Yang)”—the same idea. The four phrases “does not seek height, depth, longevity, or age” state the nature of the Dao with exceptional clarity. “The six extremes” refers to the six directions or the sixfold cosmos, and the like.

Ancient figures who attained the Dao (in summary):

• Xixweishi attained the Dao and could sustain and uphold Heaven and Earth.
• Fuxi attained the Dao and carried on the “mother of qi” (the root of the vital breath of all things).
• Weidou attained the Dao and remained unchanged through the ages.
• Sun and Moon attained the Dao and run without ceasing through the ages.
• Kanhuai attained the Dao and guarded Kunlun.
• Fengyi attained the Dao and roamed the great rivers.
• Jianwu attained the Dao and dwelt on the great mountains.
• Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) attained the Dao and ascended to the cloudy heavens.
• Zhuanxu attained the Dao and resided in the Dark Palace.
• Yuqiang attained the Dao and stood at the North Pole.
• Queen Mother of the West attained the Dao and sat on Mount Shaoguang; neither her beginning nor her end is known.
• Pengzu attained the Dao, reaching back to the time of Emperor Shun and forward to the Five Hegemons.
• Fuyue attained the Dao, assisted King Wuding, and held the realm; his spirit rode the eastern ridge, drew near to the Tail of the Winnowing Basket constellation, and was arrayed among the stars.

(Note: The source repeats some lines in the middle; the above follows the unified sense of the passage.)

Plain-language reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi (Zhuangzi “Oral Meaning”)

From Xiwei shi (Xiwei, an ancient ruler) downward, the text uses the word “de” (to obtain, to gain) in thirteen places; in each case the sense is the same: one must first obtain this Dao before the abilities and titles that follow can appear.

Xiwei shi is a ruler of high antiquity. Qie tiandi (“upholding Heaven and Earth”) is like putting Heaven and Earth, qian and kun, in good order—clear and coherent. Qi mu (the “mother of qi”) points to primordial qi; xi (to inherit, to merge with) means taking up and blending yin–yang qi and gathering it into oneself—language of that kind is again the sort Neidan (internal alchemy) and cultivation lineages treat with special respect.

Kanpi is a mountain spirit; xi Kunlun, you Kunlun means continuing in one line with Kunlun and taking Kunlun as one’s ultimate dwelling. Fuyi is a water spirit; Jianwu is the spirit of Mount Tai. Huangdi deng yuntian (“the Yellow Emperor ascended to the cloud-heaven”) refers to the story of the Yellow Emperor’s ascent at Dinghu. Yong gong (written in the text with a variant graph for “yong”) corresponds roughly to what later sources call the Taiqing zhenjing (Pure Realm of Grand Clarity). Yuqiang is the spirit of the north; Shaoguang is where immortals dwell. Phrases such as “entering without anyone knowing where it ends”—eight-character lines of that kind—carry much the same meaning; only the sentence length varies. That is a matter of literary technique.

Among these thirteen clauses, the author also inserts the sun and moon and the Big Dipper in the middle, and later uses Pengzu and Fu Yue for corroboration. The brushwork sometimes breaks ordinary patterns; you cannot force it into the usual chapter-and-verse mold of sage books—you need to read this passage on its own terms.

Nanbo Zikui asked Nüyu, “You are very old, yet your complexion is like a child’s—why is that?” Nüyu said, “Because I have heard the Great Dao (Da Dao).” Nanbo Zikui asked, “Can this Dao be learned?” Nüyu said, “No. You are not the right person for it. Buliang Yi had a sage’s talent but not a sage’s Dao; I have a sage’s Dao but not a sage’s talent. I wanted to transmit the Dao to him, thinking he might truly become a sage; otherwise, teaching a sage’s Dao to someone with a sage’s talent ought not to be difficult. Still, I guarded the Dao and taught him step by step: after three days he could forget the world; after he forgot the world, I continued to teach; after seven days he could forget external things; after he forgot external things, I continued; after nine days he could forget life itself. Only after forgetting life could the mind become clear as at dawn (zhao che); only after that clarity could he see the One (jian du)—behold the Dao in its undivided singleness, beyond discrimination; only after seeing the One could he be free of past and present; only after transcending past and present could he enter the realm where there is neither death nor birth. What is meant by “what slays life does not die” is that the aspect of destruction and change is not utterly annihilated; what is meant by “what gives life is not born” is that the aspect of endless begetting does not cling to a fixed “life.” In this state toward the ten thousand things: nothing that should be sent away is withheld, nothing that should be welcomed is refused, nothing that should be discarded is ruined, nothing that should be completed is left undone—this is called “Yingning”: though stirred and disturbed, one remains at peace; only after such disturbance is completion truly completion.

Nanbo Zikui asked, “Where did you alone hear this?” Nüyu said, “I heard it from the son of Fumo; the son of Fumo heard it from the grandson of Luosong; the grandson of Luosong heard it from Zhanming; Zhanming heard it from Niexu; Niexu heard it from Xuyi; Xuyi heard it from Ouyu; Ouyu heard it from Yinfang; Yinfang heard it from Canliao; Canliao heard it from Yishi.” (These names belong to a legendary chain of transmission in Zhuangzi’s parables, indicating that this teaching has been passed mouth to ear and heart to heart since antiquity—not the invention of any single person.)

Zi Kui and Nv Yu are both figures from Zhuangzi’s allegories; though very old in years, they still have the look of children—precisely the sort of state later practitioners often speak of. To treat the sage’s native endowment and the sage’s Way as two separate lines is extremely apt; apart from Zhuangzi, no one else writes quite this way, and before him no one had split them like this. Among those in whom both Dao and endowment were fully complete, aside from the Five Emperors and Three Kings, there were probably only Yi Yin, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius.

The three days, seven days, and nine days in the text need not be forced into literal day-counts; they simply mean one stage higher than the last.

Forgetting outward attachment to life (waisheng) means forgetting the self; dawn clarity (zhaoche) is clarity in the breast, like the pure qi when the sky has just brightened; seeing the One (jian du) is seeing for oneself what others cannot see. Without past and present, there is no death and life—and again “killing” is turned into “not dying,” and “living” into “not living”: typical Zhuangzi twists and lifts on the page.

Meeting and sending off: neither receiving nor escorting; completion and ruin: neither completing nor destroying—everything is simply thus by nature. Ying is stirring and disturbing; though amid stirring and disorder, that stillness is always present, and that stillness is called ning (tranquility). Disturbance comes first, then stillness shows itself, hence yingning—yingning is the stability achieved after disturbance.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi (Oral Exegesis on the Zhuangzi)

“Nine uses of ‘hear’ (wen)—truly striking.”

Here the text stacks several “hear/listen” (wen) in a row. On the page it looks odd on purpose: it shows that the Dao cannot be grasped by the ear alone; the heart must also take it in.

Fumo (auxiliary ink)

Speech comes first from the mouth; only then is it put on bamboo slips. What is written on the slips is called fumo—relative to oral “speech” (yan), writing is secondary, a copy.

“Speech is what is primary; writing on the slips is fumo”: what counts on the front side is yan; what is written on the bamboo is fumo.

Lu song (bundled recitation)

Lu song means wrapping or gathering the scripture together and reciting it: reading aloud while looking at the text is du (read); reciting from memory is song (chant).

It is like a child begetting a grandchild—hence the text goes on to pair zisun (descendants), layer upon layer of derivation.

Zhan (behold)

Zhan means to see; to see thoroughly is zhanming (clear-sighted insight).

Niexu

Nie connects with nie (murmuring); one advertises oneself in words, hence niexu.

Xuyi

Yi is to carry out, to act; xu is to wait. One can wait until conditions are ripe before acting—hence xuyi.

Yujie

Yujie is sighing, a long breath of feeling— the ease of having something of one’s own inwardly, not of demanding it from outside.

Overall drift (the preceding lines)

These lines all say: on the surface, reading and writing, piling up names and categories, looks marvelous; traced to the root, it still returns to zaowu (the Maker, nature, Heaven-and-Earth)—not something human names and labels can finally pin down.

Dafang, Canliao, Yishi

• Dafang: in commentarial tradition, often the “root” before qi divides, before qi has split.
• Canliao: before there is name— a stratum prior to the named.
• Yishi: pushed still further back, even “beginning” cannot be stated firmly—“yishi,” a beginning that is doubtful, a start one must not treat as solid fact.

Above that is wushi zhi shi (beginning of no-beginning)—matching the layered openings often found in the Zhuangzi:

“there is a beginning,” “there was not yet a beginning when there was a beginning,” “there was not yet a ‘there was not yet a beginning when there was a beginning’”— nest inside nest. The point is: time and “beginning” themselves cannot be taken as the final reality.

Closing note

This passage means roughly: Dao can be discussed and studied through writing and names, but in root it is still what xingtian (Heaven-given nature) already has—it is not something books add on. If reading only adds names without turning inward, one has gone off course; when name-and-form learning is pushed to the end, one must still return to the nameless Maker and the original xingtian.

Zisi, Ziyu, Zili, and Zilai—the four of them—got together and said: Who can take “non-being” (wu: emptiness, the primordial source) as his head, “life” as his backbone, and “death” as his tailbone; who can understand that death, life, survival, and extinction are ultimately one thing—him I will befriend. The four looked at one another and laughed, their hearts fully in accord, and so they became friends.

Before long Ziyu fell ill, and Zisi went to see him. Ziyu said: The Maker of things is really going to leave me in this twisted, cramped shape—back bent, hair loose, spine like five knotted vertebrae stacked on my back, chin tucked into my navel, shoulders higher than the crown of my head, and on my neck a lump like a goiter thrusting upward toward heaven. Yin and Yang are out of balance, yet in his heart he was at ease, as if nothing were wrong. He stood on tiptoe to look at himself in the well and said again: Alas, the Maker of things is going to leave me in this cramped shape again!

Zisi asked: Do you resent it? He said: No—what is there to resent? Suppose my left arm were slowly turned into a rooster—I would use it to crow at dawn; suppose my right arm were slowly turned into a sling—I would use it to shoot owls and roast them to eat; suppose my buttocks were slowly turned into wheels and my spirit into a horse—I would ride them wherever I went. What need would I have for any other charioteer?

Again: to gain a form is a matter of timing; to lose a former form is to follow the flow. At ease with timing and at home in what comes, sorrow and joy cannot enter the heart. This is what the ancients called xianjie (“suspension released”—as when something hung up suddenly drops free: release from fixed attachment). Those who cannot release themselves are bound by outer things. Besides, human beings have never been able to outdo Heaven for long—so what is there for me to resent?

In Zhuangzi Kouyi (Plain Exposition on the Zhuangzi)

Head, spine, and rump (shou, ji, kao) refer to a thing having a beginning, middle, and end—the idea of start and finish.

“Nothing” (wu) means there was nothing first, and only then something came to be; once there is being (you), life and death follow.

“Nothing contrary in the heart” (mo ni yu xin) means each person has inwardly understood for themselves; minds meet and mutually affirm one another.

“How vast is the work of creation!” (wei zai zao wu) praises the greatness of zaohua—nature’s fashioning of the myriad things.

“Juju” depicts the look of serious illness.

“Qu lou” is a bent body; “fa bei” is sores on the back; “wu guan” are the several places where the sores break out; “yi xia er yin yu qi” is the chin hanging down near the navel; “jian song er gao yu ding” is shoulders hunched higher than the crown—all describe a twisted, deformed sick body.

“Ju zhui” is like an excrescence; “zhi tian” is the crown bare to the sky; “lu ding” means the same. When yin and yang in the body are not in harmony, illness arises—hence “there is li” (pestilence, morbid qi).

Yet his mind is at ease and does not treat the illness as a burden; he does not grieve because of it.

“Pian pi” is the look of being supported and dragged along as one walks. Facing the well, he sees his own form and sighs: “What made me into this juju, crippled shape is zaohua. Do you hate being like this?” This is Zi Shi half in jest questioning Zi Yu.

“Suppose” (jiashe) is if; “jin” means gradually. Here the character for “if/suppose” is used most subtly—“jin jia” alone is striking: if zaohua gradually turned my body into something else, I would go along and use it that way too. That is following zaohua without likes or dislikes. Though it is a parable, it has a point: when the time is right, take; when the time passes, yield—the same as “When it came, Master, that was the season; when it goes, Master, that is compliance”—still the lesson of life and death.

“Xuan jie” means nothing in the mind is tied or hung up; if one is bound by outer things, one cannot release oneself—hence “cannot release oneself.” “Things have knots that bind”—the ten thousand things all have attachments; “how can the ten thousand things overcome Heaven (tian)?”—all speak of resting in the natural. Heaven as the natural is the Great Ancestor as Master (Da Zongshi)—the Zhuangzi ideal of “taking Heaven as one’s ancestor.”

Commentator Yuexuan once said: In the thirty-two chapters of the Zhuangzi, the core is the two words “ziran” (naturalness/spontaneity).

Before long, Zilai fell gravely ill. His breathing was labored, and death seemed imminent. His wife and children gathered around him, weeping. Zili, a friend of Zilai, came to visit. He said to the family, “Hush—step back. Do not obstruct hua (natural transformation).” Leaning against the door, he spoke with Zilai: “How vast is zaohua (the creative power of nature)! Where will it send you next? What will it turn you into—a rat’s liver, or an insect’s arm?”

Zilai replied, “Between parents and children, east, west, south, or north, the child can only obey. Yin-Yang (the breath of heaven and earth) holds us even closer than parents. If it bids me approach death and I refuse, I resist it—what fault would it have? How vast is zaohua! Where will it send you? What will it make of you—a rat’s liver, or an insect’s arm?”

(The passage repeats similar lines here—common in oral transmission—meaning the same: one must follow the command of Yin-Yang.)

Zilai added, “Parents and children: in every direction, only obedience. Yin-Yang and the person are even nearer. If it wants my death and I do not listen, that is resistance—what crime has Yin-Yang committed?”

The Great Clod (dakuai—heaven, earth, and the power of creation) gives me form, wears me out with life, rests me in old age, and settles me in death. So what is good at arranging my living is also good at arranging my dying. When a master smith is casting metal, if the metal leaps up and cries, “I must become a blade like Moye or Ganjiang!” the smith will surely take it for ill-omened metal. Once we have human form, we cry all day, “A person! A person!” Zaohua will surely take that for an ill-omened human. Now that heaven and earth are the great furnace and zaohua the great smith, what place would not receive us?”

When he had finished, Zilai fell peacefully asleep, as in a dream; then he stirred and woke, as one waking from a dream.

Brief context: This passage comes from “The Great Master of Dao” (Da Zongshi) in the Zhuangzi. It presents a view of life and death: the body may become any part of the ten thousand things—a rat’s liver, an insect’s arm—so one need not cling to the shape called “human.” Birth and death are both assignments of zaohua; one should be like metal that yields to the furnace and the sword that yields to the smith. Zili, Zilai, Ziyu, and Zisang are four friends in the Zhuangzi who often discuss the Dao through illness and death, teaching wu dang hua—not standing in the way of natural change.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi

Zengzi Changes His Mat

When Zengzi on his deathbed had his mat changed, his words embodied the cultivation of a Confucian sage. Zhuangzi uses such discussions and also writes of heroes shouting to stop others and telling wives and children to keep far away. Dan means alarm and fear: when a person is about to dissolve, there is no need for wailing and panic.

Rat Liver, Insect Arm, and Zhaozhou

“Rat liver” and “insect arm” stand for things utterly tiny; they also echo Master Zhaozhou’s saying that after the fire burns out, only a single stalk of reed remains. Zhuangzi’s prose is uncanny: one should simply follow fate; to force against it is perversity—the same point as “borrowing things cannot overcome Heaven” earlier.

The Casting-Metal Analogy

The casting-metal analogy is equally brilliant. Jia Yi’s “Yin and Yang as charcoal, the ten thousand things as copper” both draw “metal” from this line of thought. If we say the Creator treats people this way, ordinary people find it strange; yet the Creator looking at people is like a master smelter looking at copper and iron in the furnace. Analogies like this—who besides Zhuangzi could write them?

Cheng, Qu, and True vs. False

Cheng is the look of settling peacefully to sleep; qu is the look of suddenly waking. Treating life as sleep and death as waking—the six characters that close below are exactly the marvel of the preceding passage on “false” and “true.”

Zisang Hu, Mengzi Fan, and Ziqin Zhang

Zisang Hu, Mengzi Fan, and Ziqin Zhang became friends and said: Who can befriend “nothing” and keep company in “nothing”? Who can climb heaven, wander in mist, stir the boundless, and forget each other in life and death without end? The three looked at one another and smiled, their hearts in accord, and so became friends.

Before long Zisang Hu died, and the body had not yet been laid in the coffin. Confucius heard of it and sent Zigong to help with the funeral. There the two men either composed tunes or played zithers, singing in harmony:

“Ah, Sang Hu! Ah, Sang Hu!

You have returned to the genuine realm; we still remain among humans as ‘people’!”

Zigong stepped forward and asked: “Is it proper by ritual to sing facing the corpse?”

The two looked at each other and smiled: “How would you understand the true meaning of ritual!”

Plain-language reading

“Mutually associating as if not associating, mutually associating with no private mind”: People relate to one another yet as if they were not deliberately relating; they are together yet as if each were not nursing a separate agenda.

“Mutually acting for one another as if not deliberately acting, acting through wuwei (non-action)”: They help one another yet as if they were not deliberately helping; they do things in a wuwei way.

“Leaping and frolicking”: Describes a state of joyful jumping and play, free of constraint.

“Without limit and without end”: No boundary, no stopping point.

“Ascending heaven, roaming in mist, wandering outside things”: Rising into the heights, drifting in fog, moving beyond concrete things.

“Forgetting one another while alive, with nothing that truly ends”: While living they forget one another (or forget petty scores between them), and so there is no real finality.

This is what “not forgetting where it began, not seeking where it ends” means: not clinging to a starting point, not chasing an endpoint. The earlier phrasing stresses “not forgetting”; here the stress is “mutual forgetting”—if you read it through “mutual forgetting,” those eight characters can be folded into five: “not seeking where it ends”—there is no need to pursue a final outcome.

“Mo ran”: Empty, indifferent, as if nothing were there.

“You jian,” “you qing”: A moment, a brief while.

“Going ahead to wait and still assisting in the affair”: Going to wait and handle business is still a kind of assisting and coordinating (the exact sense follows the surrounding passage).

“Yuan Rang preparing coffin timber”: From the Book of Rites—Yuan Rang (a personal name) was preparing wood for his own coffin.

“Composing tunes,” “weaving bamboo screens”: Setting melodies to music; weaving bamboo screens (or similar woven goods).

“Sometimes composing tunes, sometimes playing the zither”: Sometimes making music, sometimes playing the qin—this refers to what the Mencius says about Yuan Rang, Fanzi, and Qin Zhang.

“Yi”: A particle in the line, with no substantive meaning.

“Jie lai”: An exclamation or call the singer uses when opening a song.

“Returning to the genuine”: Returning to what is originally so, to the beginning—recovering the initial state.

“I am still being human, yi”—the style that follows, where one suddenly hears heaven’s bells and drums and “another day is added to floating life,” is the author’s elaboration through song lyrics; “or playing the zither, referring to Mencius on Fanzi and Qin Zhang” matches the earlier “sometimes composing tunes, sometimes playing the zither”: sometimes playing the qin means the episode in Mencius involving Yuan Rang, Fanzi, and Qin Zhang.

Sentences of this sort are where this piece is most startling and unconstrained.

“The meaning of ritual”: The essential point of li (ritual), its root.

Zhuangzi often uses parables, but the Book of Rites preserves Yuan Rang’s Li Shou song, which shows that from ancient times there has been this kind of learning that leaves the world and cuts off the vulgar. People today say Buddhism only entered China under Emperor Ming of Han, without noticing that people of this sort did not wait for Buddhism to arrive.

The passage above is mostly Zhuangzi and ritual lore rather than neidan vocabulary; wuwei, returning to the genuine, and transcending the world still sit squarely in Daoist discourse.

Zi Gong went back and told Confucius what he had seen. He said, “What kind of people were they? In their practice they seemed to care about nothing and treated the body as utterly light. They sang facing the corpse without their faces changing at all—I do not even know what to call them.”

Confius said, “They are people who wander in the realm ‘outside the square’; I, Kong Qiu, am one who wanders ‘within the square.’ Outside and inside do not naturally meet—yet I sent you to offer condolences. That was my own shallow-mindedness. They keep company with the Maker of things and roam together in the single qi of Heaven and Earth. They regard birth as an extra growth on the body, like a wen, and death as when a boil breaks and the pus runs out. People like that—why would they care which comes first, life or death, or where each dwells? They borrow different bodily forms while resting in one and the same root, forgetting liver and gall, discarding ears and eyes. They turn back and forth between end and beginning without finding a thread to follow, wandering blankly beyond the dust of the world, at ease in the midst of Wuwei (non-action). How could they fuss with worldly rites to put on a show and please the crowd?”

Cultivation cannot rest on words alone, nor on outward virtue alone; if you force it into fixed labels and titles, it is like insisting that only a certain name counts as real. Fangnei and fangwai (“within the square” and “outside the square”) roughly correspond to what later Buddhist discourse calls worldly dharma and transcendent dharma: the two orientations were never the same. If you are sent to offer condolences and perform customary rites, on our side that is already a loss—hence the saying that inner and outer do not reach each other; if you are still made to go and mourn, the way it is done is low (crude and unbecoming).

“Yu zaowu zhe wei ren” (“to be human together with the Maker of things”) means taking yourself as a companion of creation, roaming in one breath with Heaven and Earth, wandering at the beginning of creation. “Fu zhui xuan you” (like an extra lump or hanging wart on the body) compares the human form to surplus growth on the cosmos—something that must be cut away and dispersed before one feels release; that is the meaning of “lao wo yi sheng, xi wo yi si” (“He toils me with life and rests me with death”). “Jia yu yi wu” (“lending oneself to another kind of thing”) connects to the Yuanjue sutra’s account of earth, water, fire, and wind—the Four Great Elements—combining into a body; hence “tuo yu tong ti” (“entrusted to one shared body”). When liver, gall, ears, and eyes each do not know themselves, that is wang shen (“forgetting the body”). “Fan fu zhong shi, bu zhi duan ni” means trying to exhaust beginning and end yet never seeing the true starting point; panghuang is drifting without anchor, mangran is dazed—seeing and knowing nothing. “Chen gou zhi wai” is fang zhi wai (“outside the square”); wuwei zhi ye is ziran (spontaneous nature). Guiguiran is the look of self-darkening—performing ritual to please worldly ears and eyes is only tormenting and benighting oneself; this is also what Laozi meant on the side of “li yi qiang shi” (ritual used to coerce the age). “Guan zhe shi ye” (“the onlooker is the one shown”); “yin guan” (the note reads like guan).

Zi Gong asked: Then which side does the Master follow? Confucius said: Qiu is a subject marked out by Heaven (a ordinary person bound by Heaven’s mandate). Even so, I share the path with you. Zi Gong asked: May I ask what a jiren (“anomalous person”) is? Confucius said: A jiren is “ji yu ren er mou yu tian”—anomalous in human affairs, yet aligned with Heaven. Hence the saying: “Tian zhi xiao ren, ren zhi junzi; ren zhi junzi, tian zhi xiao ren” (what Heaven treats as petty, people treat as noble; what people treat as noble, Heaven treats as petty).

Zi Gong asked: How do fish live at ease in water, and how do people rely on the Dao? Confucius said: Fish “xiang zao hu shui” (meet and sustain each other in water); people “xiang zao hu dao” (meet and sustain each other in the Dao). For those who meet in water, digging a pool to nurture them suffices; for those who meet in the Dao, “wu shi er sheng ding” (without busyness, stillness arises). Hence: fish “xiang wang hu jiang hu” (forget each other in rivers and lakes); people “xiang wang hu daoshu” (forget each other in the arts of the Dao).

Zi Gong asked again: May I ask about the jiren? Confucius answered: A jiren is “ji yu ren er mou yu tian”; hence “tian zhi xiao ren, ren zhi junzi; ren zhi junzi, tian zhi xiao ren.”

On “depending on which direction”: Someone asked whether what Confucius relied on was fangwai (outside the conventional world) or fangnei (within it). The “tianxing (Heaven’s punishment)” mentioned earlier means, in this context: I can never truly become a fangwai person after all. I am here with you because I want to talk with you about the joy of fangwai. Asking “which direction” means asking what principle lies within that.

Fish and water: It is like the saying “better to forget each other in the rivers and lakes than to moisten each other with spit when stranded”—fish meet in water and nourish one another; people dig pools to raise fish and think they have supplied enough. In fact, after attaining the Dao, one simply lives according to one’s own allotment; with nothing to do, the heart is naturally at ease—wuwei (non-action) in stillness.

The jiren (eccentric person): “Ji” means solitary or unusual—someone who differs from ordinary people. Mou means to align or match. The jiren does not align with the crowd but aligns with Heaven. If Heaven treats someone as a junzi (exemplary person), people may treat him as a xiao ren (petty person); if people treat someone as a junzi, Heaven may treat him as a xiao ren. The “junzi” in Zhuangzi’s sense carries mockery and a slighting of the sages—ritual, music, and law are not natural as they are; only by smashing measures and scales and stopping the people from competing does one count as the “junzi of Heaven” in his eyes. This is also venting against the age and rejecting the orthodox, which is why such lofty, one-sided talk appears.

Yan Yuan asked Zhongni (Confucius): Meng Sun Cai’s mother died. When he wept he shed no tears; inwardly he was not grief-stricken, and in mourning he did not show deep sorrow. None of these three was present, yet in Lu he was famous for “being good at mourning.” Can Lu really have people whose name and reality do not match, who only hold an empty good reputation? I have always found this strange.

Zhongni said: Meng Sun Shi has already reached the utmost—he has gone further than ordinary “knowing.” It is only that he simplified mourning rites; he is not truly without feeling—inwardly he still clings to that simplification. Meng Sun Shi does not know why people are born or why they die; he does not rush ahead of things nor lag behind, as if following the changes of the ten thousand things and waiting for changes he does not yet know. About to change—how can one know it will not change? About to stay the same—how can one know it has already changed? You and I are probably still in a dream and have not yet awakened, are we not?

Background: The line about “covering Lu” means Lu raised the reputation for “skill in managing funerals” to the highest in the realm. “Yi” here is the same as chang (often)—Yan Hui often spoke of and was often puzzled by this. “Jin yu zhi” means he had advanced beyond ordinary knowledge. The closing “shi jue zhe ye” echoes the earlier “the dream has not yet awakened”—is there anyone who has already awakened?

Lu was renowned throughout the realm for its skill in conducting funerals and for making mourning rites thorough and complete. “Yi” here means “constant” or “habitual”: some people constantly found this practice strange. “Yan guai ya zhi jiu yi le” means that sense of strangeness and surprise had lasted a long time. “Jin yu zhi zhe” refers to someone who step by step went deeper until he understood the Great Dao. “Jian zhi er bu de” means that according to the rules of mourning, things like weeping—he actually wanted to keep them as simple as possible and omit what could be omitted, but he could not: not because he did not want simplicity, but because human feeling and circumstances would not let him cast mourning aside entirely.

Though he wanted to simplify, what he actually did was already quite simple, which is why the text says “fu yi you suo jian yi le.” He also did not grasp why people are born or why they die—meaning he went round and round without finding a clear thread. “Jiu xian ji shi ye, jiu hou ji zhong ye”: following transformation, one becomes the myriad things; hence “ruo hua wei wu, yi dai qi suo bu zhi zhi hua”—entrusting oneself to transformation one does not yet know. “Yi hu” is an exclamatory particle. Once one entrusts oneself to nature, how can one fix labels such as “about to transform,” “already transformed,” or “not yet transformed”? Much of this is Zhuangzi’s expansive, rhetorical style. If the other person already knows and can follow nature, and I am still puzzled, then “my dream has not yet ended.”

Furthermore: the other person’s form merely undergoes the changes of old and young (“hai xing”); the mind is not harmed. There is “dan zhai” (a temporary dwelling) but no “qing si” (treating death as a death grounded in real emotional fixation). Master Mengsun simply realized that when others wept, he wept too—this is “zi qi suo yi nai”: acting from what is thus for oneself in that moment.

“Hai xing” means the startling changes of the bodily form through age; though the body may startle one, the mind stays at ease, hence “wu sun xin.” “Zhai” is dwelling; “dan” is temporary, as in a single day. Birth and death are like the alternation of dawn and night. Knowing that what one dwells in is only temporary, even death is not a “real” death in the emotional sense—hence “wu qing si”: not treating death as something substantively “there” in one’s feelings. “Te jue ren ku yi ku” is weeping because others weep. That is precisely where he wanted to simplify but could not—again “zi qi suo yi nai”: at that time he could only be thus.

“This six-character phrase is most marvelous” points to the wonder of his self-attained state: he wanted to simplify but could not, yet he wept with the crowd. This line is hardest to interpret; many editions read the “nai” of the previous line together with the “qie” of the next, which can work, but forcing the two characters together feels strained and awkward.

“Qie ye xiang yu wu zhi er yi”: moreover, we are all merely saying “I” to each other. “Yong ju zhi wu suo wei wu zhi hu”: how could we know what we mean when we say “I”?

The particle qie (“for the time being / moreover”) simply adds an extra ye after qie; that pattern already appears several times in the preceding chapter. Wu means “I” or “me.” Here two people face each other: once you have already used “me” to fault the other party, how can you know what the “me” you invoke really is? So phrases like qie ye, xiang yu (“facing each other”), and wu zhi (“my …”) are all toying with the word for “I.” As for yong ju zhi wu suo wei wu zhi hu (“how could one know what I mean by what I call ‘my …’?”), Zhuangzi often writes in this vein, letting the prose sway and bend; without a second kind of eye for it, the passage is genuinely hard to read.

If you dream you are a bird, you soar; if you dream you are a fish, you plunge into the deep—you cannot tell whether the person speaking now is really saying “I” (wu) at all. Again, this is typical Zhuangzi: the language ripples; without that extra insight, it does not yield easily.

If you dream you are a bird, you fly up; if you dream you are a fish, you sink down—who knows whether the one talking now is awake or still inside a dream? That picks up the earlier “butterfly transformation” motif: was it Zhuang Zhou who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it was Zhuang Zhou? When the heart finds what suits it, sometimes there is not even time to laugh yet; when delight peaks, laughter cannot be “scheduled” first—laughter follows things; things naturally “offer” laughter to you, and such laughter arises on its own, so there is no need to lay it out in advance. Hence Du Fu’s line about wiping tears only after the shock has settled, and Master Yuexuan’s remark that by the time he could weep, the shock had already settled—both concern jing, shock or startlement. Zao shi (“arriving at what suits”) speaks of xi, joy. Shock and joy differ, yet the idea of “not yet in time” is the same. Pai means to arrange or fix in order.

When laughter comes from outer things, the thing “offers” laughter to you; the laugh arrives of itself, so one need not arrange it beforehand—hence “offering laughter does not wait on arrangement” (xian xiao bu ji pai). The word pai in the next line is the same graph, but the rhetorical turn is different; you must not read the two pai’s as one continuous gloss.

Among the workings of the Creator, every affair is already set: birth and death, poverty and success, gain and loss, fortune and disaster are all allotted. Only by resting in what has been allotted and going wherever transformation leads can one enter the subtle realm of creation. Liao tian yi—“vast oneness with Heaven”—names that creative process; “the One of Heaven” is the same “One” as in “what you like is one, what you dislike is one,” here turned into a proper name—another flourish in Zhuangzi’s brushwork.

Yierzi went to visit Xu You. Xu You asked, "What did Yao use to instruct you?" Yierzi replied, "Yao told me that I must personally practice benevolence and righteousness, and also make clear distinctions between right and wrong."

Xu You said, "Then why have you come here at all? Yao has already branded your face with 'benevolence and righteousness' and cut off your nose with 'right and wrong.' How can you still roam freely in that vast, unfettered, and spontaneously flowing realm?" Yierzi said, "Even so, I still wish to at least wander to the edge of that realm."

Xu You said, "No, you cannot. A blind person cannot appreciate the beauty of facial features, and a deaf person cannot appreciate the patterns of colors and fine garments." Yierzi said, "Wuzhuang lost her beauty, Jubliang lost his strength, and the Yellow Emperor lost his wisdom—all of these were reshaped in the craftsman's furnace and anvil. How do we know that the Creator is not deliberately leaving my brand unpurged and my nose uncut, so that I may follow my innate nature and roam together with you, Master?"

Xu You said, "Alas, this is still uncertain. Let me first give you a general outline. My teacher, my teacher—he transforms and nourishes the ten thousand things yet does not claim to be 'righteous'; his grace extends through ten thousand generations yet he does not claim to be 'benevolent'; he predates antiquity yet does not claim to be 'old'; he covers heaven and supports earth, carving and shaping the myriad forms, yet does not claim to be 'skillful.' It is this realm that one should truly roam within."

Zi ru means jiao ru—to teach you through nurturing and support. Phrases such as “clear speech,” “right and wrong,” and “distinguishing right from wrong” are zhuyu (supplementary or modal function words); zhi is also such a particle. Xi lai and wei he bi lai ask: why must one come at all?

Qing and yi (the ancient punishments of facial branding and nose-cutting) are linked to wu ru—“to defile you”—as if to say you have been soiled and misled by others’ teaching.

Yaodang, zisui, and zhuanxi belong with lines like “flicking at the boundless” and “wandering beyond the dust and grime”: yaodang is roaming far and freely, zisui is reckless abandon, and zhuanxi is shifting and never settling.

Fan means a fanli (outer fence or threshold). The sense is: I do not dare ask for the inner meaning (tangao), but only hope to reach the fence—that is, to hear the lüe (rough outline). What follows compares mang (the blind) and gu (the eyeless) to say your endowment is not enough to hear the Way.

Wuzhuang was a figure famed in antiquity for mei (beauty); Julü was famed for yong (courage). The point is: if you could transform me through the Dao, so that the beautiful no longer know they are beautiful, the brave no longer know they are brave, and the knowing no longer know they know—shedding old habits and awakening on your own—it would all hinge on your zhuanyi (turning and shifting). Hence jie zai luchui, cheng xing (all within the forge and hammer, going along the path), cheng ziran zhi li (becoming the principle of the natural). Cast off my former habits, xing hu ziran in serving the master; thus xi wo qing, bu wo yi—rest my branding, mend my mutilation—so that I may cheng cheng (follow what is already formed) and go with the master. Yi is a sigh. Wei ke zhi means we still cannot see whether you will truly do this.

The lines beginning wu shi hu are where the title Da Zong Shi (Great and Venerable Teacher) is finally spelled out.

“Milun wanwu er bu ke ming yi yi, ze ji wanshi er bu ke ming yi ren”— broadly, this is wuwei er wei (acting without forcing) and ziran er ran (so of itself); I have wu rong xin (no mind that clings to fixed labels), so these names cannot be applied. The Yijing says “it drums on the ten thousand things yet does not share the sage’s worries”—the same idea.

Chang yu shanggu means prior to Heaven and Earth; unchanged through endless ages—how could one name that old or young?

Shang: what Heaven covers—the sun, moon, and stars; xia: what Earth bears—mountains, rivers, and hills—how much qiao (artifice and clever contrivance). Consider Heaven’s leftward rotation: the fixed stars cling to the sky and seem still, while sun, moon, and the five planets turn to the right, now slow, now fast, now drifting, now hiding. Rivers, cliffs, water, and stone—how many marvels—all zaowu (the work of natural creation). Among the myriad forms, like a hundred flowers and groves of trees, how much strangeness—what else could it be but qiao? Yet one must not simply call it “craft.”

These sentences throughout are painting ziran zhi Dao (the Way of nature). When the heart roams in the natural, one sees tiandi yu wo bing sheng, wanwu yu wo wei yi (Heaven and Earth are born with me; the ten thousand things and I are one)—hence ci suo you: what I roam in is just this.

Yan Hui said, “I have made progress.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I no longer keep benevolence and righteousness in mind.” Confucius said, “That is good, but not enough yet.”

When they met again another day, Yan Hui said, “I have made progress again.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I no longer keep rites and music in mind.” Confucius said, “That is good, but not enough yet.”

When they met once more, Yan Hui said, “I have made progress again.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I have achieved zuo wang (sitting in forgetfulness).” Confucius was startled and asked, “What is zuo wang?”

Yan Hui said: Let go of attachment to the limbs and the physical form; set aside cleverness and the artifice of discriminating intellect. Leave behind the bondage of the body and drop artificial knowledge—become one with the “Great Pervasion” (the Dao in its totality and unobstructed flow). That is what is called zuo wang.

Confucius said: When one is united with the Dao, there are no partial preferences; when one follows transformation, one is not bound to fixed forms. You are truly accomplished. I, Kong Qiu, would be glad to study at your side.

This passage explains how Zhuangzi uses Yan Hui’s voice to present the meaning of “sitting in forgetfulness” (zuowang), and compares it with Confucian stages of cultivation and Chan-style practice.

Zhuangzi uses Yan Hui’s name to unfold the subtlety of cultivating the Way; in the eyes of people at the time, Yan Hui was already regarded as the “secondary sage” second only to Confucius. Yet the whole account of “sitting in forgetfulness” is Zhuangzi’s own teaching—if you match it to the historical Yan Hui, you will go wrong. The word “benefit” (yi) in the text means “to gain something, to make progress.”

First one speaks of benevolence and righteousness, then of ritual and music—as if ritual and music were higher than benevolence and righteousness; that is one layer of meaning. In Zhuangzi’s writing, however, “benevolence and righteousness” often carry attachment, love and hate, and partiality; the sense of the words is not the same as when the sages use them. The order of practice is: first forget benevolence and righteousness, then go further and forget ritual and music—like the idea of “leaving the world outside and then [dealing with] the ten thousand things”: stripping away outer name and norm, layer by layer. When you reach “sitting in forgetfulness,” you let go of these too and enter a stage where neither being nor non-being is clung to; this is the same direction as “today I have lost myself”—the four limbs and the ears and eyes are no longer pulled by the “self,” hence “sloughing off the limbs, dismissing cleverness, departing from form”: dropping fixation on the body and reliance on cleverness. “Great penetration” (datong) is the Great Dao (the Way); the sages “penetrate everything” without obstruction—in the Book of Documents, “ perspicacity makes the sage,” and “perspicacity” (rui) is just this thorough penetration. Taken by itself, the two words “sitting in forgetfulness” belong to the same kind of work as the Chan “wall-gazing” gong’an.

“Being one with the Dao” means there is no longer like and dislike; without like and dislike, one enters the realm of transformation; in that realm nothing is fixed to dwell in, yet the mind can arise naturally—hence “sameness then no preference, transformation then no fixed rule.” The line “please go ahead and I will follow behind” has Zhuangzi tell Yan Hui to “walk in front of me”: you are more advanced than I; I fall behind—in this context “worthy” (xian) means surpassing ordinary people, not competing in the world. After forgetting like and dislike and merging with transformation, whoever is closer to the Dao will appear the more “worthy” in the eyes of those who are “behind.”

Ziyu and Zisang (Passage Related to the Great Master)

Ziyu and Zisang were friends. After ten days of rain, Ziyu thought Zisang had probably fallen ill and wrapped some food to bring him. At Zisang’s door he heard something like singing and weeping at once, with a zither playing; the gist of the lyrics was: Is it Father? Is it Mother? Is it Heaven? Is it Man? (Who brought me to this state?) The voice could not hold up, and the lines were rushed and broken.

Ziyu went in and asked: Why do you sing your poem like this? Zisang said: I am trying to trace who drove me into this extreme, and I cannot trace it. Would parents wish me poor? Heaven covers all without partiality; earth bears all without partiality—would Heaven and Earth alone make me poor? I look for someone who deliberately harmed me and find no one—yet having reached this extreme, it can only be called ming (fate/destiny).

The commentator on the Zhuangzi says: This passage is devoted to whether poverty or success follows ming; the wording is extraordinarily striking. Lest readers think Zisang was ill from hunger, the text first says he is “probably ill.” In antiquity playing the zither always went with song, as when Shun played the five-string zither and sang “Southern Winds.” “Like singing and like weeping” means the voice is weak and faint; “the voice cannot bear itself” means no strength left to sing; “hurrying through the verses” means urgency, cramped words—the tune will not hold and lines will not connect, hence “hurrying.” “Would parents wish me poor? Would Heaven and Earth wish me poor?”—these lines are the finest: since it is not Heaven, not Earth, not father, not mother, who did it? So what drives one “to this extreme” is ming. Here ming means the principle of nature—nothing to force, nothing to brood over; it stands above Heaven and Earth; ming is also li (principle)—exactly what The Great Master teaches. In learning the Dao one needs a teacher and must still obey; if one recognizes the Great Master, one should all the more follow only ming (the principle of nature). Read this chapter of Zhuangzi and it stands a cut above the Liezi chapter “Effort and Ming.”

Inner Chapter: “Fit for Emperors and Kings” (Ying Diwang), Seventh

This chapter explains how the way of emperors and kings ought to be, so that it responds (ying) appropriately to the Way.

Scripture

Nieque went to Wang Ni for instruction and asked four questions in succession; four times Wang Ni answered, “I do not know.” Nieque then leaped for joy and told Pu Yizi what had happened. Pu Yizi said, “Do you only now understand?”

(The text continues:) Youyu cannot match Tais. Youyu still kept “benevolence” hidden in his heart and used it to win people over; he could gain their hearts, yet in the end he had not gone beyond “not-human”—that is, he had not truly united with Heaven. Tais slept at ease and woke unhurried and at peace. Sometimes he took himself for a horse, sometimes for an ox, and let others say what they would; what he held to was always the real situation—his disposition was solid, his virtue utterly genuine—yet it is also said he “had never entered not-human”: again speaking from within the realm of “not-human” (Heaven), only the wording first says “going out” and later “entering.”

Oral Commentary

Four questions and four replies of “I do not know”—this is in the same spirit as entering the gate of non-duality through silence in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. Pu yi is sometimes written bei yi. Names in Zhuangzi are mostly invented, like “Wuyou” or “Wangshigong”—there is no need to hunt for historical identities.

Nieque grasped the point of “not speaking,” so he rejoiced and went to tell Pu Yi. When Pu Yi says, “And only now do you know?” he means: you have only today come to understand?

Tais is an ancient sovereign, a sage king of the type of Datin in legend. Cang is to hold in the breast; yao is to bind and win over—to use benevolent virtue to tie people’s hearts. One can still gain people, but only as if keeping company with Heaven; hence “had never gone out from not-human.” Here fei ren (not-human) means Heaven; “had never gone out from” means not yet having truly left that state of oneness with Heaven.

Tais “lying down, slowly and at ease” is sleeping with a settled heart; “waking, yu yu” is waking also in self-contentment. Sometimes taking himself for horse or ox, he followed whatever others said and did not argue. What he knew was all real principle; qing and xin are both genuine situation. His virtue rested in himself—all natural truth. At this point a single word “Heaven” is not enough to describe it: it is letting things be as they are, even beyond what is ordinarily called creation and transformation—so it also says “had never entered not-human.” Earlier “out,” here “in”—where Zhuangzi chooses his words, he is varying expression within the same meaning.

This chapter is titled “Responding to Emperors and Kings”; the way of emperors and kings, in the end, is to leave things to nature—that is the gist here.

Jian Wu had first met Richu Shi, and later encountered Kuang Jieyu. Jieyu asked him: “What did Richu Shi tell you?”

Jian Wu said: “He told me that one who serves as ruler ought to use the rules, laws, and standards of conduct that he himself has set to teach and transform others—then who would dare not obey or fail to be moved?”

Kuang Jieyu said: “That is self-deception; it is not true De (Virtue/Power). To govern the world by such means is like trying to cross the sea on foot, or digging a river so that mosquitoes can carry a mountain—it simply cannot be done.”

“When the sage governs the world, the emphasis is on transforming hearts from within, not on putting on an outward show; he first sets himself right, then acts in accord with the natural principle. What is called ‘being able to fulfill one’s task’ is nothing more than staying within one’s proper place and doing well what ought to be done.”

“When birds fly high, it is to escape arrows and nets; when field mice dig deep burrows beneath sacred mounds, it is to escape smoke and being dug out. If people do not understand this principle and instead try to govern the world with all sorts of visible defenses and precautions, they are deeply ignorant—they fall short even of such small creatures as birds and mice.”

Plain-Language Reading of This Passage from Zhuangzi Kouyi

Tian Gen went wandering in the wilds where yang energy was full and came to the bank of Liaoshui. The oral commentary first uses mice as a comparison: a mouse burrows into a deep hole to escape smoke and digging—methods that “leave traces and invite harm.” The point is that those who leave traces often entangle themselves. If one cannot practice the transformation of Wuwei (non-action) but instead leaves traces everywhere, that is dull ignorance; in this respect, even birds and mice, creatures that know how to hide and take cover, are cleverer than people. It also notes that Shenqiu is another name for Shengao (an old term for a high bank by the water, a place where spirits dwell).

Above Liaoshui, Tian Gen met the Nameless One and stepped forward to ask: “May I ask how to govern the world?”

The Nameless One said: “Away with you, shallow fellow—why trouble me with questions I have no wish to answer? I am about to join the Creator in nurturing the people; when I grow weary, I will again mount that vast bird without bound, fly beyond the six directions, roam in the land of non-existence, and dwell in the boundless open wild. Why must you disturb my heart with talk of ‘governing the world’?”

Tian Gen asked again. The Nameless One said: “Let your heart wander in simplicity and stillness, let your Qi (vital energy) merge with emptiness and quiet, follow things as they naturally are without private designs, and the world will settle of itself.”

Brief notes on terms:

• Tian Gen: In this Zhuangzi chapter, the seeker who questions the Nameless One about the Way.
• Nameless One: A figure who holds no title or fame and does not cling to methods of rule.
• Wuwei (non-action): Not forcing or meddling; allowing nature to take its course.
• Six extremes / land of non-existence / vast empty wild: Images for a realm beyond ordinary worldly limits.

Zhuangzi Kouyi — Vernacular Interpretation

To take “how to govern the world” as one’s question is already not the path of governing by non-action (wuwei), so it is treated as a vulgar person’s question and leaves one ill at ease—buyu means displeased or uneasy.

The idea paired with “the Creator” and “being human” is: dwell in the human world yet follow the Creator’s ziran (self-so). Yanzu and baozu mean having had enough and being full in the human realm—then one goes to wander beyond the Creator: the bird of vast emptiness, breath of nothingness, the Land of No-thing, the wild open plain—all point to the utmost void and limitlessness. He dai means “for what reason”; the commentary also glosses fa as gu, likewise “why.”

Using the problem of governing the world to stir my heart is why there is buyu; here gan carries the sense of provoke or touch. Dai, in Cui’s note, is read as “also why is that.”

Dan is plain simplicity; mo is the vast, formless place; qi here can be understood as xing (nature). When heart-nature accords with ziran, it is said to “wander the heart in plainness” and “merge qi with the vast.” Earlier it said do not listen with the mind but listen with qi—here qi is best taken as xing: follow the Creator’s ziran, the heart holds nothing, and the world settles of itself—why force “governing the world”? Once there is intention, there is private aim.

Tiangen asks again; No-name Person answers once more in real words. So-called personal names in what we see before and after are mostly empty names set up for the argument—hence later chapters speak of yuyan (allegory) and chongyan (repeated speech): naming the Yellow Emperor, Confucius, Yanzi, Jieyu the Madman, and the like is borrowing weighty names to establish one’s own point; yuyan is figures such as No-name Person, Tiangen, and Puyizi.

Yang Ziju went to see Laozi and said, “There is someone who is quick in response, strong in body, penetrating in insight, and clear in mind, and who never slackens in learning the Dao. Can a person like that be compared to an enlightened king?”

Laozi said, “In the eyes of a sage, that is merely someone who lives by changing tricks, is tied to a single skill, wears out the body, and stirs up the spirit. Moreover, the markings of tigers and leopards invite people to hunt them; the agility of apes and monkeys leads people to catch them with ropes; trained hunting dogs are led off to be put to use—can any of these be compared to an enlightened king?”

Yang Ziju pressed him uneasily: “Then how does an enlightened king govern the world?”

Laozi said, “When an enlightened king governs the world, his achievements fill the world, yet it seems they do not come from his private will. He nurtures and bestows benefit on the ten thousand things, yet the people do not feel they depend on him. He need not exalt titles and names, and lets the ten thousand things each settle in its own nature and find its own contentment. He takes his stand in what cannot be measured, and lets his heart roam in the realm of non-being.”

This passage speaks of a certain person—though no name is given, the target is clearly Confucius: quick in action, fierce in competition, fast to learn and swift to perform, penetrating in understanding things and events, with a clear and open gaze. With that kind of drive applied to learning the Way without ever letting up, can one truly stand comparison with an enlightened king (mingwang)?

Corvee laborers and convict workers (xu, xingtu) were people who served forced labor in rotating shifts (“yigeng” means changing watch); this resembles Han-dynasty talk of “shuxin” ( hauling firewood and the like). Those bound by craft (jixi) are people who live by a skill and are tied to it. These two sorts—corvee workers who wear out the body when shifts change, and artisans whose minds are unsettled because they are bound to their trade—study in ways that exhaust body and mind, much like serving corvee or being chained to a craft, with the heart still restless and afraid.

Tigers and leopards are hunted because their hides are patterned; jie refers to hunting gear, and fang to things used to bind and guard against escape. Raccoon dogs and hunting dogs are used to catch raccoons and apes; ju (a kind of ape) is prized for cleverness and fine appearance, and likewise is lured and bound—ability itself draws the very burden. The phrase “zhi li” (holding the raccoon dog) appears again in the “Heaven and Earth” (Tiandi) chapter. If one thinks that studying the Way and doing what a king should do by youwei (deliberate, contrived action), that is the same line of thought as holding up a tiger’s pelt beside an enlightened king—a rebuke pushed to an extreme.

“Merit covers the world yet seems not to belong to oneself”—merit everywhere without claiming it, in the sense of gongcheng er bu you (achieving the work without owning it). “Transforming and bestowing upon the ten thousand things while the people do not depend on you”—the realm does not know the emperor’s De (Virtue/Power), in the spirit of “what has the emperor’s power added to us?” Dai here means to grant and nurture, to transform and bestow upon the people. In exegesis, dai is often read alongside shi (to grant) for rhythm and clarity: tian shi di sheng, yun xing yu shi—heaven grants, earth generates; clouds move and rain is bestowed—the tones differ, but the sense aligns.

“Having it all, yet no name can be raised for it”—none of this can be named, and the people have nothing to praise. “Letting things delight in themselves”—though I have no fame to name, the ten thousand things find their own joy, as in Han Yu’s idea of people resting content beyond the rivers and lakes. Buce (unfathomable) is really the two words wuyou (non-being / having nothing); li hu buce (standing in the unfathomable) is you yu wuyou ( roaming in non-being). The brush opens and closes on this point, roughly along these lines.

The passages above all turn on the “responding to the king” (ying diwang) theme in the chapter title Ying Diwang (Responding to Emperors and Kings).

In the state of Zheng there lived a spirit-medium named Jixian who could foretell a person’s death or life, ruin or survival, misfortune or blessing, and length or shortness of life—even down to years, months, or days—as if he were divine. When people of Zheng saw him, they would flee. Liezi went to see him, was utterly captivated as if drunk, and on returning told his teacher Huzi: I had thought your Dao had reached its limit, but there is still something higher. Huzi said: With you I have only passed on the “wen” (outward form), not yet the “shi” (inner root); you fancy you have attained the Dao, yet it is like having only the female without the male—how can you lay an egg? Yet you take this Dao to contend with the world, insisting that people believe you—so others can read your traces and “read” you.

Liezi asked Jixian to come and let Huzi be examined. The next day Liezi brought Jixian to Huzi; when they came out, Jixian said to Liezi: Alas, your teacher is dying, he will not live—he cannot last ten days or half a month; I saw a strange sign, like wet ashes. Liezi went in and tearfully told Huzi. Huzi said: Just now what I showed him was the “diwen” (earth pattern)—stirring without trembling, upright without disorder; he probably saw my “du de ji” (sealed virtue-mechanism).

Jixian and Liezi

“Whether years, months, or days are far or near”—meaning the prediction may be distant or close. “The spirit-medium who reads faces, whose words hit the mark like a god”—Jixian divined by appearance and seemed infallible. The people of Zheng “abandoned and ran” because they feared he would be right; Liezi’s “heart drunk” was genuine submission from the heart.

“Having passed the wen, not yet the shi”

“Wen” means the outer show is already exposed; “shi” means the inner has not yet been fully transmitted. Huzi is telling Liezi: you have not truly seen “shi” yet, yet you think you have attained the Dao. “Gu” here means “still, yet”—with the sense “you still take yourself to have already obtained it”; read it in that tone.

“Only after male and female can there be eggs”—without the male, only the female, how can you lay eggs? This is a metaphor: if the mind is not yet purified, traces remain; without the “male” (the true root, no-mind), nothing genuine can be born.

“Taking the Dao to contend with the world”—feeling your Dao is above everyone else’s and demanding belief—that is having traces, not yet transformed. Hence the spirit-medium can use those traces to “read” you.

Wet ashes, diwen, du de ji

“Wet ashes”—vital breath nearly spent, like ash already damp and about to go out.

“Diwen”—here one may compare it with Chan Buddhist language about “seeing the ground” (jiandi) in stages of practice and realization.

When Jixian “saw wet ashes,” Liezi wept; Huzi said: I showed “diwen”—stirring without shaking, correct without chaos; he likely saw my “du de ji”—a state in which the mechanism of De (Virtue/Power) is closed and not displayed outward—so he mistakenly thought Huzi was about to die.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi

Wet ash: Describes vitality nearly spent—like ashes drenched with water, the fire almost gone.

Diwen (Earth Pattern): In the commentary this is treated as the name of a kind of “cultivation viewing” stage (similar to names given to phases of visualization in Chan). The sense is: as if about to sprout and come alive, yet not truly alive yet—not stirring means unmoved; not fixed means it cannot be pinned down in fixed words. Here “not fixed” follows the same line of thought as “you must apply effort, but do not fix your mind on success” in Mencius: only that state that seems to move yet does not, seems to live yet does not, so the spirit-diviner Jijiang took it for “wet ash”—wet ash means the living fire is almost out.

Dudeji (Blocked Virtue’s Pivot): Also a name for a viewing stage. Du is to shut and store; deji is the pivot where life-force and virtue stir. With the pivot held closed and unmoved, what shows is “there is life-intention, yet it also seems about to die,” so Jijiang thought Huzi was failing (not alive).

Again Jijiang came to see Huzi the next day. When he came out he told Liezi: Your master is lucky to meet me—he’s already improving; he’s fully alive—I saw Duquan. Liezi went in and told Huzi. Huzi said: What I just showed him was Tianrang—neither name nor reality clung or stayed.

Another day passed and Jijiang came again. Jijiang again said the same to Liezi: He’s convalescent, fully alive; what I saw was Duquan. Liezi reported again. Huzi said: Still Tianrang—name and reality do not enter; yet the pivot stirs from the heel—he probably saw my “good person’s pivot” side.

Duquan: Still movement within stillness. Quan is close to ji (pivot), but ji is more subtle; quan is already showing. Within “du” (closure and storage), the pivot has already appeared, so Jijiang thought he was “fully alive.”

Tianrang: Again a name for a viewing stage. Tian means the field of Heaven; rang is not ordinary earth but the soil of nature. It is like later cultivation talk that often calls the tip of the tongue “Heaven’s ford” and the crown “Mud Ball”—both metaphors for life-force budding upward. Name and reality do not enter means letting go of both sides of being and non-being; the pivot stirs from the heel means qi rising from below, extremely fine, hard for the eye to see—hence “pivot.” The good person’s pivot is the locus of movement in one’s nature and in what is so of itself.

Liezi once again brought the diviner along, and the next day led him to see Master Hu. When the diviner came out, he said to Liezi: “Your teacher’s form and spirit are still not evenly settled—I cannot read him accurately. Wait until his state is complete, then bring him for another reading.” Liezi went in and told Master Hu. Master Hu said: “What I just showed him was ‘Taichong Mosheng’ (the Great Void that nothing can master). He probably only saw my ‘balanced qi mechanism’ (heng qi ji). ‘Taichong Mosheng’ is also the name of a way of showing oneself: ‘Taichong’ means the surge of the great void; ‘Mosheng’ means nothing can get a fix on it or hold it; ‘heng’ means level, and also half—the moving aspect of qi mechanism stops only at the layer that is level and half-way, so it is half in motion and half at rest. The diviner said I was not ‘even’ because I was half moving and half still—still unsettled.”

“The shen pan of the newt’s bend may be called a yuan (abyss); the shen pan of still water may be called a yuan; the shen pan of flowing water may be called a yuan. The abyss has nine names; here only three are mentioned.” Newt’s bend, still water, and flowing water are all names of ways of observing; later Buddhists often spoke of “contemplation” (guan), while the ancients spoke of “yuan” (abyss). The abyss has nine names in all; here only three are given. Here “shen” should read as “pan” (following the base text): meaning the newt’s bend can credibly count as one observation, still water as one, flowing water as one. Only at this point did Master Hu make it clear: what he had used to show the diviner were all these “abysses.” I have nine abysses and had only revealed three of them—meaning my subtlety was still not fully shown. Some people exhaust all nine names of Liezi’s abysses and think Liezi surpasses Zhuangzi; that may miss the point. If the nine abysses were fully explained, they would cease to be marvelous—what could be told in full yet is left untold is precisely where Zhuangzi’s writing is strange and fine; those who study his prose closely can feel it. This chapter originally had four sections; when it reaches the item “nine names of the abyss,” it turns into the fourth section—this is the text’s way of expanding and contracting as it goes.

Liezi brought Ji Xian again; the next day he led him to see Hu Wozi. Before Hu Wozi had even settled into place, Ji Xian lost his composure and fled. Liezi could not catch up and returned to tell Hu Wozi. Hu Wozi said: “Just now I showed him what it is to not yet reveal my root—I met him with empty yielding compliance (weiyi); he could not make out what I was, so he took me for something dragged down and pulled apart (tuí mí, read from dì as tuí), and for surging, billowing motion (bō liú), and so he ran away. Realms of ‘already vanished, already lost’ cannot be put into words or seen through with the ordinary eye. ‘Not yet revealing the root’ is also a way of contemplating that nameless void: empty yet without fixed thing, compliant and yielding—seeming like nothing, yet also like something; he could not understand, hence ‘he does not know what you are.’”

(Note: here dì is read like tuí. Dì mí describes being tugged and dragged; bō liú describes vast swaying and surging. Ji Xian, looking at Hu Wozi, saw only dragging and surging and could not see within, so he lost himself and fled.)

After this Liezi felt he had not truly entered the gate. He went home and shut his door for three years: he did not go out; he tended the fire at the stove for his wife and fed the pigs as respectfully as if serving guests. In acting he seemed as if affairs were none of his business, and he did not take himself as the one who acted. He gathered in cleverness and artifice and returned to plainness; like a block of wood, he merely stood in his bodily form alone. “Fēng” (sealing) suggests boundary and limit; “fēn” (entanglement) suggests multiplicity and clutter. When the body is already like a puppet, what boundary or limit is there left to guard? Liezi remained so for life—“yī yǐ shì zhōng” means he kept to this state all his days.

In this passage Zhuangzi unpacks several layers of meaning in wuwei (non-action).

“Wuwei ming shi” (not making fame the master)—shi means the one in charge, the head of household. Not letting reputation rule you is what Zhuangzi calls shan wu jin ming: do not chase empty fame.

“Wuwei mou fu” (not making scheming the storehouse)—fu is a place where things gather. Earlier he said bu mo shi, bu mou: do not use crafty mind to calculate; once you set out to scheme, the mind clumps in one place. When planning is needed, plan—but without the inner tag “I am scheming”—hence wuwei mou fu.

“Wuwei shi ren” (not making affairs one’s assigned burden)—you cannot do nothing at all, but do not treat action as your personal load or personal credit; hence wuwei shi ren.

“Wuwei zhi zhu” (not making cleverness the master)—people inevitably use intelligence, but do not let smartness be boss; wherever the heart clings, bias appears. These four wu’s teach restraint and prohibition, the same spirit as the Analects’ wu yi, wu bi, wu gu, wu wo (the Four Don’ts)—worth pondering slowly.

“Jian” here means seeing the Dao, awakening to it. When the Dao is exhausted to the point of the boundless, the heart roams at the beginning where there is no thing—“zhen” (omen/beginning) points to a start; wu zhen is no beginning, no start. Heaven entrusts this pattern to me; I can fully receive what heaven gives without feeling I have got something—hence jin qi suo shou hu tian er wu jian de. The moment you think “I have attained,” you leave a mark. The Buddhist line that awakening in dependence on illusory marks is likewise—once you see, do not reify it as something solid.

Ending on the single word “xu” (empty) is very forceful. Xu is naturalness, not clinging to appearances.

“The perfected person’s use of mind is like a mirror”: the mirror does not favor beauty or ugliness, coming or going—it only reflects. The person looks; the mirror does not actively welcome or send away. Form comes, it shows form; thing comes, it shows thing—that is ying (responding). The mirror never keeps the image inside—that is ying er bu cang (respond without storing). The perfected person’s heart is like this: no friction with outer things, so neng sheng wu er bu shang—can overcome things without being harmed. Heaven’s Dao wins without contending—that is the sense of this sheng (overcome).

The mirror lines explain the xu above; the prose rises and falls—plain on the surface, artful underneath—typical of this kind of writing.

The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu, the emperor of the North Sea was called Hu, and the emperor of the central region was called Hundun (Hundun: a state of undifferentiated wholeness, not yet split apart—here it stands for primordial Qi (vital energy) or innate simplicity). Shu and Hu often visited Hundun, and Hundun treated them well. Shu and Hu discussed how to repay Hundun’s kindness and said: “People all have the seven apertures (the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and related openings used for seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and breathing); only Hundun lacks them—we should try opening them for him.” So they drilled one aperture each day; on the seventh day, Hundun died.

This passage is a parable, not a story meant to be taken as historical fact. It says that once people become too clever and too scheming, they can ruin the life that was originally whole and undivided. “Drilling the apertures” is the image: to be like Hundun—letting go of attachment to the body, fame, and profit, and not relying on clever tricks—is ordinary truth, yet Zhuangzi writes it as the bizarre “one hole per day.” Shu, Hu, and Hundun are all made-up names; do not force them to match real persons or places. Treating it as chronicle is like explaining dreams to someone who does not understand dreaming—the more you explain, the further you stray. Hundun here can be read as primordial Qi, undifferentiated authenticity: the human body also has seven apertures; like a newborn child, the eyes, ears, nose, and tongue are all there, yet there is no fully formed system of views and knowledge—that is intact “Hundun.” Once views and knowledge arise, joy, anger, liking, and disliking appear—that is “the apertures have been drilled open.” Mencius said that the great person “does not lose the heart of the child”; he too points to this state before the apertures are carved. Zhuangzi’s elaboration sounds uncanny, but the writing is genuinely striking.

The Zhuangzi comprises thirty-two chapters, divided into inner and outer chapters. The seven inner chapters each have three-character titles, such as “Free and Easy Wandering” (Xiaoyao You) and “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” (Qiwu Lun). From “Webbed Toes” (Pian Mu) onward belong the outer chapters; their titles are taken from the first two or three characters of each chapter, much as The Analects uses “Learning” (Xue Er) and “Governing with Virtue” (Wei Zheng) as chapter names.

Originally there was no distinction between “inner as refined and outer as rough.” Inner and outer chapters share the same way of teaching; the division was made deliberately so that later generations could draw inspiration from the work for ages to come. Some readers find the outer chapters occasionally verbose and branch off at length, and therefore assume the inner chapters are polished while the outer ones are crude—but that is not necessarily so.

Another way of reading strings the titles of the seven inner chapters in order: one must first achieve “free and easy wandering,” then one can “discuss making all things equal”; having equalized things, one needs a “nourisher of life” to cultivate oneself; once the body is well nourished, one can move through the “human world”; moving in the world, one leads others toward the Way, hence “sign of full virtue,” with inner virtue full and outward confirmation; when people learn from me, I take the Way as my teacher, hence the “great and venerable teacher”; with this Way in hand, one can be teacher to emperors and kings, hence “responding to emperors and kings.” That reading can cohere, but it strains the chapter titles; the reasoning is not deep, and it is unlike the tight sequential logic of the “Sequence of the Hexagrams” in the Yijing.

Those who truly know how to read the Zhuangzi do not hang on such labels and order, but read the main text closely: the brush moves through endless changes, and the reading itself brings a kind of delight.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi (Oral Explication of the Zhuangzi)

Main sense of the classic passage (Zhuangzi’s original text)

An extra big toe growing attached, or an extra finger branching off—is that something “added” to one’s xing (innate nature)? Yet the text says it is an excess of de (virtue/power in the sense of what is naturally allotted). Hanging warts and excrescences on the body—is that something “added” to the xing? Yet it is called an excess of xing. When benevolence and righteousness are applied in many elaborate ways, sorted into categories as if they were organs lined up in the five viscera, that is not how dao and de naturally are.

Commentary in the oral explication

Mu is the big toe; zhi is a finger; pian means joined or doubled; zhi (branch) means an extra growth on the side. What one is born with is called xing; what everyone equally receives is called de. Attached big toes and branching fingers are pathological forms—yet they too arise from the natural, and compared with de as equal endowment for all, they count as chi (superfluity). Here the use of “xing” and “de” differs slightly from how sages use those terms in the canonical teachings.

Attached warts and hanging excrescences are also illness. Pian and zhi (doubled toe, extra finger) are present from birth; warts and excrescences appear only after the body has taken shape, so the text says they come from “xing” (form) and are excessive relative to xing (nature). Duofang means many lines of doctrine; yong is outward application. “Arranged among the five viscera” means not springing from the heart-mind’s inner root—not the natural way of dao—hence “not the correct alignment of dao and de.” Gaozi held that yi (righteousness) lies outside the body; Zhuangzi goes further and treats even ren (benevolence) as external. Seeing benevolence and righteousness as skewed, and pairing that with “cleverness,” he treats both as learning that does not cultivate the inner—so one only sees busywork and many-sided schemes, like redundant attached toes and branching fingers.

Therefore: when eyesight is pushed too far, it scrambles the five colors and ornate patterns—azure, yellow, brocade and embroidery dazzle the eye—is that not Lian Zhu, the man of legend with piercing sight? When hearing is pushed too far, it scrambles the five tones and corrupts the six pitch standards—metal, stone, silk, bamboo, the yellow bell and the great bell clang—is that not Music Master Shi Kuang? When the benevolent heart is pushed too far, like a side branch, it puffs up conduct and blocks innate nature to win fame, so the world beats drums to follow rules that are not whole—is that not Zeng Shen and Shi Yu, famed for ren? When argumentative skill is pushed too far, it piles up tile fragments and knotted cords, twists phrases and alters wording, spins the mind in “hard and white” and “sameness and difference,” and talks useless talk until it rots—is that not Yang Zhu and Mo Di? So all these are ways of “many doublings and side branches,” not the most correct great dao under heaven.

This passage explains Zhuangzi’s critique of ritual and law, disputation, and the virtues of benevolence and righteousness (Ren and Yi).

In antiquity people used the five colors and the brocade patterns on ceremonial robes (fufu) to nourish and delight the eyes; Zhuangzi held that this instead disturbed the heart-mind and trapped people in outward form and color, hence his phrase “bound to brightness” (pian yu ming)—using vision on what is superfluous. The point matches Laozi’s “the five colors blind the eyes.” Li Zhu was a legendary figure of exceptionally keen sight; if one says there is no need to overuse the eyes, those who rely on sharp discernment will disagree and take Li Zhu as their model. “More than enough in hearing” (duo yu cong) works the same way for the ears.

Zhuangzi treated ritual and music as something external to what is most essential. “Zhuo” means to pull up or forcefully push; “sai” is to block like a thatch plug. Human virtue naturally arises from stillness; if one forces benevolent conduct and strenuously “lifts” virtue, it is “plucking up virtue and blocking nature” (zhuo de er sai xing)—choking off spontaneous nature. Ritual and law often demand standards ordinary people cannot reach, so the text says they make the world act as if drummed and incited by words (huanggu), driven to follow norms that are out of reach.

Stacking tile upon tile or tying knot after knot yields no real benefit in the doing itself; debaters who talk on and on in endless concatenation are likewise hollow—hence the images of “piled tiles” (lei wa) and “tied knots” (jie sheng). Rewording sentences and splitting hairs, spending the mind on sophistries such as “hard and white” and “same and different,” is wasted effort; vainly glorifying useless talk and self-admiring disputation is like “wearing out one’s steps to praise useless words” (bi kui yi yu wuyong zhi yan)—using exhausted strides to elevate nonsense. If you say this is wrong, followers of Yang Zhu and Mozi will feel it is exactly right.

“Many redundant side branches” (duo pian pang zhi) means too many offshoots, all surplus; the Way of nature was never split into so many ends—these are not “ultimate rectitude” (zhi zheng). Ultimate rectitude means the principle as it naturally is, the state of things as they originally are.

True ultimate rectitude does not lose the “dispositions of nature and life” (xingming zhi qing)—the native condition of life and inborn nature. What should stay joined is not forcibly split into “conjoined” (pian); what should branch is not forcibly trimmed into “splayed” (qi); the long need not be resented as excess, the short as lack. Thus though a duck’s leg is short, lengthening it harms the bird; though a crane’s leg is long, shortening it grieves it. Nature has its long and short parts—not something to cut or splice at will; where nothing is forcibly added or taken away, that anxious suffering does not arise. If benevolence and righteousness go against human feeling, they bring much worry—Zhuangzi is asking: how could Ren and Yi reduce people to such distress?

The same applies to promoting useless talk through weary labor: if you call that mistaken, Yangists and Mohists will insist it is correct. Too many side branches are all redundant; the Dao is originally one—these are not ultimate rectitude. Ultimate rectitude is the principle as it is: keep the dispositions of nature and life, do not split what should be whole or trim what should branch, let length and shortness suffice, like the legs of duck and crane—not to be rashly extended or cut off. That is the wholeness of nature and the lessening of worry that Zhuangzi wants to preserve.

“Utmost correctness” (zhizheng) means following what is originally so, naturally and without forcing. When a person can truly be like this, they do not lose the authenticity of life and nature (xingming benran)—what should join joins, yet without cramming things together like an extra limb forced into “conjoined” (pian) alignment; what should extend extends, yet without standing on tiptoes (qi) to look taller; what is long by nature is not treated as “too long” or “superfluous”; what is short is not felt as “too short” or “not enough.” These lines have real flavor and echo the earlier saying: nothing under heaven is greater than the tip of autumn down, yet Mount Tai can also count as small—large and small, long and short, are not settled by comparing outward things, but by whether one rests in what is inherently so.

“Qi” means forcing oneself upward, straining to stand higher. Once you qi, you no longer stick to the ground or stand steady, and the heart is ill at ease. Zhuangzi’s word choice is this fine for a reason—it is not casual.

“Long by nature, short by nature (xing chang, xing duan)” means length and shortness belong to each thing’s inborn disposition. A duck’s legs are short, a crane’s long—each keeps its nature, without cutting or lengthening to fit the names of benevolence and righteousness (renyi). The duck (fu) and crane (he) image fits best; the tone carries a “yi” sigh of regret: set renyi up as many rules and many standards, and they often fail human feeling. Hence Zhuangzi’s sigh: if renyi could also arise from the natural, they would not become so multifarious and worry-laden—“much worry (duo you)” means that when people impose renyi artificially, with rule piled on rule, they trouble the heart and burden the body instead.

On Zhuangzi’s terms, this attitude often places even Confucius and Mencius and, further back, Yao, Shun, Yu, and Tang among the objects of ironic critique—not a blanket denial of all morality, but opposition to making renyi something added on, cluttered, and unsettling; better to let renyi be like natural length and shortness, each in its place, with less human “qi” and “pian” forcing.

To continue: when the feet have fused toes or the hands have extra fingers, forcing a cut draws blood; forcing a bite-off hurts. In both cases the count is either too many (an extra digit) or too wrong to separate (two fingers grown together), yet the trouble is the same.

Those called “humane persons” (renren) often half-close their eyes and brood alone, worrying over the world’s calamities; those called “inhumane” will violate their innate disposition of life and nature to grasp wealth and rank. Seen this way, is it really in line with human nature to preach ren and yi (benevolence and righteousness) on purpose? Since the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang, Zhou), why has the world been so loud and restless?

Fused toes and extra fingers are “ailments,” yet they cannot be hacked away by force—remove them and the person only suffers more. An extra finger is “surplus in number”; fingers grown together that will not part are “shortfall in number.” “Haomu” describes half-shut eyes: wanting to close but not quite closing, lashes still bristling like wormwood—suggesting solitary worry over worldly troubles. Here the renren who fret for the world’s ills are set beside the inhumane who ruin their nature for gain: both are making misery for themselves. The text also asks: are ren and yi truly the stuff of human feeling? So ren, yi, and trustworthiness are not what people are born with.

“Xiaoxiao” means clamor and hubbub. Once that talk spread after the Three Dynasties, how noisy the world became.

Needing the carpenter’s square, ink line, compass, and L-square to trim things straight is to pare away things’ native character; needing cord, contracts, and glue and lacquer to bind things fast is to injure things’ de (virtue/power); using ritual and music to bend people and ren and yi to soothe hearts, as if to comfort the world—that is to turn away from the constant way of nature (changran zhi dao).

Nature and De (Virtue/Power): Human nature is spontaneous and natural; De is what one receives from Heaven of itself—neither is something deliberately manufactured by human effort.

If “rightness” must wait on cultivation: If one insists that only after training and artificial effort can one count as “upright,” that is already harming oneself. Hooks, cords, inked lines, glue and lacquer, and the like are all images for contrived “cultivation.”

Where ritual, righteousness, benevolence, and duty go wrong: Bending the body to fit ritual and music, softening speech to fit benevolence and duty, hoping thereby to settle the hearts of all under Heaven—all of this departs from what is naturally so, and is therefore said to have lost the “constant natural state.” Houyu (hūxú)—coaxing and indulging—is like an old woman soothing and humoring a child.

The “constant natural state” under Heaven: Heaven and Earth have their own constant way: what should bend needs no hook to pull it; what should be straight needs no cord to stretch it; what should be round needs no compass to trace it; what should be square needs no square to cut it. Joining and adhering need no glue or lacquer; binding and restraining need no ropes. Thus the myriad things of the world arise naturally, yet do not know how they arise; likewise they obtain what they should obtain, yet do not know how they obtain it. The principle is the same in ancient times and today—this layer must not be diminished or lost.

When benevolence and duty become endless “linking”: If benevolence and duty are made like glue and lacquer, like cords and ropes, tying people back and forth between moral labels, they instead bewilder the world—so what is the point?

First Section

The lines after “changran” (the constant, natural state) connect in meaning with the word “he” (harmony, fitting together): what ought not to grow in pairs yet grows in pairs is called “pianzhi” (conjoined branches); what ought not to protrude yet protrudes is called “qi” (extra growth)—the layers below follow the same pattern. Whether things are curved or straight, square or round, attached or separated, or bound by constraints, all should arise from nature (ziran) rather than from human force; only then is it right.

“You” and “you” (weeds) share the same sense: “you” is grass that grows wild and out of place. Who is it, then, that “gives rise” in “yet it is born”? And who grants the sameness among what is born? All of it is ziran (spontaneous nature)—hence the text says: one does not know from what it is born, nor from what it is obtained.

“Gu jin bu er” (past and present are not divided): “er” means split and opposition; “yi” (one) means what cannot be diminished or lost—from antiquity to the present, the principle of the root (benti) neither increases nor decreases with the times. “Lian” means continuous succession; “lian” also means sticking together. Lacquer and glue bind by themselves, like mud; cord and rope constrain by themselves, like twisted bindings (mesuo). If one turns away from original nature (xing) to manufacture “ren and yi” (benevolence and righteousness) and keeps at it without stop, one is like someone set in mud or tied with rope—how can one still roam freely in the gate of Dao and De (the Way and Virtue)? It is only something used to bewilder the world.

Zhuangzi and Mencius were contemporaries: Mencius focused on ren and yi; Zhuangzi focused on Dao and De. So the Zhuangzi often restrains talk of ren and yi and speaks instead of ziran—and there is much that is subtle and excellent in that; yet the rhetoric often goes too far. Broadly speaking, the “ren and yi” in Zhuangzi’s mouth does not carry the same meaning as in Mencius; readers should judge for themselves.

Second Section

Small delusion misleads one’s direction; great delusion injures original nature (xing)—how do we know this is so? From the age of Yu and Shun onward, people used ren and yi to stir up the world, until everyone under heaven rushed to serve ren and yi; they used right and wrong to exchange ren and yi for human nature (xing). So try to reason it through: from the Three Dynasties downward, no one under heaven failed to exchange outer things for their own nature—the petty person lets the body be ruined for profit; the scholar for reputation; the great officer for the clan; the sage for the realm. These kinds of people differ in enterprise and in fame, yet in harming nature and staking the body, they are the same. (In the original, the stretch before this repeats phrases such as “lacquer binds like mud”; the sense remains: depart from xing to pursue ren and yi, and one is like mud that sets or rope that binds—hardly able to wander in the gate of Dao and De.)

Vernacular Explanation

“Huo” means confusion or disorientation. “Fang” refers to the four directions—east, west, south, and north. A small confusion can mix up those directions; a great one can make you lose the inherent nature of heaven and earth. The line above is used as an analogy: the “zhao” (signboard) mentioned below is like what people today call a shop sign—raising the banner of “benevolence and righteousness” to stir up the world, so everyone rushes toward benevolence and righteousness and wears themselves out being driven and busy. Knowing only benevolence and righteousness while not knowing the Dao and De is trading external things for one’s own nature.

In petty people this shows as “xun li”—throwing oneself into the chase for profit; in gentlemen as “xun ming” (devotion to reputation); ministers and grand officers as “xun qi jia” (devotion to their house); the ruler as “xun tianxia” (devotion to the realm). “Xun” means to follow, to give oneself over in following—forgetting oneself to follow external things is called xun. In Zhuangzi’s sense, the realm, the state, fame, and profit are all external things. Putting “realm and state” together with “fame and profit” uses the small to outweigh the large, the low to outweigh the high—much of this book is written that way.

“Shu zi” refers to the sage, grand officer, knight, and petty person mentioned above: their undertakings and reputations differ, but in forgetting the body and harming their nature they are the same—all are mistakes of “xun wu” (devotion to things).

Zang and Gu were herding sheep together; the sheep were lost. Asked what Zang was doing, he said he was carrying arrows for protection and reading books; asked what Gu was doing, he said he was gambling with dice for fun. What they did differed, but losing the sheep was the same. Boyi died for reputation at Mount Shouyang; Robber Zhi died for profit on Mount Dongling—the manner of death differed, but harming life and injuring nature was the same. Why must we say Boyi was right and Robber Zhi wrong?

Everyone in the world is “xun”: if what one devotes oneself to is benevolence and righteousness, ordinary people call that person a gentleman; if it is goods and wealth, they call that person a petty person. What they devote themselves to differs, yet there are gentlemen and petty people. But when it comes to harming life and injuring nature, Robber Zhi and Boyi are the same—why must we split them into gentleman and petty person again?

Note: I used “xun” throughout instead of a single English gloss because the text defines it as follow/devote oneself and forget self for externals—common renderings include “dying for” or “sacrificing oneself to,” but the user forbade Chinese characters, so pinyin xun is appropriate on first use in each section... Actually first paragraph I explained xun in third paragraph. Good.

Double-check: no Chinese characters in output. Good.

Vernacular Explanation

“Huo” means confusion or disorientation. “Fang” refers to the four directions—east, west, south, and north. A small confusion can mix up those directions; a great one can make you lose the inherent nature of heaven and earth. The line above is used as an analogy: the “zhao” (signboard) mentioned below is like what people today call a shop sign—raising the banner of “benevolence and righteousness” to stir up the world, so everyone rushes toward benevolence and righteousness and wears themselves out being driven and busy. Knowing only benevolence and righteousness while not knowing the Dao and De is trading external things for one’s own nature.

In petty people this shows as xun li—throwing oneself into the chase for profit; in gentlemen as xun ming (devotion to reputation); ministers and grand officers as xun qi jia (devotion to their house); the ruler as xun tianxia (devotion to the realm). Xun means to follow, to give oneself over in following—forgetting oneself to follow external things is called xun. In Zhuangzi’s sense, the realm, the state, fame, and profit are all external things. Putting “realm and state” together with “fame and profit” uses the small to outweigh the large, the low to outweigh the high—much of this book is written that way.

“Shu zi” refers to the sage, grand officer, knight, and petty person mentioned above: their undertakings and reputations differ, but in forgetting the body and harming their nature they are the same—all are mistakes of xun wu (devotion to things).

Zang and Gu were herding sheep together; the sheep were lost. Asked what Zang was doing, he said he was carrying arrows for protection and reading books; asked what Gu was doing, he said he was gambling with dice for fun. What they did differed, but losing the sheep was the same. Boyi died for reputation at Mount Shouyang; Robber Zhi died for profit on Mount Dongling—the manner of death differed, but harming life and injuring nature was the same. Why must we say Boyi was right and Robber Zhi wrong?

Everyone in the world is xun: if what one devotes oneself to is benevolence and righteousness, ordinary people call that person a gentleman; if it is goods and wealth, they call that person a petty person. What they devote themselves to differs, yet there are gentlemen and petty people. But when it comes to harming life and injuring nature, Robber Zhi and Boyi are the same—why must we split them into gentleman and petty person again?

Gambling and reading differ greatly in what people call good and bad, yet when it comes to “losing the sheep,” the outcome is the same. That image is used to best effect here.

“Xiefang” means clutching gambling gear in one’s hands; “tou qiong” is casting the qiong—a gambling piece rather like dice today, also known as “chi” or “mu.” “Sai” matches “sai” in the sense of contest and gambling matches.

Zhuangzi is not ignorant of whether Boyi or Daozhi is the worthy man and which is the unworthy; he only borrows their names to frame an argument. What “both count as fault” refers to is precisely that kind of borrowed example.

The junzi (exemplary person) and the xiaoren (petty person) stand in different stations, yet on the point of harming life and wounding innate nature, they are alike. The passage’s main thrust is to satirize the junzi, so it sets the xiaoren’s case beside his—again the rhetorical move of using the small to outweigh the large, the low to outweigh the high.

What This Passage from Zhuangzi Kouyi Is About

Zhuangzi begins by saying: if you bind your whole nature to “benevolence and righteousness,” then even someone as accomplished as Zeng Shen or Zisi would not be what I call “good” (zang). If you bind your nature to judging the five flavors, then even someone as skilled at tasting as Yu’er would not be what I call good. Bound to the five tones and the five colors, then even someone like Shi Kuang who masters music, or Li Zhu with legendary sharp sight, would not be what I call “keen-eared” or “clear-sighted.”

What I call good is not the package of benevolence and righteousness, but being good at aligning with one’s own de (virtuous power)—more precisely, not hanging on the names and teachings of benevolence and righteousness, but following the natural disposition of one’s xing (nature) and ming (life). What I call keen-eared is not listening to external things, but listening to oneself; clear-sighted is not looking at external things, but looking at oneself. If you do not first “see yourself and attain for yourself,” yet hurry to look at the other and gain what the other gains, you have gained what others gain without gaining your own; you suit what others suit without suiting yourself. In that case, whether Robber Zhi or Boyi, in the matter of “losing the root and chasing the external,” are equally deviant (yinpie).

Therefore Zhuangzi says: I feel ashamed before Dao and De (nature)—so above I dare not adopt that ostentatious conduct of benevolence and righteousness, and below I dare not engage in licentious, deviant behavior.

Main Idea of the Kouyi (Lin Xi Yi) in Plain Language

The commentator explains that “binding one’s nature” means the mind is entirely fixated on external things or on name-and-teaching; Zeng and Shi refer to Zeng Shen and Zisi (one personal name appears in an alternate form to avoid a taboo name of Emperor Xiaozong of Song). The pairing below with Yu’er (skilled at distinguishing flavors), Shi Kuang (music master to Duke Ping of Jin), Li Zhu (a figure of legend for extreme visual acuity), and Zeng and Shi is deliberately meant to deflate what the world praises as good, keen-eared, and clear-sighted—to show that is not Zhuangzi’s “zang.”

“Letting the disposition of nature and life run its course” means following nature, not forcibly tying the body with benevolence and righteousness. On the lines that keen-earedness is not hearing the other but hearing oneself, and clear-sightedness is not seeing the other but seeing oneself, the commentator holds that the core of the entire Great Canon (Da zang jing) is nothing more than this—language of this kind is where Zhuangzi stands alone, where others cannot match him. The word “other” (bi) must not be read lightly: what Chan masters often call a mad dog chasing a clod, or a phantom flower producing phantom fruit, is precisely this “other”—chasing external conditions. To “gain for oneself and suit oneself” is self-seeing and self-awakening; the crux is distinguishing the original mind from external things. Failing to obtain the original mind and galloping outward—all of that counts as yinpie (deviant).

“Self-hearing, self-seeing,” read against Confucian classics, matches the same kind of meaning as the Analects’ “silent recognition,” the Changes’ “accomplished in silence, trusted without speaking,” the Mencius’ “infused into the four limbs, the four limbs understand without being told,” and in Cheng Yi’s preface to the Spring and Autumn commentary, “leisurely soaking and swimming, silent recognition with the mind penetrating”—only Confucian phrasing is plainer. Zhu Xi (Hu Weng), wary of the Lu Jiuyuan line, criticized Jiangxi scholars for “raising eyebrows and blinking—claiming sudden enlightenment on their own,” so in his Analects commentary he read shi (recognize) as zhi (remember), glossing “silent recognition” as “silently remembering”; he also glossed Mencius’ “understand without being told” as “understanding without waiting for words”—deliberately saying less about sudden enlightenment. But if you use Cheng Yi’s “silent recognition, mind penetrating,” how can shi be zhi? Students of the Way who in practice always wait for “one penetration, a hundred penetrations” must especially guard against this—what is called clinging to delusion while awaiting awakening, as if Mount Sumeru stood between. Sudden and gradual are two kinds of spiritual aptitude: one cannot speak only of gradual and deny sudden, nor need everyone have “sudden enlightenment.” Zhonggong (Ran Yong) holding reverence is gradual; Hui (Yan Hui) restraining the self and returning to ritual can be sudden—otherwise how explain “in one day restraining the self and returning to ritual, the realm returns to benevolence”? If benevolence can in one day return to oneself, that is sudden. Read carefully: the Analects first raises “restraining the self and returning to ritual is benevolence,” then “in one day… the realm returns to benevolence,” then asks “benevolence—is it from oneself or from others?”—the rise and fall of tone resembles Chan question-and-answer. After Hui grasped it in the words, he asked “its items”—like Chan asking how to maintain; the four prohibitions (not looking, listening, speaking, or acting against ritual), and what follows, is exhaust the mind, know nature, know Heaven, and the work of preserving mind, nurturing nature, serving Heaven, cultivating the person, awaiting fate. “Benevolence is from oneself” is also what Chan says: this matter no one can do for you. The former masters (Zhu Xi and others) said: Buddhist texts are best used to corroborate Confucian texts—once corroborated, it becomes easy to see.

“Above I dare not adopt the conduct of benevolence and righteousness” corresponds to the Zhuangzi outer chapters, “doing good, do not approach fame”; “below I dare not engage in deviant conduct” corresponds to “doing evil, do not approach punishment.” Dao and De are nature; Zhuangzi fears shame before nature, so he neither does good that nears fame nor evil that nears punishment—seeking fame is not natural, hence “ashamed before Dao and De.”

Overall, how is Zhuangzi not also speaking of rectifying the mind and cultivating the person? Mocking Yao, Shun, Confucius, Zeng, Shi, and Boyi in the text is not truly to negate them—it is the brush of indignation, borrowing lofty names to vent. Liu Shuping (Tangdong) once wrote On Zhuang and Qu Sharing Labor, Different Tunes—Zhuang Zhou as “hero of frustrated indignation”; Master Yuexuan (Zhang Shi) highly approved: Zhuangzi also wrote after indignation at the world and hatred of evil; vision high, prose marvelous, hence excess. The Grand Historian (Sima Qian) said he excels at literary composition, departs from words to point at things, strips Confucians and Moists—though contemporary senior scholars cannot explain themselves; language vast and self-sufficient for satisfaction—these lines truly hit Zhuangzi.

Note: This section takes the Zhuangzi original as the backbone, with the outer layer of Song-dynasty Lin Xi Yi’s Zhuangzi Kouyi as line-by-line elaboration, heavily using Chan language, Zhu Xi, and the Cheng school to “corroborate” Zhuangzi; the plain-language version above merges these two layers and does not pose further questions to the reader or continue translating what follows.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi, “Horse’s Hooves,” Section Nine

A horse’s hooves can tread frost and snow; its coat can ward off cold. It nibbles grass, drinks water, and stands on all four feet—that is the horse’s true nature. Even if a lofty terrace and splendid chambers stand beside it, the horse has no use for such things.

Later Bole came forward and said, “I am skilled at training horses.” He burned their hooves, pierced them with iron spikes, carved and filed them, put halters on their heads and bits in their mouths, and penned them in rows in the stable—before training was finished, two or three out of ten horses were already dead. Then he made them go hungry and thirsty, run fast and hard, and march in neat ranks; in front there was the pain of the bit and bridle, behind the threat of the whip—and by the time all this was done, more than half the horses had died.

Zhuangzi uses the horse as a metaphor: externally imposed “governance” in fact destroys innate nature. Horses were originally at ease; human “good governance” became the greatest harm. This matches the inner chapters’ idea of preferring to drag one’s tail in the mud rather than being a spirit enshrined in the temple hall—the same point on another level.

In traditional commentary, line by line: “Yitai” and “lujin” refer to the ruler’s palace (yi carries the sense of nurturing; “change where you live, change how you are nourished”); shaoti is treating the hooves with fire; ke is paring the hooves; luo is netting or haltering; jiluo is the headgear, and pei (written in the text with a variant character) restrains the feet—what today is called front and rear hobbles; lianlie and zaozhan mean tying horses in rows between manger and rack; zheng and qi mean lining them up in formation. “Qian you jueshi” means the ornaments under the jaw—the bit, bridle, and tassels. The horse is controlled by people and cannot enjoy itself, so many die—using the horse to speak of human beings: forcing uniformity, using fetters and discipline, wears innate nature away.

Scriptural Passage (Main Idea of the Zhuangzi Original)

The potter says: I am skilled at working clay—what should be round must match the compass, what should be square must match the square. The carpenter says: I am skilled at working wood—what should be curved must match the curve, what should be straight must match the line. Do earth and wood by nature wish to be ruled by compass, square, curve, and line? Yet generation after generation people praise it, saying: Bo Le is skilled at taming horses, the potter and carpenter are skilled at working earth and wood—and to have governed the world in this same way is the same kind of fault.

Oral Commentary (Explanation)

The potter is the one who mixes clay and makes vessels; the carpenter is the one who shapes timber. Earth and wood become useful things only after human work, just as horses are branded, clipped, marked, driven, and lined up in ranks—is that not a violation of the inherent nature of earth, wood, and horses? Yet people all take Bo Le, the potter, and the carpenter as truly capable. It is as if from the time of Taishi (the ancient sage-king) downward, everyone has treated “governing the world” as a special skill—and that is what the previous chapter meant when it said that benevolence and righteousness are not the natural disposition of human beings, but something forcibly imposed. These passages mean no more than that; only the wording is refined and elegant.

I hold that one who is truly skilled at governing the world is not like that. The people have a constant nature: they weave cloth to clothe themselves and till fields to eat—this is called “shared De” (tongde): aligning with nature, not forming factions for private gain, which is called “Heaven’s release” (tianfang)—each following Heaven and finding their proper place. Therefore in an age of utmost De (zhide), people walk with steady steps and look with plain, uncomplicated eyes. Then mountains had no paths, marshes had no boats or bridges; the ten thousand things lived in groups, each keeping to its own place; birds and beasts moved in flocks and herds, and plants flourished. Thus one could lead a beast by a rope for a stroll, or climb up to peer into a magpie’s nest. In an age of utmost De, humans dwelt alongside birds and beasts and existed together with the ten thousand things—who could still distinguish “gentleman” from “petty man”? Equally without contrived knowledge and without grasping desires, their De did not scatter; equally without hollow, showy wants—this is called “simple genuineness” (supu). When simple genuineness prevails, the people’s inherent nature is preserved intact.

Same De (Virtue/Power): Those who receive the same endowment from Heaven share the same nature.

“When people are born, each follows the life suited to him”: In the world, everyone pursues the livelihood that fits him—farming or weaving—and that is Heaven’s own mechanism at work; hence it is called constant nature. Constant nature is what the previous chapter called changran—the state of things as they naturally are.

Dang means partisan bias or one-sidedness. “Unified and not partisan” means being whole and unbiased, finding joy within nature itself; hence it is called tianfang (Heaven’s release). Ming yue simply means “is termed” or “is called.” Tianxing, tianjun, and tianyou in Qiwu Lun (Discourse on Equalizing Things), like tianfang here, are terms Zhuangzi coined to describe the joy of the natural.

“The age of supreme De” refers to high antiquity.

Tiantian suggests contentment and ease; diandian a direct, plain, unpretentious look—people simple and without guile.

The text also picks up lines from the preceding Ying Diwang (Responsive Lord of the South), such as “they slept at ease and woke at ease.”

“Mountains had no paths or tunnels” and “marshes had no boats or bridges”: people settled where their land lay, and within each settlement young and old, high and low, were naturally linked.

Birds and beasts lived in deep hills, still far from people, with no one to harm them; grass and trees grew on their own, before the trouble of axe and hatchet.

Jixi means tying up wild animals; “climbing to pull down a magpie nest and peek inside” describes how people began to interfere. Then people and beasts, people and things, forgot one another. Su Shi’s Zashuo (Miscellaneous Remarks) tells how, in his youth, magpies nested on the low branches outside his study and turtle doves came every four or five days—much like this scene (see the note to Yichao shi in juan 28 of his collected poems). From that we can imagine how high antiquity may have been: birds and beasts could dwell with people, the ten thousand things could gather together—where would the split between “gentleman” and “petty man” have come from?

“Clans gathered; all were alike.”

“Without knowledge or cleverness”—no artful wit; “without desire”—purely the principle of Heaven. Because the whole world was so, it is called “alike in having no desire.”

“Not departing” from wholeness—the undivided natural state; supu (plain simplicity): then everyone attained the joy of nature, so the text says “in plain simplicity the people’s nature was fulfilled.”

“Their De did not depart—this is called plain simplicity”: the two lines are cause and effect; the second picks up only the words plain simplicity—a classic prose device; writing today seldom keeps that kind of tightness.

When sages hobble along to force themselves into “Ren” (humaneness) and stand on tiptoe to stiffly perform “Yi” (righteousness), people under heaven begin to doubt and no longer trust one another naturally. When pleasure is spread until it overflows and ritual and law are picked apart until they become petty and strange, the world starts to split apart, each side holding to its own extreme.

Therefore: if plain, unworked wood is not carved and cut, what need is there for sacrificial vessels like the xi zun? If a whole piece of white jade is not polished and engraved, what need is there for ritual jades like the gui and zhang? If the Great Dao and natural De (Virtue/Power) are not cast aside, why must one grasp at “Ren and Yi” as a remedy? If people’s true nature is not scattered and lost, why must one rely on rites and music to restrain them? When the five colors are already distinct and not confused, why pile on “ornament and pattern”? When the five tones are already harmonious and not chaotic, why still tune them against the six pitch standards?

To hack and carve plain material into finished objects—that is the craftsman’s fault. To wreck Dao and De and then manufacture “Ren and Yi”—that is the fault of the sage (meaning those who over-promote teaching and reform).

(In the original, the two lines about “plain simplicity” echo each other: the next line picks up only the words “plain simplicity” to continue—a pattern of classical prose. Modern writing often lacks this kind of thread. The note also gives the pronunciation of “bie xie” (hobbling) in fanqie spelling: “bu jie fan” and “xi jie fan”—the old reverse-cut method of indicating how to read the characters.)

Preface section: The passage from “As for Bole” through “As for the sage” uses “the artificial” to answer the “artificial” raised earlier. Bièxiè describes a forced, hobbling walk; dìqí means one cannot even stand steady. Chànmàn is the same idea as hànmàn—the mind drifting freely and refusing to be boxed in. Zhāipì means the hands and feet are used as if tied up; here “pì” should be read as bò (same pronunciation as bò in bò wood). This again turns the language of forcing oneself into ritual and music and pushing benevolence and righteousness through xǔyú (gentle warming and coaxing)—the wording is strange, yet it has its own brilliance. “Shǐ fēn” means mind and outward conduct begin to split; once there is division, there is no longer unity. Every use of “fēn” here points toward scattering and lack of single-mindedness.

The sacrificial cup and jade: Carving wood to make ritual vessels is why the text says, “If plain simplicity is not mutilated, who still needs a sacrificial zūn?” Jade that is not cut and polished cannot serve as an implement, hence “If white jade is not destroyed, who still needs guī and zhāng?” Dao and De (dàodé) are the state of things as they naturally are; Zhuangzi treats benevolence and righteousness as something added on from outside, so he says, “If Dao and De are not abandoned, what need is there for benevolence and righteousness?” Nature and disposition (xìngqíng) are complete in themselves; Zhuangzi treats ritual and music as things forcibly imposed, so he says, “If nature and disposition are not separated, what need is there for ritual and music?” Mencius said that “propriety and form are the business of both, and music is the business of both”—that is the voice of the sage. In this book, the words ritual, music, benevolence, and righteousness are not used as Mencius uses them; they are consistently treated as external things.

Pattern and the pitch pipes: “Pattern and color confuse the five colors” and “the six pitch standards confuse the five tones” are both metaphors for using human effort to alter what is natural. The two lines “The crime of the craftsman, the fault of the sage” wrap up what precedes.

Compared with Mencius: In Mencius’s terms, “propriety and form” and “music” both rest on the pair of ritual, music, benevolence, and righteousness—that is the sage’s straight teaching. This book’s rationale for ritual, music, benevolence, and righteousness differs; it treats them as external objects. The closing remark above states exactly that.

On land, horses eat grass and drink water; when content they rub necks together, when angry they turn and kick each other—that is all horses naturally do.

Then people put on them the wooden yoke and the crescent-shaped brow band, and horses learned to break the halter, snap the bit, chew through the reins, spit out the metal mouthpiece, and gnaw at the bridle… Their behavior even turned to “stealing” and mischief. The blame falls on Bo Le (the legendary master of taming and judging horses)—he taught horses to go wrong.

It is said that in the time of He Xu (the ideal age of antiquity), when people had nothing to do they did not know what to “busy” themselves with; when they walked they did not know where they were “going.” They held food in their mouths and wore smiles on their faces; when their bellies were full they wandered about—that is all people naturally knew how to live.

Then the Sage appeared, using rites and music to straighten conduct under Heaven and hanging benevolence and righteousness before them to soothe hearts. Only then did people start standing on tiptoe to outdo one another, delight in cleverness, and scramble for profit without end. That too is the Sage’s “fault”—not that the Sage’s intent was wholly wrong, but that once rites, propriety, benevolence, and righteousness are used to “correct” the world, people are pulled out of their natural state and drawn into rivalry for fame and gain, in the same way that taming horses draws out horses’ “thieving” nature.

(This passage comes from commentary in the Zhuangzi tradition. It uses horses and Bo Le, and the age of antiquity and the Sage, to show that human norms and teaching can also have side effects.)

This passage uses the picture of horses and the metaphors of breaking horses and stealing horses to gather up the long discussion that came before, and along the way to explain how the outer chapters relate to the inner chapters.

Painting horses: “necks entwined” and “backs turned”

What was said earlier is restated here in a few lines, with extra sentences woven in, making it even more striking. When horses are pleased, they rub necks together (jiaojing xiangmi—necks leaning on each other, rubbing); when angry, they turn their backs and kick (fenbei xiangdi—back to back, kicking at each other)—just like a painting of horses. Xiangmi means rubbing against each other; see how powerfully the phrases “jiaojing” and “fenbei” work.

Heng’e are carriage fittings; ezhou is what reins in the yoke pole; yueti is what we today call the forehead mirror (ornament on the horse’s brow). Jieni: jie means alone, ni means sidelong glare—a look of glaring sideways in anger on one’s own. Yin’e: neck bent in resistance, refusing the bit and reins. Si is fierce and unruly; man is charging forward—refusing the bridle, butting against each other.

Gui is scheming, qie is acting in secret: gui ji yi ru xian, qian qie yi jia pei (devising tricks to get the bit in, stealthily slipping on the reins)—all describing a fierce horse that will not submit, so putting on bit and reins takes so much cunning. Matching wits with others is called zhi of horse-thieving (daoma zhi zhi); even resisting an enemy counts. Bole makes horses like this—without crossbar, yoke, bit, and reins, horse would be horse and human human; who would ever see postures like jieni and yin’e?

Min neng yi ci zhe: what common people should stop at stops right here. Kuang is using ritual and music to straighten people’s outward form and using benevolence and righteousness to soothe the heart—things that exist only after sages invented them; in high antiquity there was none of this.

Xianqi: held high, lifted up. Diqi is restlessness, standing on tiptoe to compete for height; haozhi zhengli (loving cleverness and contending for profit) is like a horse gui xian qie pei (scheming with the bit, stealing the reins)—using artifice to compete.

Outer chapters and Zuozhuan / Guoyu

The relation between inner and outer chapters is somewhat like that between Zuozhuan and Guoyu: as if from the same hand—after Zuozhuan came Guoyu—yet the literary tone differs from Zuozhuan. A chapter like this one in Zhuangzi is where the long branches and broad leaves show (expansive, branching style), so some think it was not written by Zhuangzi himself—but that is not so (Lin Xiyi still treats it as within the Zhuangzi corpus).

Brief glossary of terms

If someone, to guard against petty thieves who pry open chests, pick pockets, or break into cabinets, binds the chest tight and locks the cabinet firm, the world calls that “being wise.” Yet when a great thief arrives, he hoists off chest and cabinet together—and he only hopes you have not tied and locked them too well. What passed for cleverness was really just stockpiling goods for the big thief.

Consider this: is there anyone the world calls clever who is not, in effect, hoarding for a great thief? Is there anyone it calls a sage who is not standing guard for one? Why say so? Once upon a time in Qi, cities faced one another within sight, cock and dog cries could be heard between them, nets and traps were set and plows and hoes worked over more than two thousand li square; within the borders they built ancestral temples, established altars to soil and grain, governed walled towns, districts, townships, and hamlets—where had they not taken the sages as their model? Yet when Tian Chengzi (the Tian clan) killed the ruler of Qi and seized the state, what he stole was not the land alone: he stole the sages’ laws and the institutions of clever planning along with it. So Tian Chengzi, though bearing the name of bandit, lived as securely as Yao and Shun: small states dared not speak against him, large ones dared not attack, and for twelve generations his line held Qi—is that not having stolen Qi and also stolen the “laws of sagehood and wisdom” to protect the body of a thief?

Reading this chapter, one feels the author’s indignation on every page and the force of the language. He then dresses the point in a fresh metaphor, showing off his wit: qū is to pry open, tàn to reach in and take, fā also to open—speaking only of mouse-sized pilferers; those six characters that follow are truly deft brushwork. Jiǎnsè are rope knots, shè is to wrap and bind, jiōng is the door bolt and key, jué the lock. Worldly wisdom is set up against such petty theft; when the great thief comes, he takes bindings and locks together with the goods. When the Tian clan usurped Qi, private measure for lending and public measure for collection—that is what the Zuo Zhuan records. Using the sages’ laws to complete a robber’s design was largely how things stood in the Warring States period; Zhuangzi uses this conceit to lay that bare.

Try looking at it from an ordinary, worldly angle: when people speak of “the wisest person,” has there never been someone who stockpiled goods for a great robber? When they speak of “the most sage person,” has there never been someone who stood guard over a robber’s hoard? Why put it that way? Long ago Long Feng was executed, Bi Gan had his heart cut out, Chang Hong was dismembered, and Wu Zixu was hacked into a pulp—four men of worth, yet none of them in the end escaped a violent end. So a follower of Robber Zhi (Dao Zhi) asked him: “Is there also a Dao (Way) to thieving?” Robber Zhi replied: “Where would there not be a Dao?” Guessing what is hidden inside someone’s house counts as sagacity (sheng); rushing in first counts as courage (yong); being the last to withdraw counts as righteousness (yi); judging whether the job can succeed counts as knowledge (zhi); dividing the loot fairly counts as benevolence (ren). Without any one of these five, a major theft cannot be pulled off—and there has never been such a thing under heaven. Seen this way, good people cannot keep their footing without the sage’s Dao, and Robber Zhi cannot rampage without the sage’s Dao either. Under heaven the good are few and the vicious many, so what sages bring the world is less benefit and more harm.

“Dismemberment” and “mincing flesh to pulp” both mean dying through punishment for crime. Though the four were worthy, their bodies all suffered. Robber Zhi, by contrast, used “Dao” to talk himself into being right. The point is: even the worthy cannot be relied on; and those who steal the name of the “sage’s Dao” sometimes rob for their own gain, dressing theft up with “sagacity, courage, righteousness, knowledge, and benevolence”—Zhuangzi deliberately invented such labels to mock the Confucians. The language is outlandish, yet measured against worldly human feelings, there really is something to it. When it says the good are few, the bad many, and sages benefit the world little while harming it much, that too is said with sharp clarity.

So it is said: when the lips are gone the teeth feel the cold (chun wang chi han—mutual dependence exposed as mutual ruin); Lu offered thin wine and Chu marched to attack Lu, and Handan was besieged (among the linked stories of states turning on one another). The relation of lip and tooth is just what is meant here. If sages do not die, great robbers will not cease; even if you double your praise of sages to govern the world, you only double what benefits Robber Zhi.

Chu was about to attack Lu because the wine Lu presented was too weak; Liang then moved against Zhao, tied up with situations like “Lu could not come to the rescue”—the tie between lip and tooth is exactly this. Sages undying and great robbers unceasing: though you use the sage’s Dao to order the world, you increase what Robber Zhi gains.

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Kouyi

Chu was about to attack Lu on the grounds that the wine Lu sent as tribute was too weak; Liang then attacked Zhao, claiming Zhao had failed to benefit from Lu and would not help. Lips and teeth seem unrelated, yet when the lips are gone the teeth feel the cold; river and valley seem separate, yet when the river dries the valley is empty; hill and abyss do not touch directly, yet when the hill is leveled the abyss is filled. This is what people today call “Zhang drinks the wine, Li gets drunk”—using someone else’s trouble to one’s own hurt. The point: the sage’s standards were never made for thieves, yet they become thieves’ capital. Hence: when the sage appears, the great thief rises; when the sage does not appear, the great thief does not rise. (Some) overthrow the sage and indulge thieves, saying that only with neither sage nor thief can the realm be well governed. When the river is full, the valley is full of water; when the river dries, the valley is empty. River and valley do not connect directly, yet in spring and summer the water rises and in autumn and winter it falls—change runs the same way. When the hill is leveled (“shan fu” means the hill is cut down and laid flat), it is as if the hill were stripped away; the hill is flat and earth fills the abyss—seemingly unrelated, in fact cause and effect. “Wugu” means without cause; “zhong shengren er zhi” means the sage comes out to govern again. When the sage governs again, laws grow tighter and the cunning use them to cheat—hence again: overvalue “profit,” and the great thief Zhi profits. (The story “Lu’s wine was thin and Handan was besieged” appears in Huainanzi too, with slightly different wording, same idea.)

(The sage) made bushel and peck measures to measure grain—thieves steal bushel and peck along with the grain; made scales and weights to weigh—steal scales and weights; made tallies and seals for trust—steal tallies and seals; used benevolence and righteousness to straighten hearts—steal benevolence and righteousness. How know? Steal a belt hook, execution; steal a state and sit as lord—the lord’s gate displays benevolence and righteousness—is that not stealing benevolence and sage wisdom too?

Bushel, peck, scale, weight, tally, seal, benevolence, righteousness—the four kinds listed together; below, the sense of lowering the “high.” Hook-thieves are petty; Warring States usurpers who became lords were great thieves. Petty thieves steal hooks, great thieves steal states, both wrapped in benevolence and sage wisdom.

This passage explains Zhuangzi’s critique of “great thieves” and the way of the sages.

The dipper, the bushel measure, the steelyard, the balance weights, tally tokens, seals, benevolence (ren), and righteousness (yi) are grouped together to deflate and expose things that pose as lofty. Stealing a belt hook counts as petty theft; Warring States lords who seized states by usurpation were all great thieves. Petty thieves get executed, yet great thieves could act like this—that is bitter sarcasm. Once someone became a feudal lord and founded a state while claiming to love the people and benefit things, they were not only stealing the realm but also stealing the benevolence, righteousness, and sagely wisdom that the sages had established.

So among those who chase the so-called “great thieves,” the lords who became rulers stole the profit that came with benevolence and righteousness along with the dipper, bushel, steelyard, tally, and seal. Neither lavish chariots and robes nor the threat of axe and halberd could deter them. That amounts to richly rewarding a robber like Robber Zhi while hoping to stop theft—and the commentator takes this as a fault in the sages’ approach. Hence “fish cannot leave the deep; the sharp tools of the state must not be shown to the people”: the way of the sage was meant as the sharp tool of the realm, not something to make everyone in the world understand and follow.

Named “great thief,” everyone wants to pursue them; today’s lords are all usurpers of states, yet they stand above others—who does not see it? So the text says “expose”—the great thief is plain for all to see, yet benevolence and righteousness, dipper and bushel, steelyard and seal are stolen along with the realm, while the world sets no rewards for capture and no punishments to forbid it—again bitter sarcasm. “Fish cannot leave the deep” means the Way cannot leave its root; the sage’s law should be for the sage’s own use, not for making everyone know it, hence “not for clarifying the realm”—here “clarifying” means making the whole world aware.

Therefore it is said: discard sages and abandon cleverness, and great thieves will stop; throw away jade and smash pearls, and petty thieves will not arise; burn tally tokens and break seals, and the people return to plain simplicity; smash bushels and snap steelyards, and the people will not fight over profit; utterly cripple the sage’s laws under heaven, and only then can the people be reasoned with.

Stripping jade and smashing pearls, burning talismans and breaking seals, splitting measures and snapping steelyards—such images are Zhuangzi’s sharp, hyperbolic rhetoric to wrap up the idea of “abandoning sagehood and discarding cleverness” (jue sheng qi zhi); he is not telling us to do these things literally. “Can cripple” (dan can) means to destroy and cut away: strip out as much as possible of the sages’ ritual and norms, so the people become simple and uniform, and only then can one reason with them—hence lines like “the people can at last be reasoned with” (min shi ke yu yi). All of this is indignant speech; later readers often mock Zhuangzi with “split the steelyard, burn the seal,” but the point is close to Laozi’s “do not value goods hard to obtain, so the people will not steal”—fewer “rarities” and tokens of power that make people fight and steal—only Zhuangzi pushes it further. Su Dongpo said: “Once a person learns characters, worry begins”—literacy brings trouble; does that mean we should make the whole world illiterate?

“Disrupt the six tones, melt pipes and zithers, stop the ears of Kuang the Blind” (Shi Kuang, the famed musician): only then will people each guard their hearing and not listen wildly or wrongly. “Erase patterned writing, scatter the five colors, glue shut the eyes of Li Zhu” (legendary sharp-sighted man): without gaudy ornament and color, people each guard their sight and do not look wildly or wrongly. “Destroy plumb line and cord, discard square and compass, cripple the fingers of Gong Chui” (the craftsman): without those tools, people each keep to their own proper skill. That is why Laozi says “supreme skill appears clumsy” (da qiao ruo zhuo)—real craft looks like awkwardness. Likewise cut back the conduct of Zeng and Shi, clamp shut the mouths of Yang and Mo, and cast aside Ren and Yi (benevolence and righteousness): remove the “moral exemplars” like Zeng Shen and Shi Yu, silence the teachings of Yang Zhu and Mozi, even drop the labels of “benevolence and righteousness,” and De (Virtue) under Heaven will settle into one thick, shared tone (“dun tong” means solid and single-minded). Then everyone inwardly keeps their clarity, and the world will not dazzle and confuse; inwardly keeps their acuity, and will not be dragged down by music and scales; inwardly keeps their knowing, and will not be muddled by clever tricks; inwardly keeps their De, and will not go off on side paths.

Zeng, Shi, Yang, Mo, Shi Kuang, Gong Chui, and Li Zhu all set up outward models of “virtue,” “skill,” and “clarity” for others to chase, and so stirred up the world; from the perspective of the Way of nature, such “methods” (fa) do little good (“what use such laws have”—fa zhi suo wu yong ye).

First section (on “removing the false and keeping the true”)

“Zhuo luan” means to pull something out and throw it into disorder. The six pitch pipes originally have a fixed order of long and short; if that order is pulled apart and scrambled, they can no longer serve their purpose. “Shuo jue fen qi” means to melt down, cut off, burn up, and discard.

Only with ears like those of Music Master Kuang can one set laws and regulate music; if one stops up the ears, human hearing can instead accord with nature, without relying on such artificial contrivances. The lines about “ming” (clearness) and “qiao” (skill) carry the same point—because “qiao” is mentioned, Laozi’s “the greatest skill seems like clumsiness” (da qiao ruo zhuo) is cited in support; that too is a habitual move in this kind of writing.

Zeng Shen and Shi Yu were famed for loyalty and filial piety; Yang Zhu and Mozi built their schools on benevolence and righteousness. Pull out and discard these teachings of reputation and duty, so that the language of benevolence and righteousness no longer holds sway, and people under heaven can together return to this (natural) De (Virtue/Power), and come back to the subtle original state. “Bu shuo” means not dissolving away; “bu lei” means not being entangled; “bu huo” means not deceiving one another; “bu pi” means not being one-sided or perverse. Placing Zeng, Shi, Yang, and Mo alongside Kuang, Gong Chui, and Li Zhu is again using the small to suppress the large. “Wai li qi de” means prizing outer things and losing the original heart-mind. “Yao luan” refers to scorching and disturbing. From the standpoint of the correct method (the true Dao), these people and these doctrines are all useless and should all be set aside. Hence “what the method has no use for”—that closing line is extremely forceful; it is one of the strengths of the prose.

Second section (the age of utmost De and the twelve clans)

Do you not know the “age of utmost De (Virtue/Power)”? In antiquity there were the Rongcheng clan, the Dating clan, the Bohuang clan, the Zhongyang clan, the Lilu clan, the Lichu clan, the Xuanyuan clan, the Hexu clan, the Zunlu clan, the Zhurong clan, the Fuxi clan, the Shennong clan…

Of these twelve clans, in commonly read classics only Xuanyuan, Fuxi, and Shennong appear often; before them, Rongcheng, Dating, Bohuang, Zhongyang, and the rest are rarely listed together in ordinary books.

What the classics can clearly name among the Twelve Clans are only Xuanyuan (the Yellow Emperor), Fuxi, and Shennong; farther back, nothing can be traced in the various schools’ texts. Those names may come from very ancient oral tradition, or Zhuangzi may have invented them—we cannot decide today. It is a bit like Buddhism’s “In such-and-such a great kalpa in the past I did thus and so”—the rhetoric is grand, but if you set the long span of heaven and earth against the years for which human records exist, since Fuxi the countable stretch in the classics is only about three thousand years or so; heaven and earth cannot have been that short. Before Fuxi there must have been ages the Six Classics did not record; speak of them and it easily sounds absurd, yet one cannot entirely treat them as nonexistent either.

Take Fujian: Wuzhu (leader of Minyue) appears in records only from Han times; culture and antiquities there gradually flourished only after Tang. Before Wuzhu, the region was mostly still in a raw, undeveloped state. In recent years someone plowing fields in front of Nangsi Temple suddenly dug into a cave with gold and jade objects, tripods and ritual vessels—many people secretly carried things away. After the cave was emptied, villagers went to look; bricks large and small were carved with human figures, dragons and tigers, extremely fine—this was the front chamber. Behind was another wall; when struck with hoe and axe it gave a hollow thud yet would not budge, as if filled with bronze and iron—not like an ordinary family tomb. If it were a royal tomb, gazetteers of Fujian’s remote antiquity hardly offer names to match. Clearly there must be earlier events that were never transmitted. Seen this way, even older tales such as Rongcheng and Dating cannot be flatly denied as never having existed.

In those days, people kept records by tying knots, ate food that tasted sweet, wore clothes that looked fine, lived by customs that brought contentment, and settled where they were with enough to get by. Neighboring states were within sight of one another, and the crowing of cocks and barking of dogs could be heard across borders—yet people lived out their lives without traveling back and forth. That is what the most tranquil state under heaven looks like.

Now we have reached the point where people stretch their necks and stand on tiptoe, saying “There is a worthy person in such-and-such a place,” and hurry off with grain on their backs to join them: at home they abandon their parents; abroad they neglect their proper duty to serve their ruler; footprints cross the borders of feudal lords, and cart tracks run a thousand li away. This is the fault of those in high places who excessively honor “cleverness and artifice.” When those above truly love cleverness and artifice but lack the Great Dao, the realm falls into disorder. How do we know it will be so?

The line about “there is a worthy in a certain place, so people pack grain and rush there” covertly targets people flocking to Mencius and Xunzi—and further back, Confucius belongs in the same line. Look at the Jixia Academy in Qi and strategists like Su Qin and Zhang Yi, and you will see that Zhuangzi spoke this way to criticize the temper of his age: to love cleverness and artifice is not the natural way, hence “when cleverness and artifice are loved but there is no Dao, the realm is in chaos.”

When crossbows, handled nets (bi), string-attached arrows (yi), and other such clever devices multiply, birds fly about wildly above; when hooks, bait, fishnets, and bamboo traps multiply, fish dart frantically in the water; when cutting grids, snares, luo nets, zhi and fu (various fences and hunting gear) multiply, beasts run riot in the marshes. When deceit, gradual poisoning of minds, slippery rhetoric, and disputations such as “hard and white,” “splitting hairs,” and “sameness and difference” multiply, the world is bewildered by war-of-words. That is why the realm is so often in great disorder: the fault lies in honoring cleverness and artifice.