《庄子翼》

We have collated this work as instructed: Zhuangzi Yi comprises eight fascicles, plus one fascicle of Zhuangzi Quewu (Omissions and Errors) and one fascicle of appendices. It was compiled by Jiao Hong of the Ming and completed in the wuzi year of the Wanli reign (1588). Its layout matches his Laozi Yi: the front matter lists the commentary editions included—from Guo Xiang’s onward, twenty-two lineages in all; works cited in parallel for mutual clarification—from Zhi Dun’s onward, sixteen lineages; and treatments of phrasing and pronunciation—from Guo Xiang’s onward, eleven lineages. On checking what the book actually quotes, the writings of Guo Xiang, Lü Huiqing, Chu Boxiu, Luo Mianxue, and Lu Xixing appear most often; the other schools contribute only occasional entries, largely to round out the tally.

The book also states that Chu’s Yihai draws on Wang An’s commentary for the Inner Chapters and Liu Kai’s for the Outer Chapters. The Daoist canon additionally preserves Wang Ping’s Xinzhuan in fourteen fascicles—perhaps an earlier and a later recension of his notes, hence both are listed. In the citations as they stand, apart from Ping’s Xinzhuan, there is no distinct “Ping commentary”; yet Yangsheng Zhu includes one entry attributed to Liu Kai, which suggests Liu Kai’s original work may have covered Inner Chapters as well—how those texts were arranged is no longer clear. Broadly speaking, Ming authors liked to advertise breadth; when one verifies their claims, much proves inflated. After the Wanli period this habit grew especially strong; there is little profit in chasing every detail.

As for Zhi Dun’s commentary on Zhuangzi, earlier histories do not record it. His exegesis of Xiaoyaoyou survives in Liu Xiaobiao’s commentary on Shishuo Xinyu, yet here the source is suppressed and the label reads simply “commentary of Zhi Daolin”—another Ming habit of repackaging, not solid evidence. Still, from Yang Shen onward among Ming polymaths, Jiao Hong ranks among the most learned, and what he cites is mostly from older books. Though he was touched by Li Zhi’s temper, brought Confucian themes into Mohist-style argument, and often strayed in judgment, he could still tell Buddhist from Daoist material to some degree; many of his choices do catch Zhuangzi’s drift. Measured against Confucian orthodoxy he stands off to one side; measured against the Daoist tradition he does not wholly lose the thread. For that kind of anthology, his footing is firmer than that of commonplace exegeses.

The final Zhuangzi Quewu fascicle reproduces in full the text of Chen Jingyuan’s Nanhua jing jie from the Song, which is useful for textual comparison. A further appended fascicle collects the Biography of Zhuangzi in Shiji, Ruan Ji’s Discourse on Zhuangzi, Wang Anshi’s Discourse on Zhuangzi, Su Shi’s Record of the Zhuangzi Shrine, Pan You’s parting letter, Wang Ping’s miscellaneous pieces, Li Shibiao’s Nine Discourses on Zhuangzi, and related items. Songshi Yiwen zhi lists Li Shibiao’s Ten Discourses on Zhuangzi in one fascicle; why only nine appear here is unclear. Moreover, the main text already adopts his explanations of Jie Niu, Huzi, and Haoliang, yet all nine discourses are copied again at the end—an inconsistent arrangement, as if the compiler never finished pruning.

Respectfully collated in the eighth month of the forty-third year of the Qianlong reign. Directors-general: Ji Yun, Lu Xixiong, Sun Shiyi; Director of collation: Lu Feichi.

In the preface to Zhuangzi Yi (Wings of Zhuangzi), the author explains: Laozi wrote the Daodejing in two parts during the late Warring States period, clarifying the meaning of Dao and De. Guan Yinzi, Yang Zhu, Lie Yukou (Liezi), Kangcangzi, and Zhuang Zhou of Chu can all be seen as heirs of this line. Among these masters, only Yang Zhu left no dedicated book. Liezi’s text did not circulate widely until the end of the Jin dynasty; some suspect it was later compiled from passages taken from Zhuangzi, which is why Sima Qian, the Grand Historian, did not give Liezi or Kangcangzi separate biographies in his Records.

The Guan Yinzi edited by Wang Shiyuan in the Tang is lofty in style, but notions such as the “infant,” the “bud maiden,” and “incantations over clay figures” were not yet visible in Laozi’s time. Most likely later seekers of the Way wrote under his name; they are not truly Guan Yin’s words.

Zhuangzi was traditionally said to have fifty-three chapters; thirty-three survive today. Some passages in the outer and miscellaneous chapters are doubted as not Zhuangzi’s own work; the inner chapters can almost certainly be attributed to no one but Zhuang Zhou. Seen this way, among books transmitted from Laozi’s line, Zhuangzi is essentially what remains. Having already compiled several volumes of Laozi Yi, I read various commentaries on Zhuangzi, took what agreed with my understanding, and arranged this book, also titled Zhuangzi Yi.

Laozi and Zhuangzi stand to Confucius and Mencius as Confucius and Mencius stand to each other in relation to the earlier pair: Laozi and Confucius were roughly contemporaries, as were Zhuangzi and Mencius. Confucius and Mencius did not treat Laozi and Zhuangzi as enemies to attack. Yet later scholars often argued endlessly, unwilling to rest—perhaps because Confucius and Mencius spoke mainly from “being” (concrete teaching and human affairs), while Laozi and Zhuangzi spoke mainly from “non-being” (the body of the Way and empty pervasion); the emphasis differed, but they were not necessarily incompatible.

In fact Confucius and Mencius did not speak only of “being” and never of “non-being”—“non-being” is lodged within “being”; Confucius and Mencius guided people from what the world already understood upward, what is called “learning below to reach above.” Laozi and Zhuangzi, living in that age, saw that most who studied Confucius and Mencius remained stuck at the level of “being,” with few who could reach “non-being”; they therefore held that one must first penetrate “non-being” to use “being” well. They expanded what Confucius and Mencius had touched on only briefly, to supplement what Confucius and Mencius had not fully said. As for benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music, Confucius and Mencius had already urged them repeatedly—what use if Laozi and Zhuangzi repeated the same? That was Laozi and Zhuangzi’s refined intent, not a deliberate novelty to elevate themselves.

“What is above form is called Dao; what is below form is called vessel”—this is language the Confucian line also used. Laozi and Zhuangzi simply replaced “Dao and vessel” with “being and non-being,” and “above and below” with “manifestation and mystery”; the wording differed, that is all. To think the aim was mutually harmful because the words differ—that is the attacker’s own bias; it hardly injures Laozi or Zhuangzi.

Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi all wrote out of compassion for scholars who had strayed from their innate nature. As for later noisy debate over sameness and difference, that is not my subject here.

Recorded on the Human Day of the wuchen year of the Wanli reign, by Jiao Hong (style name Ruohou).

Bibliographic Sources Drawn Upon in Zhuangzi Yi

In compiling Zhuangzi Yi, the editor consulted and excerpted the following commentaries on Zhuangzi (Nanhua Jing) and related works.

Guo Xiang’s commentary; Lü Huiqing (style name Jifu)’s commentary; Lin Yidu’s commentary; Chen Xiangdao’s commentary; Chen Jingyuan (style name Taichu, from Jianchang, Northern Song, Xining period), author of Commentaries on the Daode Jing and Nanhua Jing.

Wang Bi (style name Yuanze)’s commentary—Wang served as Direct Attendant at the Hall of Dragon Designs and Left Remonstrance Grand Master in the Song; his commentary covers the Inner Chapters. Liu Kai continued after Bi, commenting on the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters.

Wu Chou’s commentary (active in the Chongning and Daguan periods). Zhao Yifu (style name Xuzhai) on the Inner Chapters. Lin Xiyi’s oral explication (Hanlin Academician, composed in the xinyou year of the Jingding reign).

Li Shibiao’s discussions (Yuan Zhuo’s Ten Discourses on Zhuangzi and Liezi). Wang Dan’s Exordium on Zhuangzi. Fan Wuyin’s lecture notes (style name Yingyuan, courtesy name Shanfu, from Shunqing in Shu).

Chu Boxiu (Daoist priest) compiled Collected Subtleties of the Ocean of Meaning on the Nanhua Jing, adding his own views under the title Personal Observations. Nanhua Xinzhuan (New Transmission of the Nanhua Jing) (citing Wang Bi’s Inner Chapter commentary and Liu Kai’s Outer Chapter commentary in Yihai; the Daozang also has Wang Bi’s Xinzhuan in fourteen fascicles, which may be a different recension from an earlier or later date, so both are listed; here the portions that agree with Yihai are included in the main text, while Xinzhuan is also recorded separately).

Luo Miandao (from Lujiang), Zhuangzi Xunben (Following the Root of Zhuangzi). Liu Chenweng (style name Xixi) collated Zhuangzi. Tang Shunzhi (style name Jingchuan, mid-Ming Censor-in-Chief) Shilüe (Outline Explanations), engraved and published by his disciple Xu Shipeng, with Xu’s own explanations appended. Lu Xixing (style name Changgeng, from Guangling), Fumo on the Nanhua Jing (Auxiliary Ink to the Nanhua Jing). Zhu Dezhi (from Piling), Comprehensive Meaning of Zhuangzi. Zhang Siwei (from Puzhou, Academician), supplementary notes.

This passage is not part of the main text of the Zhuangzi; it is bibliographical front matter and a catalog of commentaries and related works included in a particular edition of the Zhuangzi Yi (Wings of Zhuangzi).

In brief:

• Title and editorial history: The Zhuangzi Yi was abridged and arranged under the direction of Prefect Fang Sishan, with participation from Education Commissioner Fang Kang and editor Chu Yihai, among others; the compilers also added their own views. The twenty-two earlier exegetes mentioned at the outset are those whose work was drawn on or incorporated when the book was cut, ordered, and assembled.

• From “Zhi Daolin’s commentary” through “Jiang Ya’s commentary,” etc.: The list names commentaries, lecture notes, and essays represented in this book or in related materials—e.g., Zhi Daolin’s Zhaolun, Xiang Xiu’s commentary, Cui Zhuan’s commentary, Li Yi’s commentary, Zhang Zhan’s commentary (Jin dynasty Director of Imperial Entertainment, who also commented on the Liezi), lecture notes by Emperor Jianwen of Liang, Zhang Ji’s lecture notes, Sima Biao’s commentary, Liang Kuang’s treatise, Cheng Xuanying’s subcommentary, Su Shi’s Guangcheng jie, Hong Mai’s Rongzhai suibi, and Jiang Ya’s commentary (Song dynasty student from Hangzhou who commented on the Liezi). Some titles repeat in the catalog, likely from duplication in layout or copying rather than from a second, distinct passage.

• Danqian lu and Jiao shi bicheng: Material on the Zhuangzi from Yang Shen’s Danqian lu and Jiao Hong’s Bicheng is included wherever older jottings touched on Zhuangzi, so readers everywhere can compare and correct.

• “The sixteen schools above are cited in the jijie”: Those sixteen names are taken from what the “collected explanations” (jijie) cite, supplemented with passages gathered from other books for this edition.

• Works on phrasing and pronunciation: Further listed are aids focused on wording and reading: Guo Xiang’s pronunciation in three fascicles, Li Gui’s in one, Xu Miao’s in three, Jia Shanyi’s straight pronunciation in one, Sima Biao’s in one, Zhou Dun’s Zhengwen juyi in one fascicle, Lu Deming’s Wenjuyi in twenty, Bixuzi’s Zhangju in seven, Zhuangzi yushi in one, Zhuangzi quewu in one, and Wu Youqing’s revised text in one; the note “the ten schools above are all zhangju and yinyi” groups these as works of clause division and phonological gloss.

• “Reading the Zhuangzi [seven items, see Bicheng]”: The Bicheng contains seven “reading Zhuangzi” pieces, which this book also records or cites.

In sum: The whole section explains who abridged the Zhuangzi Yi, which earlier Zhuangzi studies (commentary, subcommentary, lectures, miscellanies) it attaches, and which smaller books on pronunciation, collation, and emendation are appended—so readers can see the edition’s sources and structure.

The Zhuangzi was written to help people understand the Dao. When Confucians speak of the Dao, they invariably tie it to benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music; Zhuangzi often sets these aside or even rejects them, as if the Dao had no place for such things. If one then supposes that broken tiles and chaff can hold the subtlety of the Dao while benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music do not, that is not what Zhuangzi meant.

In truth, benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music are themselves part of the Dao; it is only the benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music of worldly Confucians that are often no more than traces and appearances of the Dao. If one clings to appearances alone and does not grasp why those appearances arise, how can the Dao be explained clearly? That is why Zhuangzi, with no better option, pushes them aside—so that people may know: the Dao establishes its root before form appears, and has its reality beyond names and concepts; one cannot hold only the speakable “being” in hand but must also be able to seek further inward. When that seeking truly succeeds, one sees that form does not depart from reality nor names from principle; then benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music need not be rejected wholesale.

Zhuangzi himself said: righteousness, though it seems lofty, cannot be left unupheld; ritual, though it seems binding, cannot be left unaccumulated. Scholars who know only one layer of meaning and not another easily speak in vague, far-ranging language that grows harder to follow the more they say.

Laozi said, “Hold fast to the Dao of antiquity to govern the present’s being”: the present’s “being” must take the ancient “non-being” as its root; to govern affairs through “being,” one must take one’s pattern from “non-being.” Therefore to describe “emptiness” and “non-being” as abandoning human teaching is mistaken. When Shun ruled the realm through Wuwei (non-action), he was not neglecting governance but governing through non-action; Yu seemed to do what had to be done, yet acted by “taking no-affairs as the affair.” Muddled people take Wuwei to mean abolishing practical work—as in the Jin and Song eras of “pure talk”—and that is very far from Zhuangzi and Laozi.

Zhuangzi also said: water that is not mixed is clear; if it is not stirred, it lies level; yet if it is blocked and cannot flow, it will not become clear either. Treating the abandonment of affairs as Wuwei is like damming water—how can one expect it to clear?

Sima Qian said that Zhuangzi disparaged Confucius, and most Confucians of the age echoed him. Only Su Zizhan (Su Shi) held that Zhuangzi in substance honored Confucius while in wording he did not follow Confucius’s line; as for truly honoring Confucius, no one matched Zhuangzi. Su’s remark hits the marrow. Yet worldly scholars are often led by the letter and never reach the “substance,” so how could they grasp what Su meant?

How do we see this? What worldly scholars cling to is Confucius’s traces and dregs; what Zhuangzi discusses is his essential meaning. It is like Bian Que seeing through a wall into the five viscera and prescribing accordingly: two people study him—one cannot see the viscera or distinguish illness yet clutches the prescription sheet alone—like scholars who only hold to Confucius’s traces; the other can like Bian Que see the wall and the viscera yet prescribes by his own judgment and need not follow the master in every case—for Bian Que, should one praise the one who deadens himself to the formula, or the one who can compose formulas as meaning requires?

In Buddhist talk of “repaying kindness,” those who revile the Buddha and curse the patriarchs are always condemned. If reviling Buddha and cursing patriarchs counted as repaying kindness, would those who take refuge and praise not be ungrateful? Who knows that reviling and cursing can in a sense be the utmost of taking refuge and praise? Otherwise, when Qin Shi mourned Laozi and in the You at Lilin Laozi also criticized himself, could one say Zhuangzi was slandering Laozi and Zhou?

The Records of the Grand Historian places Zhuangzi in the time of King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi; the Wei Ying in the book is King Hui of Liang. It also has Zhuangzi debating Confucians with Duke Ai of Lu—so Zhuangzi would be contemporary with Confucius. When Sun Shuao served King Zhuang of Chu, Confucius was not yet born; Yiliao never served Chu, yet the book has Zhongni going to Chu, Chu people offering wine, Sun Shuao holding the cup standing, and Shinan Yiliao receiving wine to sacrifice—front and back often clash so. Scholars often doubt on this account. Yet Zhuangzi himself said: nineteen parts allegory, seventeen parts repeated sayings. Allegory means borrowing another’s mouth to finish one’s own meaning; since one only trusts one’s meaning, why must every fact be true? The Records says that books like Weilei, Xuyan, and Kangsangzi are empty words without factual basis—mostly fiction of the Zixu sort. If one nitpicks year and month, is that not close to talking in one’s sleep?

Even so, Zhuangzi guarded against people trusting only their own meaning. Suppose scholars, taught by Zhuangzi that “names are not names” and “this and not-this are not this and not-this,” still miss Zhuangzi’s teaching: Su argued Zhuangzi could honor Confucius yet alone doubted that Robber Zhi and Fisherman truly reviled Confucius; as for Yielding the Throne and Explaining the Sword, both are shallow and do not enter the Dao. Read again and again and grasp the point of allegory: the Lie Yukou chapter of Outer Chapters has Yang Zhu going west to Qin and meeting Laozi—on the way, innkeepers welcomed him forward, the master of the house held the mat, the wife held towel and comb, guests left their mats, stove-tenders left the hearth; on the return he quarreled over mats with them. Remove the four chapters Yielding the Throne, Explaining the Sword, Fisherman, and Robber Zhi and read them with Lie Yukou—that fits Su’s meaning exactly. Zhuangzi’s words had not ended when the obtuse plagiarized his words into their own doctrines, hence Xu Junyou’s sacrificial text has “quarreling over mats filling the hall, no longer the ten ladles and five feedings” used as one story. Reading Allegory and Lie Yukou together now truly melts ice. The second chapter of Liezi as we have it opens with Yukou feeding gruel, then adds Yang Zhu quarreling over mats—exactly matching Su’s words. Did Su write his essay with insight from this too?

Broadly, the strangeness of Zhuangzi’s book is not something later ages could garble at will; differing diction and form can be seen at a glance. Guo Xuan (Guo Xiang) said: talent of a single bent rashly patches in odd talk, like Yanyi, Yixiu zhi shou, Weiyan, Youfu, Zixu, and such chapters—of all clever miscellany, three parts in ten. Bibliographic Treatise in the Book of Han lists Zhuangzi in fifty-three chapters, as annotated by Sima Biao and the Meng school; the language is often fantastic, sometimes like the Classic of Mountains and Seas, sometimes like dream-divination books, so commentators took what they would; only the inner chapters all schools agree on. Set against this, is Su’s “obtuse” exactly so? Yanyi, Youfu, and such chapters no longer survive.

Cui’s edited Zhuangzi differs in wording in many places. In Free and Easy Wandering: after “the blind cannot share in the sight of patterns, the deaf cannot share in the sound of bells and drums” comes “the cross-eyed cannot share in the beauty of brows and eyes, the amputee does not make his own false patterned shoes”; in Equalizing Things: after “nothing is not so, nothing is not acceptable” comes “what may be may not be what may not be, what may not be may be what may be”; in Great Master: after “riding the eastern rope, straddling Sagittarius and Tail to rank among the stars” comes “born without parents, dead ascending far”; three years and the form vanishes—this speaks of spirit beyond naming; after “soundly asleep, suddenly awake” comes “suddenly sweating”; “reaching ease before laughter, offering laughter before pushing away”—one reading has “reaching the enemy before laughter, offering laughter before pushing”; “accept arrangement and go to transformation, thus entering the vast unity of heaven” reads “accept arrangement and transformation not reaching… not reaching… not reaching mat and divination, mat and divination then entering vast unity of heaven”; in Keeping All Under Heaven in Order: after “how do we know Zeng and Shi are not arrows for Jie and Zhi” comes “being and non-being generate each other, then how greatly are Zeng and Shi and Jie and Zhi all being and non-being, and how can they not mutually spur each other”—such differences often occur. Tradition says outer and miscellaneous chapters were much cut by Guo Xiang—is that his tampering? Or did other busybodies willfully patch and alter so?

Plain-Language Commentary

Yan Junping (Western Han Daoist and scholar, author of Laozi Zhigui) cites Zhuangzi in many places. For example he says: Before the cart overturns, the boy servant can still drive as usual; once it has plunged into a deep ditch, no number of men can save a single egg. While the egg is still unhatched, a finger can touch it lightly; when it has grown into a wild goose that beats its wings and mounts the clouds, even arrow and cord cannot reach it. While still in the womb, a single cord can tie it; when grown into a bull, nets and snares cannot hold it. A tiger can subdue a pack of beasts and devour oxen and horses—swords and precautions cannot stop it. Thus drops gathered long become rivers and seas; a small snake that does not die may become a divine dragon; small good deeds accumulated bring good fortune, small evils unchecked bring ruin.

He also says: That I am I—does it depend on this shell called “me”? What toils for the “body” is not the body itself—the body can exist because “I” am still here; that I can be I is because there is spirit; that spirit stays in me is because the Dao makes it so.

He also says: What the Dao begets and Heaven raises begins in “no-beginning,” is born from “no-birth,” abides in “no-abiding,” perishes in “no-perishing.”

He also says: Raising fortune, producing profit, completing success, finishing affairs, preparing things, and putting them to use were originally meant to make people greatly rich—yet the result is that under Heaven luxury and overstepping abound, goods and wealth run short, and the people grow uglier; fortune piled mountain-high and gold and jade heaped in stores, yet the state grows less secure and the people fewer; profit lures clever tricks, mutual deception and folly, coercion by fraud. Dikes against breach, debauchery, and treachery grow tighter; distinctions of same and different, right and wrong, multiply—the state darkens, government decays. Crafting arts, pursuing skills, carving patterns, strange transformations and marvels, to praise the virtuous and separate noble from base; clever fraud arises, outstanding talent grows stranger; orders deep, punishments harsh, penalties severe; flaying flesh, severing limbs; the distant not hidden, the near not harmonious; crime reaching extermination of kin, reward reaching enfeoffment as marquis—Heaven and Earth tremble, yet bandits multiply.

He also says: Hungry yet eating double, thirsty yet drinking hard, hot yet plunging into water, cold yet entering fire—though what is sought may remove the symptom, the body must die. A lump in the chest cannot be chiseled out, a disease in the throat cannot be peeled; a mosquito on the face cannot be shot at wildly, lice on the body cannot be hacked at randomly.

He also says: Sun and moon rise and set—their brightness is the same; people live and die—their form is of a kind; spring and autumn divide—their benefit is the same; sage and wild man, appearance can match; the open and the blocked, affairs can match; Daoist and newborn, achievement can match. In all these cases, inner difference but outer sameness—only a sage can tell them apart.

He also says: Yin alone without yang—nothing is born; yang alone without yin—nothing is completed. The way of Heaven and Earth: every beginning must have an end, every end must have a beginning.

He also says: An infant knows nothing, yet toward an enemy still keeps loyalty and trust; when grown and knowing, he deceives elder brother and sister-in-law. When the three armies are triumphant, subordinates are like captive soldiers; beasts in a exhausted ravine do not flee rhinoceros and tiger—affairs are not easy, yet principle is so.

None of the above sayings appear in the received Zhuangzi. According to the Art Catalogue in the Hanshu, the original Zhuangzi had fifty-three chapters; Guo Xiang (Wei-Jin scholar) cut its “clever clutter” and fixed it at thirty-three chapters—what survives is only about one quarter. Yan Junping’s book is earlier than Guo Xiang; what he cites should be lost chapters—this can be known.

Su Shi (style Dongpo) said the four chapters Rang Wang, Shuo Jian, Dao Zhi, and Yu Fu are forged; Luo Miandao (Song) also suspected Ke Yi and Shan Xing are shallow, fixing the authentic total at twenty-six chapters. Broadly, fine and coarse in wording stand clearly apart. If what Yan Junping cites was deleted by Guo Xiang, there is no room for doubt. Alas—Guo Xiang was truly a sharp judge.

Zhuangzi Yi, Inner Chapters, Chapter 1: Xiaoyaoyou (Free and Easy Wandering)

This work is included in the Qing dynasty Imperially Commissioned Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku Quanshu); the author is the Ming dynasty scholar Jiao Hong.

Xiaoyaoyou is the opening chapter of the Zhuangzi inner chapters. Guo Xiang, the Jin dynasty commentator on the Zhuangzi, notes beneath this chapter title that however great the difference in size among things, as long as each rests in its own zi de (self-contentment according to its nature) and acts in accord with its inborn disposition, all alike share one and the same xiaoyao (free and easy wandering): the small need not envy the large, nor need the large suppress the small; each fulfilling its allotted role and bringing its capacity to full use—that is xiaoyao.

The text also records that in older manuscripts “xiaoyao” was sometimes written as “xiao yao” (using different characters for the same sound). Huang Jifu explains: “xiao” is like yang qi (vital yang energy) stirring and ice gradually melting—though there is expenditure, the root is not harmed; “yao” is like a boat moving on water and the waves rippling—though there is motion, the inside of the boat is not injured. Only one who truly recognizes and lives the Dao (the Way) can move through the world with such ease. Huang Jifu’s reading of the two characters “xiao” and “yao” aligns with Guo Xiang’s point above that “each in its proper place, xiaoyao is one.”

Opening of Zhuangzi, “Free and Easy Wandering” (with the gist of wing-commentary traditions)

In the far north lies a vast, dark sea. Legend says that in it lives a fish called Kun, so huge that no one knows whether it measures thousands of li or not. It transforms into a bird called Peng, whose back likewise spans thousands of li. When it spreads its wings and rises, they are like clouds hanging to the horizon. This bird waits for haiyun—when the sea surges and a great wind wells up from the depths—before it flies south toward the Ming, the dark deep sea. That dark sea in the south is the Tianchi (Heaven’s Pool), a natural great basin that stands for a lofty, far realm.

Qi Xie (either a person’s name or the title of a book of marvels) records strange events. It says: when Peng flies toward the southern Ming, its wings strike the water and raise waves three thousand li high; riding the fuyao (a whirlwind that shoots upward) it climbs ninety thousand li into the sky, and must fly for a full six months before it can rest. The yema (“wild horses”) that move through heaven and earth—the drifting breath of the air—and the dust that rises are all things stirred by one another through xi (breath, airflow). Is the sky so blue because that is its true color? Or does it only look that way because the distance is endless and the eye cannot see the end? When Peng looks down from that height, it probably sees the same boundless blur that people see when they look up from the ground—nothing certain.

The gist of commentaries associated with Guo Xiang and others: whether Kun and Peng ever existed as literal creatures need not be pressed. Zhuangzi’s point is carefree wandering through wuwei (non-action) and each being at peace in its xingfen (allotted nature, what is proper to one’s kind). The logic of the extremely small and the extremely large is the same. Peng cannot lodge its body except in the dark sea, and cannot bear its wings except at ninety thousand li—not for spectacle, but as the natural rule that “great things must arise in great places.” Wings so vast need the fuyao to reach ninety thousand li; only after half a year’s flight does it rest in the Tianchi. Wild horses and dust are all the breath on which Peng relies. People do not know how far heaven extends or whether its color is “true”; Peng looking down from above may not know its own “height” either—it simply stops where it stops and heads south.

Expositions in the kouyi (oral explanation) tradition say: this passage uses Kun and Peng’s transformation to express vastness of spirit and rising above petty strife—once you know heaven and earth are so wide, the self is no more than one grain in a great storehouse. Peng must wait for the great wind of the sixth month’s sea surge before migrating south; the numbers are all hyperbole. The lines on wild horses and dust prepare the ground: people look up and see an endless blue that may not be the “true” color but only what sight reaches; when Peng is in the sky and looks down, people and wild horses and dust may seem as hazy to it as the sky seems to us—all to convey extreme height and distance, not to assert a real bird of that kind.

A Personal View

What must change cannot escape change; what must fly cannot escape flight—both are pushed by the “heavenly mechanism” (tianji), not by human calculation. Those whom creation (zaohua) pushes along often do not understand it themselves.

Zhuangzi says the peng “flies in fury” (nu er fei); here “nu” is not losing one’s temper or crying out against injustice, but moving only when compelled: driven by the dual qi of yin and yang (“the two qi”), the motion is sudden and swift, so it looks like “fury,” when in fact qi is doing the driving. Things stored too long must burst forth; things bent too long must straighten—it is not that one dislikes a settled life and deliberately stirs trouble. All things take form within the Great Transforming (dahua), following the waxing and waning of yin-yang qi and the turn of fullness and emptiness; the pattern cannot be evaded.

In “Discourse on Making Things Equal” (Qiwu lun), “the myriad openings roar” (wan qiao nu hao); in “External Things” (Waiwu), plants and trees “burst” (nu) into growth—the same idiom. Laozi’s “the ten thousand things arise together” (wanwu bing zuo) means the same. From this we see “six months of breath” (liu yue xi): there is not only the “fury” side but also the “rest/breath” (xi) side. The world only sees the peng’s “furious” flight and not the six months of “xi” before it; it only knows “arising” (zuo) and not “returning” (fu), so it drifts from carefree wandering (xiaoyao) and day by day squeezes into “deliberate action” (youwei)—affairs breeding affairs, troubles breeding troubles, wearing out life and body without turning back— truly lamentable.

Guan Yinzi said: however vast heaven and earth may be, they can only command what has form; they cannot command what is formless. To be less tugged by yin-yang dual qi, one must grasp this while the “dark fish” (ming yu, the kun) has not yet become the peng—while still hidden, before form and flight, first understand “xi” (rest/breath).

Supplementary Notes (two points)

“Departs on the breath of six months” (qu yi liu yue xi) and “living things are blown by each other’s breath” (shengwu yi xi xiang chui)—the two “xi” share one meaning: breath, rhythm. For humans, breath is respiration; for creation, breath is the four seasons. “Departs on the breath of six months” means when the great wind rises in the sixth month, the peng rides that gust southward. “Living things are blown by each other’s breath” is like Laozi’s “between heaven and earth—is it not like a bellows (tuoyue)?”—heaven and earth like a wind-box, the ten thousand things moved by this in-and-out “xi.” Some commentators take “sixth month” as half a year and “xi” as stopping still—mostly because they did not read the later “xi” together with “fu” (return).

Supplementary Notes (continued)

Again: both “xi” mean breath and rhythm; human xi is breathing, heaven’s xi is the four seasons. “Living things are blown by each other’s breath” is the bellows image in Laozi. Explaining “sixth month” as half a year and “xi” as cessation often comes from not threading Zhuangzi’s later whole line of “xi—zuo—fu” (rest—arising—return).

Water must gather deep enough before a large vessel can float on it; when the water is too shallow, no matter how large the ship, it cannot be carried. Pour a cup of water into a low spot in front of the hall, and a blade of grass can serve as a boat; place a cup on it and it seems glued to the ground—not because the cup is too large, but because the water is too shallow relative to the vessel.

Wind must likewise accumulate thick enough before the great peng bird’s vast wings can be lifted by it. Thus when the peng flies ninety thousand li, the wind builds beneath it; with its back against the blue sky and nothing to block its way, it then turns south.

The cicada and the little dove mock it: “We fly up from a tree and come down again; sometimes we cannot even reach our goal and have to land on the ground—why fly ninety thousand li south?” Someone going to the nearby outskirts needs only three meals for the round trip and returns still full; going a hundred li requires pounding rice overnight; going a thousand li means hoarding provisions for three months. How could these two small creatures understand such things?

Petty understanding cannot match great understanding, nor short life long life—but how do we know? The morning mushroom (a large fungus that lives and dies in a day, also called jigu in some places) does not know how many days a month holds; the cicada that lives from spring to summer or summer to autumn does not know how many seasons a year holds—this is what is called a “small year.” In the south of Chu there is a sacred tree called “Great Chun,” which takes five hundred years for one spring and five hundred years for one autumn; in high antiquity there was also Great Chun, which took eight thousand years for one spring and eight thousand years for one autumn. Yet Peng Zu (tradition says his surname was Ji and given name Keng, enfeoffed at Pengcheng under Yao, living until the Shang dynasty, about seven hundred years) is still famous for longevity today—when ordinary people compare themselves to him, is it not pitiful?

The notes add glosses to help read the original text: “aotang” refers to a low place like a small embankment; “jiao” means stuck to the ground; “tiao” is the cicada; “xuejiu” is the small dove; “jueqi” is to rise swiftly in flight; “qiang yu fang” is to brush against elm and sandalwood trees; “kong yu di” is to land on the ground; “mangcang” means the nearby outskirts; “guo” means full. Cui’s commentary links “tang” with “fang” (embankment); Zhi Dun says “you fang” resembles the shape of a small mound—schools differ on individual characters, but the main point remains: when water is shallow and wind thin, only small things can be borne; to travel far and carry great weight, one must first “accumulate thickness.”

Peng’s ability to soar so high comes down to nothing more than the size of its wings. Where endowment is small, what it relies on need not be great; where endowment is large, what it employs still cannot do without the small. Hence there is a principle of utmost fitness, and things have fixed limits—each is enough for its use, and the outcome is the same.

If one loses what truly governs life yet seeks a livelihood outside that proper sphere—undertaking what one’s strength cannot bear, acting against one’s true disposition—then even with wings spanning the sky one cannot reach the boundless; bursting upward to fly, one still cannot escape distress.

That it now plans to fly south is not from loving height or coveting distance, but because unless wind gathers, the way to heaven is blocked. The farther one must go in three meals and three nights’ travel, the more provisions must be stockpiled; the larger the wings, the thicker the accumulated Qi must be.

“The two creatures” mean Peng and the cicada. Large and small are relative, yet their inclinations differ just as much. That their inclinations differ—does knowing the difference make the difference? Each simply does not know why it is so; that is all. This is the gist of Free and Easy Wandering.

Years and wisdom do not match; the gap can be vast like this. Compared with ordinary people, what they grieve can also be grieved; yet ordinary people never grieve in this way, because each nature has its own limit. Once one knows that limit, not a hair’s breadth can be crossed—what in the world remains to grieve?

Things never become large because they wish to be small, or small because they must envy the large. So when we note the contrast of small and great, each has its allotted place, beyond the reach of envious wanting. The burden of envy can be cut off here. Grief arises from burden; when burden ends, grief departs—and never has anyone whose grief departed remained unsettled in nature and life.

From here down to Liezi, the text repeatedly contrasts the small and great in years and wisdom, each side trusting its own measure, none able to overturn the other. Then it gathers everything under the person who “waits for nothing”: letting go of that, forgetting self, merging the many differences so that different paths alike are attained while one claims no fame or merit. What unifies small and great is what is neither small nor great. If small and great still remain, then even Peng and the marsh quail, office-holder and wind-rider, are alike burdensome things.

To equalize life and death is to be beyond death and life. If life and death still remain, then even the great cassia tree and the short-lived cicada, Peng Zu and the morning mushroom, are alike in their brevity. Thus to wander where there is neither small nor great is the infinite; to be merged in neither death nor life is the without limit.

If “free wandering” is still tied to a fixed direction, then even when released to wander, there is an end—it is not yet true non-going.

New Transmission

Among people under heaven, petty cleverness cannot match great wisdom, and a short life cannot match a long one—just as the morning fungus that lives no more than a day and night cannot compare to the hui cicada that survives a season; the mingling tortoise (in legend, five hundred years for one spring and five hundred for one autumn) still falls short of the great chun tree that takes eight thousand years as one spring and eight thousand as one autumn; and a child who dies young cannot compare to Peng Zu, who lived eight hundred years.

Yet from the standpoint of the truth that there is originally neither great nor small, neither death nor birth, all of these are merely the burden of having a physical form. Since what is real is not in the length or shortness of the body, how can one still speak of who “falls short” of whom, or who is “not as good” as whom?

Tracing the Root

Tiao: blackish in color, calling in the fifth month—this is the tiao (cicada). Chan: streaked on the body, calling only after the seventh month—this is the chan (cicada). Bluish in color is called diaoliao (pronounced roughly like “diao liao”). Sources also say it is transformed from dung beetles, water insects, or qicao (grubs), and similar accounts.

(Following Zhuangzi’s parable of “small and great, short and long life”) If one fixes on bodily traces and lifespan to rank high and low, there will be “falling short” and “not as good”; if one awakens to the principle of no small and no great, no death and no birth, then all alike are the weariness of having form—among them there is originally nothing to call higher or lower.

This passage is a line-by-line commentary on names and allusions in the Zhuangzi passage on the “debate between small and great,” in the style of scholarly notes.

The cicada (tiao) and related insects

The black one that chirps in the fifth month is called tiao; the striped one that chirps only after the seventh month is called chan (cicada); the greenish one is called diaogu (a kind of cicada). Some say they transform from dlang (dung beetles), water insects, or qicao (grubs) and the like.

The xiejuan (lit. “magpie-dove”)

Xie is the mountain magpie; in shape it resembles the jiu (turtle-dove), hence the compound xiejuan. Guo Pu’s note on the Yueling (Monthly Ordinances) says: the mingjiu resembles the mountain magpie but is slightly smaller, with a short tail, bluish black, and a frequent call; people in Jiangdong call it huzhou. The Yueling for mid-spring says “the hawk transforms into a jiu”; the Wangzhi for mid-autumn says “the jiu transforms into a hawk”; in the Zuozhuan, Du Yu glosses shuangjiu as hawk—because the two creatures were traditionally said to transform into each other, a jiu could also be called a hawk. These two insects can “transform,” and their bodies are small, so Zhuangzi sets them against the kun and peng to show that the small cannot comprehend the great.

Morning mushrooms (zhaojun)

Jun is fungi that grow from the ground; large ones are called zhong□ (character damaged in the text), small ones jun. Because they sprout in the morning and die by evening, they are called morning mushrooms (zhaojun).

Huigu (short-lived cicada)

This too is a kind of cicada. The Tongzhi briefly says: hanliao is properly named huigu; in the ninth and tenth months its cry is shrill and urgent—the line in a minor Xiaoshan poem, “Huigu chirps with a mournful sound, at year’s end it finds no peace,” refers to this. Zhuangzi’s huigu “does not know spring and autumn” means the small cicada that chirps in the fourth and fifth months and is purplish blue.

The Dark Spirit (mingling)

Ming is the southern dark sea; ling means the spirit turtle. Lin, feng, gui, long (unicorn, phoenix, tortoise, dragon) are the Four Spirit Beasts; mingling is the spirit turtle of the dark sea. Zhuangzi pairs morning mushrooms with the great chun (camphor/Toona tree) and huigu with mingling—one moving, one plant, set against each other. On this basis mingling is an animal (the turtle), not a plant.

The reckoning of years

“Five hundred years count as one spring, five hundred as one autumn”: according to the Shiji, turtles live a thousand years and their bodies are one chi two cun long; the two “five hundreds” together make the thousand-year span.

“Eight thousand years as one spring, eight thousand as one autumn”: some split the character for chun (camphor tree) into two “eight hundreds,” multiply by ten, and get two “eight thousands”—such arithmetic is mostly the commentator’s huaji (playful/wordplay), numbers hit upon by chance, like the character game of “the character hai has two heads and six bodies”; readers often do not notice.

Shang Tang, the legendary sage king of antiquity, once questioned Ji (identified by some as Xia Ge, a worthy of Tang’s era—the Liezi uses this name). What follows is a discussion related to such exchanges.

North of “Qiongfa”—a land so barren that not a hair grows, at the far north—lies a dark sea called the Tianchi (Heavenly Pool). In it lives a fish called Kun, thousands of li across; no one can say how long it is. There is also a bird called Peng, whose back is as vast as Mount Tai and whose wings are like clouds hanging to the horizon. Riding the whirlwind (fuyao), spiraling upward like a ram’s horn, it rises ninety thousand li, pierces the clouds, bears the blue sky on its back, and only then turns south toward the Southern Sea.

A small bird—the chiyue, flitting among wormwood and artemisia—mocked it: “Where is it trying to go? When I leap up, I reach only a few zhang before falling back, hopping among the wormwood—that’s as far as flight gets for me. Where else could it be going?” That is the difference between small and great.

Thus those whose talent suffices for one office, whose conduct fits one village, whose virtue matches one lord, and whose ability can persuade one state—they see themselves much like that little bird. Song Rongzi (a scholar of Song in the Warring States period) would still laugh at them: even if the whole world praised him, he would not push harder; even if the whole world condemned him, he would not grow despondent. He could distinguish the boundary between inner (one’s own judgment of right and wrong) and outer (others’ opinions), and clarify the terrain of honor and disgrace—enough for him. He did not anxiously chase worldly fame and gain. Even so, he had not reached the furthest point.

Liezi (the figure from Zheng in Daoist lore who could ride the wind) traveled on the wind, light and easy, and returned only after fifteen days. He too was not keen on seeking blessings. Though spared walking, he still had something to depend on—he still relied on the wind.

As for one who accords with the “correctness” that is heaven and earth’s own nature, who rides the transformations of the six qi—Yin, Yang, wind, rain, dark, and light—and wanders in the boundless—what would he still depend on? Hence it is said: the zhiren ( perfected person) has no fixation on “self”; the shenren (spirit person) achieves without deliberate effort; the shengren ( sage) leaves no trace of seeking a name.

Guo Xiang’s commentary explains: King Tang questioned Ji (a figure from ancient legend); Zhuangzi also wrote a similar episode. The gist is that each thing has its own limit and proper place; go along with that and things run smoothly—so Zhuangzi treated the question itself as fitting.

Xiangxiu (some say “old commentary” here in general) once said: two kinds of insects have different wings, so the places they reach differ—some fly to the celestial pool, others are content merely among elm and camphor trees. Each is enough in accord with its own form and does not understand why it is so. When we speak now of large and small, each has an inborn nature; it is not a matter of standing on tiptoe envying what one can reach, and each rests in its innate endowment without grieving over mutual difference—hence the stress again on this point. The way they regard themselves is the same: like a bird at ease in its own corner.

Song Rongzi (Warring States figure of the Song–Yin school, who advocated “forbid attack and condemn aggression”) could still be laughed at because he had not yet reached the level of equalizing identification—hence the laughter. Neither universal praise nor blame could move him to advance or be downcast, because he truly knew he was thus by nature; to discern inner from outer was to take the self as inner and the external as outer; to distinguish the domains of honor and disgrace was to locate honor in oneself and disgrace in others. “That is all” (si yi yi) meant one could not go beyond this stage. Not anxiously pursuing things in the world (“shu shu” means frequently grasping) came from being content with one’s natural sufficiency, hence keeping distance from the vulgar world. “Still not yet” (you wei) means one could only hold to one’s own rightness and could not yet achieve “nothing is impossible.”

“Lingran” describes a light, graceful, floating air. “Fifteen days to return” shows: one who still depends on something, even if riding the wind, cannot traverse the world in a single watch of the day—yet that travel is still natural, not a deliberate, frequent striving; without wind one cannot go, so one must still wait on something. Only one who rides upon everything and does not fail to ride anything is without reliance.

Heaven and Earth are the collective name of the myriad things. Heaven and Earth take the myriad things as their substance, and the myriad things must take spontaneity (ziran) as their proper standard. Thus the great peng can soar high, the skittish quail can stay low, the great chion can live long, the morning mushroom can live short—all are capacities of nature, not capacities of deliberate effort. Ability without acting yet naturally able—hence what is correct. Therefore “riding the correctness of Heaven and Earth” means following the nature of the myriad things; “ steering the transformations of the six qi” means roaming the path of change. Proceed thus—where is there an end? Wherever one meets, one rides; why wait again? This is the person of supreme virtue, merging with things and equalizing self and other in xiaoyao (free and easy wandering).

If one still waits on something, then even one as light and subtle as Liezi cannot travel without wind and must have what he relies on before he can wander freely—how much more so the great peng? Only one who merges with things and follows the great transformations can be without reliance and constantly unobstructed. And is it only oneself who is unobstructed? One must also guide those who still wait, so they do not lose what they wait on; if what they wait on is not lost, they align with the great thoroughfare. Waiting and not waiting are not something I can forcibly equalize; as for each resting in its nature, the spontaneous mechanism unfolding of its own, receiving without noticing—those are not something I can forcibly distinguish. Not waiting is still insufficient to set it utterly apart from waiting—how much more the large and small among those who wait? Not waiting, therefore following things; following things to the utmost, when principle is complete traces vanish. Now to follow without assisting, to be one with ultimate principle—that is why there is no deliberate achievement. “Sage” is merely the name for “each thing obtaining its nature”—it is not yet enough to name the reason it obtains its nature.

It is said again that one must guide those who wait so they do not lose what they wait on; if what they wait on is not lost, they align with the great thoroughfare. Waiting and not waiting—I cannot equalize; as for each resting in its nature, the spontaneous mechanism unfolding, receiving without knowing—I cannot differentiate by force. Not waiting is still insufficient to mark off waiting—how much more the size of those who wait? Not waiting, therefore following things; following things to arrival, when principle arrives traces vanish. Now to follow without assisting, to be one with ultimate principle—that is why there is no achievement. The sage is only the name for things obtaining their nature—not yet enough to name how they obtain it.

Xiaoyao (carefree wandering) describes the state of mind of the zhiren—someone who has penetrated the Great Dao and roams in unity with Heaven and Earth. When Zhuangzi speaks of the Dao, he uses the great peng bird and the little quail as images: the peng spreads its wings to follow an immensely open path of nourishing life and preserving the whole self, so it may seek a suitable mode beyond the physical form; the little quail stays close by, mocks long flights, and in its heart still carries self-praise and belittling of others.

The zhiren follows tianzheng—the natural right way. With a broad heart, they wander in boundless freedom. Toward external things they employ things without being employed by things—they meet the myriad things yet are not bound by them—so even distant affairs cannot tie them down; it is not that “I” am being dragged along. Within, they are not pulled by stray thoughts; without haste they are naturally clear and penetrating, so everywhere things fit and nothing is twisted or strained. This is what is called xiaoyao.

As for people driven by desire, getting a little seems enough; they quickly delight in whatever they have gained, which looks like innocence but is like a hungry person stuffing one meal or a thirsty person gulping one cup—it is not truly forgetting that daily life still needs dry provisions, or that sacrificial rites still require food and wine. If inwardly there is no genuine sufficiency (not a moment’s satisfaction but inherent completeness), how can one speak of xiaoyao?

Note: The “peng” and “yan” (little quail) come from Zhuangzi, “Xiaoyouyou”; “employ things without being employed by things” is a Zhuangzi formula meaning to use outer things without being ruled by them. Zhi Daolin was an Eastern Jin eminent monk who expounded Zhuangzi through Buddhist ideas; this passage contrasts the zhiren’s xiaoyao with the temporary satisfaction of the desirous. The source text appears to have repetition and corrupted characters; this reading follows the usual sense.

Xuxi’s explanation: Zhuangzi first placed the meaning of his allegory in the Qi Harmonies, yet still felt that insufficient, and entrusted it again to King Tang of Shang—meaning: if you do not believe, you may ask someone else for confirmation. Song Rongzi belongs to this type of person, yet he still does not count as carefree wandering. Even if Liezi can ride the wind and travel, he still does not count as carefree wandering. Only when one is wholly without dependence may it be called “wandering.” The earlier talk of needing to “nurture the wind” (rely on wind power) likewise still falls short of carefree wandering. The peng is the beginning of “wandering”; setting out ten thousand li, one first sees the color of the sky; at that point even the peng is hardly worth dwelling on. “Not yet established” means one still leans on something and has not yet left behind right and wrong. “Light and free” means one is already outside the right-and-wrong of the human world; using the body to command qi still means one has not left qi behind. “Riding the correctness of Heaven and Earth” means standing at the origin of the ten thousand things—above the single qi, with no yin or yang, no wind or rain, no dark or bright; though Heaven and Earth are born together with me and the ten thousand things exist for me alone, this is not lodging the physical body in external things. The perfect person has no self—once there is no “self,” whence come fame and merit?

Xinchuan’s explanation: The kun-peng plans to fly south; the skittering quail leaps upward—the great and small differ, hence “this is the distinction of small and great.” Kun-peng and skittering quail each have their own body, so each in its way is not carefree wandering; yet can carefree wandering be apart from each one’s own body? It is only that each silently attains its limit, and then all is carefree wandering; if one is burdened by one’s body, then all is hardship. Thus carefree wandering and hardship seem to turn on a single “understood” versus “not understood.”

Bicheng’s explanation: The perfect person knows—within, merging with all minds and extinguishing so that nothing is lodged; hence “no self.” The spirit person fully completes the Dao and then moves among the ten thousand things while marvelous function stays hidden; hence “no merit.” The sage forgets the Dao; spirit transforms in vastness until nothing can be grasped; hence “no name.”

Yao wished to yield the empire to Xu You and said: “The sun and moon have already risen, yet the torches still burn—trying to outshine the sun and moon, would that not be futile? The season’s rains have already fallen, yet one still hauls water to soak the fields—trying to outdo the rain in moistening, would that not be wasted effort? You need only stand up and the world is at peace, while I still occupy the throne like an empty shell. I see myself as lacking in virtue; please take the empire.”

Xu You replied: “You have governed the empire, and it is already well ordered. If I took your place, would that not be for the sake of a name? A name is the follower of reality—why should I play that follower? The wren nests in the deep forest and needs only one branch; the mole-rat drinks at the river and fills its belly and stops. Go back and rest—the empire is no use to me. It is like a kitchen: though the cook is away, the sacrificial stand-in does not step over the chopping block and cauldron to wield the ladles in his place.”

Guo Xiang notes the following:

The one who can bring great order to the world does not achieve it by “managing the world day after day.” Yao governed the world through “non-governance”—without forcing order, the world naturally fell into place. Xu You understood that the world was already well ordered, so there was no need to replace Yao and rule; the real effect of governing the world was already in Yao, which is why we have sayings like “Yao could govern the world.” Governing comes from “not governing”; acting comes from wuwei (non-action). What was needed was already complete in Yao—why borrow Xu You?

If one thinks that only retreating into the mountains and folding one’s hands in silence counts as wuwei, that is the language of the Laozi–Zhuangzi line, which those in power (dangtu) will not adopt; they must work within the realm of purposeful action and will not return to that mountain-and-forest wuwei.

One who “takes charge of himself” stands opposed to things; one who “follows things” has no opposition to them. Yao had no opposing counterpart in the world; Xu You stood alongside figures like Hou Ji and Qi—each secure in his place. Why? One who guards against things needs everything to depend on him; he responds with no deliberate mind, only as stimulation arises—like a boat with no mooring, drifting east or west without deciding for itself. Thus it is not that a ruler must “refuse to walk the same path as the people,” nor that one is not ruler of the world unless one “never goes anywhere”; to rule thus, lofty as Heaven, is the virtue of a ruler.

If one stands alone on a high peak and clings to one sectarian bias, one is still an ordinary thing among the vulgar—merely Yao’s “outer minister.” To put an outer minister in place of the inner sovereign is name without reality.

“The wren nests in one branch; the mole drinks its fill from the belly”—this means each nature has its limit; enough is enough, and one need not hoard the wealth of the world. Yao and Xu You alike in “equality that needs no use,” yet Yao alone saw that “the broad-minded have no fixed direction,” so the world gladly upheld him without growing weary.

The cook and the sacrificial officer each keep their duties; birds, beasts, and the myriad things each receive what suffices; Emperor Yao and Xu You each rest in what they meet—this is the most truthful state of the world. When each obtains its reality, what more is there to do? Only self-fulfillment. Thus Yao, Xu You, and Heaven and Earth differ in form, yet are one in carefree wandering (xiaoyao).

Lu’s Annotation

From Xu You’s perspective: though he revered Wuwei (non-action), he was not incapable of deliberate action; hence when Yao invited him to govern the world, he would not have been suspicious of the offer. From Yao’s perspective: Yao wished to act, yet in acting he never departed from the way of Wuwei; thus even when the world was already at peace, he still refused to monopolize credit for himself. To win the world through a “non-disturbing” approach and thereby bring peace to the world—this is the true meaning of Wuwei.

On Yao’s side: though in Wuwei, he was not unable to act, so he invited Xu You to govern the world, and Xu You would not have doubted him. On Yao’s side: wishing to act, yet not stepping outside Wuwei; the world was already well ordered, yet he still would not accept the throne. To take the world through non-interference and have the world well governed—this is Wuwei in substance. If, once the world was already well ordered, one still sought to replace Yao, that would be “taking the world and acting upon it”—it could not succeed; it would merely borrow the name of Wuwei. Name is the guest of reality—would one truly serve that name? Thus when he acted, the four seas and nine provinces gladly upheld him and he did not deem himself more than enough; when he was in Wuwei, one branchful satisfied his belly and he retired in peace and did not deem himself less than enough. Therefore, by “making no use of the world” as his deed, Yao approved of him—hence his carefree ease.

Wang Dan’s Discussion

Heaven proceeds from Wuwei; human beings proceed from deliberate action. Those in Wuwei take deliberate action as a burden; those in deliberate action take Wuwei as their root. When Yao acted, he was Son of Heaven and possessed the world—he did not count that as surplus; in Wuwei, by “making no use of the world” as his deed, Yao approved of him—hence his carefree ease. What heaven does is like sun and moon traversing the sky and the four seasons running their course; what humans do is like a small torch or watering by hand. Yao thought Xu You could govern the world yet did not dare claim the merit for himself; Xu You thought Yao could govern the world yet would not take his place—then who ultimately governed the world? If governance lay with Yao, that was deliberate action with Wuwei as its substance; if governance lay with You, that was Wuwei yet containing deliberate action. The Dao in a sage manifests outward like Yao, or hides like Xu You—why must one be valued and the other slighted?

Personal View

Yao compared his merit to a torch and to watering—humility pushed to the extreme; how could he have the throne at heart? Xu You likened what sufficed for him to the wren—measuring that his own portion was already enough; how could he have been one who grasps at wealth and rank? With the sage Yao on the throne, there was Xu You in the wilds—temperaments responding to each other follows its own principle. Sages do not weigh office and withdrawal as high or low; they decide stay or leave by principle and meaning—this bears on whether the Dao expands or contracts and whether the times fit. Had Xu You gladly accepted the abdication, he could still have sat in dignity in the ancestral hall; had Yao smoothly yielded the throne, he could still have hidden his light in deepest antiquity—the saying “name is the guest of reality” can awaken the dream of Handan and still the quarrel of the horned snail, and also lets later people imagine the joy of Mount Ji and the Ying waters—yet even “one gourd, wind in the trees” still feels like a burden. In the end the metaphor is “the officiant at the sacrifice does not step over the altar to take the cook’s place”: each keeps his place, each is content with his lot, and the world is without trouble—all return together to carefree ease.

Jian Wu asked Lian Shu: “I heard Jie Yu (the Chu recluse Lu Tong) speak. His words were vast yet never touched the ground, and once uttered they could not be taken back. I was frightened listening— they seemed as boundless as the Milky Way and utterly remote from ordinary human affairs.”

Lian Shu asked: “What did he say?”

Jian Wu replied: “He said that on Mount Miaoguye—a legendary mountain impossibly far away—spirit-men dwell: their skin is clear as ice and snow, their bearing light as an unmarried maiden’s. They eat no grain but inhale wind and drink dew; they ride cloud-qi and drive flying dragons, roaming beyond the four seas. With spirit concentrated and gathered, they keep the ten thousand things from harm and bring the five grains to ripeness. I took this for empty talk and refused to believe it.”

Lian Shu said: “Of course. A blind man cannot appreciate patterned splendor; a deaf man cannot enjoy bells and drums— is it only the body that can be deaf or blind? The mind can be ‘deaf’ and ‘blind’ too. Jie Yu’s words are exactly that for you. Someone whose talent and virtue are not yet deep wants to embrace all things and unify the realm under Heaven, yet to whom would he look for order and disorder? And who would bustle about treating ‘governing the realm’ as something that must be done? Spirit-men are not injured by outer things: when great floods reach the sky they do not drown them; when drought melts metal and stone and scorches hills to cinders they do not burn them. Trifles on their persons like dust or chaff can still refine and cast sage-kings in the mold of Yao and Shun. Who would still take ‘serving outer things’ as life’s main task?”

He gave another example: “A man of Song brought zhangfu (Yin-dynasty ceremonial caps) to sell in Yue; the Yue people cropped their hair and tattooed their bodies—they had no use for such hats.”

And of Yao: “When Yao governed the realm, the people were secure and the realm within the seas was at peace, yet he went to Mount Miaoguye and south of the Fen River to visit the ‘Four Masters’ (commentators often identify them as Wang Ni, Nie Que, Bei Yi, Xu You—mostly allegorical figures). When Yao returned, he was unsettled and empty, as if he had forgotten ‘the realm under Heaven’ altogether.”

Main drift (including commentators’ intent): What Jie Yu calls the “spirit-man,” in the view of Guo Xiang and others, is really an allegorical image of the “sage”: not literally abstaining from grain, but receiving the subtle qi of nature; not necessarily voyaging far overseas—in quiet spirit one is one body with the four seas, riding yin-yang and mastering the six qi, dwelling among people yet driving the ten thousand things. “Spirit concentrated” means spirit gathers and each thing finds its place; ordinary people judge by sight alone and treat supreme speech as madness—that is the deafness and blindness of “knowing.” The sage penetrates the nature of all things and accomplishes the governance of Yao and Shun through Wuwei (non-action), not by toiling to “take things as one’s business.” Outer things cannot harm him because he rests in what he meets and does not cling to injury. Yao did not reject the realm—his heart wandered in the utmost distance and did not hang its name on “governing the realm”; people only saw Yao wearing the jade seal and ordering civil affairs, not knowing he was darkly one with the spirit-man. The Four Masters and the spirit-man are metaphors set beyond the farthest reach of sight and hearing, showing that true carefree wandering (xiaoyao) lies not in standing aloof on high, cut off from the vulgar, but in roaming the boundless without dependence (wudai).

Plain-Language Reading of Zhuangzi Yi (Wings of Zhuangzi)

Fan Wuyin (1)

Using “mountain” as a figure for the body: those who treat keeping the body pure and refusing to drift with the vulgar world as the highest state belong among valley-and-hill recluses—not people of wúdài (non-reliance, freedom from depending on externals). Such persons are not fit to speak of the utmost or to roam in the boundless.

Fan Wuyin (2)

Again “mountain” stands for the body; Mount Miǎogūyè suggests remoteness and depth. The shénrén (spirit person) is what is most numinous within the body. If one can seek that utmost numinosity in the hidden and subtle, then living without grain, sipping wind and dew, riding clouds and dragons, and roaming the four seas is not empty exaggeration. If one only seeks outward, is that not going much too far?

Editorial View (Guānjiàn)

“Flesh like ice and snow”: the body holds pure simplicity, and worldly grime cannot stain it. “Slender grace like a maiden”: by keeping softness one preserves oneself, and harm cannot reach one. “No grain, wind for food and dew for drink”: cutting off vulgar flavors and taking in heaven and earth’s clear coolness. “Riding clouds and dragons, roaming the four seas”: rising through empty space and merging in silence with primordial qì—this is what is meant by arriving without walking and wandering with the Maker of things.

“Spirit concentrated so things suffer no blight and the year’s grain ripens”: at the extreme of nurturing shén (spirit), one not only completes oneself but also assists heaven and earth in transformation and supports the spontaneous growth of the ten thousand things. This is the effect of extending oneself to things; hence spirit merges with what cannot be fathomed and accords with the Dào beyond fixed form.

If one is shifted by names and appearances and seeks “mountain” beyond the farthest reaches, then the so-called spirit person only grows more distant. The line about “dust, chaff, and husks molding Yáo and Shùn” seems to slight Yáo and Shùn; traced to its intent, it actually exalts them to the highest degree. The Yáo and Shùn the world praises are only names for that dust and chaff; the reality of Yáo and Shùn cannot be captured by name and form.

Tracing the Root (Xúnběn)

“Greatly like the distance from path to courtyard”: jìng is the road before the gate, tíng is the ground outside the hall—path and courtyard are not far apart. Jiēyú’s words differ greatly from ordinary speech, like the gap between path and courtyard; the distinction between name and reality also lies in this sort of thing.

【Following the Original Text】

“Ting and jing” originally meant the small path before the gate and the open ground of the courtyard—the path and the courtyard are not really far apart. What Jie Yu (Madman Jie of Chu) said, compared with ordinary talk, is like the gap between “jing” and “ting”: not a matter of how far words travel, but how far apart the meaning is.

The Great Gourd

Huishi said to Zhuangzi: The king of Wei gave me seeds of a great gourd. I planted them, and the fruit could hold five shi (a measure of capacity, roughly enough for five shi of grain). Filled with water it was too stiff to lift; split open as a dipper, the shell was flat and thin and held little. It was not that it was not big—I thought it useless and smashed it.

Zhuangzi said: You really do not know how to use “big.” In Song there was someone who knew how to make a drug that kept hands from cracking in winter (for washing cloth in the cold). His family for generations made a living bleaching floss (fine cotton wadding, used for padding). A traveler heard of it and offered a hundred in gold for the recipe. The family debated: we have bleached floss for generations and never gotten more than a few in gold; sell the skill once for a hundred—sell. The traveler got the formula and went to persuade the king of Wu. When Yue was in trouble, the king of Wu sent him to lead troops; in winter they fought the Yue on the water, routed them, and he received a fief. The same “hand-saving” drug—one man gained a domain, another still had to bleach floss. The difference lay in how it was used. You have a five-shi gourd—why not think of making a great zun (a vessel that can float on water) and drifting on rivers and lakes? Yet you worry it is “hollow and thin” and holds little—showing your mind is still stuck in “narrow as a clump of thatch.”

The Great Tree (Chu)

Huishi also said to Zhuangzi: I have a big tree people call chu (Ailanthus). The trunk is knotted and swollen—ink line and square cannot reach it; the small branches twist and turn and do not fit compass and rule. It stands by the road and carpenters do not even look at it. Now your words are big and empty, and people leave you too.

Zhuangzi said: Have you not seen the liao (a cat-like beast)? It crouches low, waits for things flying by, leaps east and west, up and down—and runs into a trigger and dies in the net. Then look at the li ox, big as a cloud hanging from the sky: it can be “big” but cannot catch mice. You have a great tree and fret it is useless—why not plant it in the “Land of Nothing-Whatever,” the vast wilds with no end, and wander freely beside it in ease and carefree roaming, or lie beneath it? Then no axe will harm it, and nothing in the ten thousand things can hurt it—what seems useless is exactly what spares you from hardship.

Glosses for the Original (for reading the classical text)

Shi wu shi: the fruit could hold five shi inside; huo luo: hollow, thin shell; xiao ran: vast and empty in appearance; kuan: fine floss; zun: a vessel that floats on water; wu he you zhi xiang, guang mo zhi ye: names for boundless, duty-free ground where nothing is “used.”

Guo Xiang’s commentary:

This ointment keeps the hands from chapping, which is why the man from Song often soaked and rinsed silk floss in water. The “Peng” mentioned here is not a straight road; the story of rinsing floss is used to make a point: in affairs great or small, once they leave the measure that suits them, benefit and harm even out; when use hits the right mark, the myriad things can each find their place and wander at ease.

Lu Huiqing’s commentary:

The Dao, taken as something that can be spoken of, is originally one whole. If one does not know how to apply it, one cannot even keep the four limbs covered—then generation after generation one might rinse silk floss and earn no more than a few pieces of gold. If one knows how to apply it, one does not merely protect oneself; even when the world is drowning, one still relies on it to save others—like deploying water in battle or carving out a fief from the land. “Pour into it and it is not full; dip from it and it is not exhausted”—this, too, is the rivers and lakes within a person. Now you possess a great vessel, yet you cannot float freely on the grand scale and instead fret that you have nowhere to stay. That is what is called having a peng heart—a heart tangled and cramped like wild grass.

To take “being useful” as usefulness is usefulness on a small scale; to take “being useless” as usefulness is usefulness on a grand scale. The leopard cat leaps and bounds to catch mice and ends up dead in a net—that illustrates failing to practice wuwei and harming the body through clever contrivance. The yak is huge yet cannot catch mice—that illustrates carefree wuwei and preserving one’s bodily form.

For the sage regarding the Dao, taking deep roots and a firm stem as foundation, the “tree” thereby achieved is exceedingly great. If you wish to draw near to it, better to turn and seek within our own heart: the heart as a thing has no known boundary; to abide where “one does not know where it is” is to plant the tree in the “Land of Not-Anywhere.” When full, it fills the six directions; when still, the myriad things cannot disturb it—wandering beside it, resting beneath it, never leaving it for an instant. Then where would the so-called “great yet useless” cause distress? Your heart, likewise, as a thing has no known boundary; to abide where “one does not know where it is” is to plant the tree in the “Land of Not-Anywhere” … (the passage repeats the same thread of thought) … then where would the so-called “great yet useless” cause distress, such that you should worry as you do?

Chen Xiangdao said: Every thing has what suits it; every affair has what fits it; disaster often comes from not knowing how to use things well. The recipe for ointment that keeps hands from cracking in cold water is the same—people of Song used it as ordinary hand salve, with little benefit; people of Wu used it as a secret preparation for protecting hands in river battles, with great profit. The same set of tactics for weakening the feudal lords of the Seven Kingdoms—Chao Cuo employed them and brought calamity upon himself; Zhufu Yan employed them and instead quieted turmoil. Is the use of a great gourd not the same kind of lesson? Hollow within, a gourd is good at holding; round in form, it is good at floating. Set on the ground, it loses its nature of floating, and its shell is too hard for it to lift itself; split open to make a dipper, the round whole is broken, the pulp falls out, and it can hold nothing. Fashion it into a large floating vessel on rivers and lakes, and without exertion it stays buoyant—serviceable wherever it goes. Generally, small things are easy to put to use, large things hard to deploy; in human affairs, small means are often nimble, large ones sometimes clumsy. Faced with this difficulty of “large and hard to use,” still to meet it with nimbleness—who but one who accords with nature, follows the natural order, and clears away mental clutter and burdens could do so? Leopard cats and gibbons are small and “useful,” yet still cannot escape harm; the yak is large and “useless,” and the myriad things do not injure it—so the little advantage of being “useful” is not as good as the ease of being “useless.” The great useless tree (da shu) has no use to speak of; planted in an abandoned plot no one wants, the planter may wander freely beneath it, and roosting birds escape the axe and adze—how can that be mentioned in the same breath as those cast into paths of profit and harm, striking one another in the mundane world?

Commentary in Zhuangzi Yi on the Theme of “Xiaoyao You” (Free and Easy Wandering)

This passage is a “xunben” (tracing the root) summary of Zhuangzi’s “Xiaoyao You.” It argues that although the chapter is titled “Free and Easy Wandering,” what runs through it from start to finish is really a single word: hua (transformation). Only when the myriad things and human beings change and settle within their own natures and circumstances can each kind of wandering be what it is.

First section (kun-peng, cicada, dove, and sparrow)

This treats transformation at different scales: the kun (great fish) becomes the peng; it flies extremely high and far. Creatures like the cicada, the turtledove, and the sparrow can only move in low, nearby places. Forms and capacities differ, so “flight” has its high and its low—you cannot measure them all by one yardstick.

Second section (transformation of Heaven)

From things the text turns to Heaven: what Heaven transforms and bestows also comes in large and small, thick and thin, so what people call “free and easy wandering” has grades and levels—not one identical pattern for everyone.

Third section (human transformation and the use of the useless)

It says that if people can, like the later parables in Zhuangzi, turn what seems useless into use (following their nature in how they are employed, not forcibly imitating others), they too can have their own wandering.

At the same time it notes: endowments each have their allotted place—cicadas, doves, and sparrows need not force themselves to become kun-peng. Yet whether wise or dull, worthy or unworthy, people can in principle follow the great Dao upward; in practice many compare themselves to cicadas and sparrows, treating their own horizon as the whole, or undervaluing themselves, or smugly settling where they are—the commentator here repeatedly warns against that mindset.

End of the chapter (gourd and useless tree)

This echoes the stories of the great gourd and the huge, gnarled tree in “Xiaoyao You”: if a person is like a gourd too heavy to lift or a tree too crooked for ordinary timber—seemingly useless by usual standards—as long as they accord with their own quality and transform with each situation, that can still be free and easy wandering; they need not fail to count as wandering just because they are not like kun-peng.

Overall meaning: Wandering is not uniformly soaring to the sky; it lies in each resting in its own transformation and fulfilling its own nature. The commentator uses the single word “hua” to thread the chapter’s parables into one line: great and small, high and low, worthy and unworthy may each obtain their own wandering; what to avoid is forcing sameness and also limiting oneself.

Additional Notes

Some say Confucius was inherently clumsy in “using the large.” Reply: not clumsy—only a different way of applying it. Human nature is originally one; what differs is how it is put to use. Use it with finesse and you can wander freely; use it clumsily and you are bound. When Confucius said “by nature we are close, by habit we drift apart,” he meant exactly this.

General Overview

Those who follow the utmost principle conduct all affairs by letting the Dao run through them; those who preserve their nature return to oneness with the myriad things. There has never been anyone whose nature was fulfilled yet who could not wander freely. An infant’s mind originally has no fixed opinions; as the body grows and things are encountered, gain and loss lodge in the heart like ice and fire taking turns—letting go of this, chasing that, without rest. If one cannot see affairs clearly and overcome selfish desire with the way of rightness, even in the most honored and abundant station one cannot escape being dragged along. Therefore in learning the Dao one must first find what sages and worthies delight in, feel it in one’s own person, and investigate it in practice—only then is one getting somewhere. The Changes speaks of delighting in Heaven and knowing fate; Yan Hui with a bamboo bowl and gourd ladle found joy; Mencius nourished flood-like Qi (vital energy) until it filled heaven and earth; Yuan Xian walked singing with a voice like metal and stone—all of these transcend the burden of outer things and preserve one’s own “Heaven-given” self. Whether in office or withdrawal, in movement or stillness, there is no place that is not joy; only then can one speak of free and easy wandering.

In the northern sea the great kun becomes the great peng, riding the wind and striking the water to fly to the southern darkness. This is a figure: the learner’s hearing and sight are narrow and aims small, not knowing that the sea of nature is vast, clear, and still, and sinking together with the “pearl of fate”—so this creature born from the great is brought forward to show where one originally came from. When nurturing is long, body and spirit unite and transform; entering and leaving yin and yang, its function cannot be fathomed. Let those who “perform one office, please one district, or prove themselves in one state” see that outer things may be light and one’s own Heaven should be heavy; then one will see nurturing wind, cutting through clouds, and wandering without limit with transformation—how can worldly ties keep up? Therefore one must reach the point of riding heaven and earth, driving the six qi (vital energies), and wandering in the boundless—only that is the utmost of free wandering. So-called utmost sage and utmost spirit are nothing but complete blending with transformation; fame and merit are all outer things. The chapter in which Yao offered the empire to Xu You confirms the reasoning above, opens the wind of modest yielding, warns later people, and cuts off outward craving—much benefit to the path.

Jian Wu heard Jie Yu speak and unfolded the secret of the spirit person, likening the utmost spirit within the body—one must preserve and nurture it to reach it; the root is not to be sought far away. Chaff and husks can still mold Yao and Shun: the spirit person’s virtue moves with Heaven; even the overflow of that can suffice for the governance of Tang and Yu, while its true marrow is not what ordinary people know. Yao went to see the four masters on Mount Guye—the subtle principle there cannot be guessed; one must visit the four masters of Guye in person, and then it need not be spoken; students should strive.

This chapter first discusses kun and peng, cicadas, doves, the spirit tortoise, morning mushrooms, knowledge, years, large and small—all talk that exhausts principle; at the end it brings up the great gourd to complete itself by “empty center” and the great tree to stand firm by deep roots, figures for fulfilling nature to the point of fate and for the great completion of learning the Dao and entering spirit: swift without haste, arriving without going—where would one go that is not free wandering?

Chapter Two: Equalizing Things

Guo Xiang’s commentary: Holding oneself right and faulting others, beautifying oneself and disliking others—nothing is not like this; yet though right and wrong differ, “that” and “this” are equal in substance.

Jingchuan: The whole chapter argues that originally there is no fixed right and wrong; right and wrong are all human-made.

Nan Guo Ziqi sat leaning on a low table, face turned upward as he breathed out slowly; his expression was vacant, as if he had lost his companion. His disciple Yan Cheng Ziyou stood before him and asked: What has come over you? Your body can seem withered like dead wood, your mind stilled like dead ashes—is that so? The way you sit leaning on the table today is quite unlike other days.

Ziqi said: Yan You, you ask well. Just now I entered “forgetting the self”—I set down that stubborn “self.” Do you understand? You have heard the “piping of humans,” but not yet the “piping of earth”; you have heard the “piping of earth,” but not yet the “piping of Heaven.”

Ziyou said: May I ask what each of these refers to?

Ziqi said: The great earth is a solid mass of qi; when it exhales, we call it wind. Wind itself does not actively “burst forth,” yet once it does, countless hollows roar together. Have you never heard it? In deep mountain groves, the wind rustles through; on great trees with trunks you could encircle with your arms, the trunk is full of holes—some like nostrils, mouths, ears, mortises, rings, mortars, low hollows, or muddy pools. Where the wind passes, some sounds are piercing, some whining, some scolding, some sucking in, some long cries, some wailing, some deep and muffled, some plaintive; the leading tone goes “yu,” the answering tone “yong.” In a small wind the harmony is fine; in a great wind the harmony is vast. When the fierce wind stops, the myriad hollows return to silence. Those sounds that answer one another in sequence, each in its place—can you not see and hear them?

Ziyou said: Then the “piping of earth” is the sound of the many hollows, and the “piping of humans” is the sound of bamboo tubes and such instruments. May I ask what the “piping of Heaven” is?

Ziqi said: The so-called piping of Heaven is not that something else is blowing on the myriad hollows; rather, it is the wind that lets each hole sound in its own way, each taking what it ought to take. If you say someone is “raging” and shouting, who would that someone be?

Guo Xiang’s note (in plain language): When Heaven and the person are unified and “this” and “that” are forgotten, one no longer clings outward to whether things are pleasing or not; then one collapses with a dull thud, as if losing the pair of form and spirit. The commentary also says: “withered wood” and “dead ashes” describe the state of the paired form and spirit; “pair” can also mean the pairing of body and spirit; “great chunk” refers to the great adorned Heaven; “awe-inspiring heights” describes deep, steep mountains; “tenon” refers to bracket-like timber parts; “deep” describes a deep sound; “ plaintive bite” describes a mournful, cutting tone.

Guo Xiang’s commentary: When self and heaven-and-human are one, and self and other are leveled, one no longer deliberately seeks delight outwardly—one slumps and dissolves, as if losing what one was paired with. Withered wood and dead ashes describe an inner solitude in which feelings and cognition do not arise. One who lets things be natural and forgets right and wrong simply entrusts oneself to innate genuineness alone—what is there to call “what one has”? Thus in stillness one is like withered wood; in movement like drifting dust— I cannot merge with you in the aspect of motion and rest; as for being at ease without deliberate mind, I cannot merge with you as one. “I have lost my self” means the self is forgotten; once the self is forgotten, what in the world is worth clinging to and cognizing? Hence one must forget both inner and outer, then stand transcendent, and each side obtains what it should.

Lai means a pipe. Pipes and tubes are uneven; pitch and mode differ—hence short, long, high, and low sounds, while the allotted measure each receives is the same. Since superiority and inferiority do not get confused within those measures, how much more when wind and things differ in tone yet sound together, each taking sufficiency from itself—here the piping of heaven and earth is seen. Kuai (clod) is without name or form; the sighing breath—is it some other thing? It is only the qi clumping and sighing forth by itself. Nothing born fails to be born clumping by itself—the clumped body is vast, hence the name great clod (dakuai).

Liuliu is the sound of a long wind; weizhui is what a great wind stirs. From nostrils and mouth downward, various likenesses of the many openings are briefly listed; from jiehe downward, various distinct sounds of the openings. Yu, yong, and the like mean that though pitch and mode of sound change endlessly, in call and response, loud and soft, nothing fails to match what each receives and to hit its allotted share. Ji means to stop. When a fierce wind blows, the many openings are full; when it stops, they are empty—empty and full differ, yet in each obtaining its place they are the same. Tiaotiao, diaodiao are aspects of shaking—meaning that things’ sounds differ and the shaking of forms differs too; though movement differs, each attains oneness. Is tiaotiao alone right and diaodiao alone wrong? The ten thousand things are blown differently yet each is made to be itself—this is the piping of heaven (tianlai). Does the piping of heaven mean there is yet another thing? It is just the many openings, joined bamboo, and the like—meeting in the assembly of the living and together completing one heaven. If nonbeing were nonbeing, it could not give birth to being; if being had not yet been born, it could not give birth—then who is it that gives birth to birth? Only clumping and self-birthing—not “I” give birth. Since I cannot give birth to things, things also cannot give birth to me, then I am simply natural. Being so of oneself is called what is natural (tianran)—does that mean the blue sky? Some say the piping of heaven drives things and makes them follow itself—but heaven cannot even possess itself, how could it possess things? Hence tian (heaven) is the collective name for the ten thousand things. Nothing exclusively is heaven—who would master and drive things? Thus each thing is born of itself and nothing issues from elsewhere—this is the Way of heaven (tiandao). Each fully takes for itself—then who is the one who rages? It means each thing obtains for itself—who masters rage and makes it so? This is really to stress again the piping of heaven.

Commentary by Lü

Human beings have bodily form and spirit-mind because they cling to an “I.” Without this “I,” one would be like dead ashes or withered wood—no different from things without life. Ziyou did not understand where this “I” arises from; driven by form, qi, and spirit-mind, he could not find peace, nor did he know how to reach the state of Nan Guo Ziqi. Yet in a single moment of sudden awakening (“ta” realization), he could notice the difference between leaning on the armrest now and leaning on it before—his observation had already become quite subtle. Leaning on the armrest before meant responding to outer things; leaning on it now meant letting outer things go. If one can understand where the “I” begins, then existence and extinction, being and non-being, have never departed from this “I.” A bamboo tube: when people blow it, they all know the inside is empty, without solid substance; the reason I become “I” works the same way. The myriad openings roaring—is that not like the time when one clings to “I” and drives spirit-mind and bodily form? When every opening is empty—is that not like “losing the I” and being like withered wood and dead ashes? “Yet you alone have not heard, you alone have not seen” means: the beginning and end of the piping of the earth is something you have heard and seen with your own ears and eyes; but the arising and ceasing of mind-consciousness is what you have never heard or seen yourself. From what you have heard and seen, infer what you have never heard or seen—only then can the principle of the piping of Heaven be grasped.

Yi Du (Doubt Alone)

Wind comes from empty space; its trail cannot be found. It arises from stillness and returns to stillness; it is born from nothing and returns to nothing. Only because each opening receives it differently does what people hear differ—much like the myriad things receiving creation and transformation, the pattern is similar. That the myriad openings are sounded by wind—this can be understood.

If wind cannot sound them, then all openings are empty; if transformation cannot employ them, then all forms are stilled. As for the state where there is neither sound nor opening—wind cannot blow into it. What Liezi calls “yi du” (doubt alone) points to this level.

Plain-Language Reading of Qiwu Lun (Discussion on Making All Things Equal) from Wings of Zhuangzi

New Commentary

“Ou” means to pair or match. Most things in the world have something that pairs with them; only the Dao is subtle and far-reaching, with nothing to which it can be paired. Without pairing, all returns to oneness, and the distinction between self and other is forgotten—that is what Qiwu Lun means by “the equalization of things and self.”

Someone sitting at a desk today is not the same person who sat there yesterday. The Brahmin ascetic’s saying—“I am still the same I, but the person is no longer that person”—points to exactly this.

Heaven-sounds, earth-sounds, and human-sounds arise because many hollows give rise to different noises. The hollows differ, yet all receive wind and together make sound; the forms of things differ, yet all receive qi and together take shape. The hollows are what the wind blows through to make noise; the ten thousand things are what transformation drives into being—what they meet differs, but they converge on the same point, so from the side of “things” they cannot but be equalized. Yet wind cannot sound by itself; without hollows there is no sound. Transformation cannot work on emptiness; without the ten thousand things there is no formed world. If you can shed the burden of the body and quiet deluded feelings, see clearly and understand that “I” is not truly something “I” own, you enter a wondrous realm where even transformation cannot hold you.

Tracing the Root (notes aligned with the original imagery)

In Qiwu Lun, the passage on wind seems almost to grow from the brush tip—only the hand of transformation could write it thus. Nose, mouth, and ear resemble the human form; mortise, ring, and mortar resemble the shapes of vessels. Where water gathers in hoofprints it is called “wa” (depression); where water runs low it is called “wu” (filth)—this speaks of form.

What follows speaks of sound: “ji” is like the sound of rushing water; “xiao” like an arrow leaving the bow; “hao” like wailing; “miao” like echo from the dark southeast corner of a deep room; “yao” like birds chirping; “chang yu”—“yu” here relates to the yu pipe (Han Feizi says the yu leads the five tones, hence “chang yu”); “yong” is the many hollows opening and closing like fish mouths, all murmuring together.

“Ling wind” is clear, cool wind; “piao wind” is gusty, shifting wind. “Diaodiao” and “diaodiao” describe wind in the treetops: diaodiao is gentle and harmonious; diaodiao is protective, warding. Folk speech today uses “diaodiao” for a light breeze; tea pickers call tender shoots “diao” and pluck them, saying they are diaodiao—ready to pick—all images taken from the wind’s movement and its sounds.

Xuxi’s Commentary

“Losing the paired counterpart”—yet “I” is there all along. If even “I” is cast away entirely, what basis remains for the Discourse on the Equality of Things? That would be a contest with no rival, a victory with no opponent.

Zhuangzi wanted to show how alien and inhuman “disputes over things” (people clinging each to their own view) can be, so he took the least grounded thing under Heaven and Earth as his image: wind. If one knows where the wind rises and where it goes, then those “unequal” sounds, in the end, become “equal.” Heaven and Earth are vast, yet amount to a single mass; the wind is great, yet amount to a single breath—such is how the person of thorough understanding puts it.

“Wei,” “fang,” “zhui,” and “cui” all refer to remote, sharp corners deep in the mountains and forests—places the wind never reaches.

“Ji” suggests crossing in disorder; it denotes fierce wind (stronger than drifting gusts). When fierce wind passes, every hollow and opening sounds at once, like exhaling, like drawing breath. If “ji” meant stopping, then to whom would fierce wind belong?

Zhuangzi arrays many hollows and openings, and adds descriptions such as “tiao tiao” and “diao diao”—so that every treetop beaten down by the wind is accounted for. There is no day in the world without right and wrong: small right and wrong are like small winds, great right and wrong like great winds, yet all finally grow still and cease—this is what is called “making equal.” If one can recognize where these sounds arise from, one need not wait for the wind to stop; one is already equal. “Who is it that rages?”—No one does it on purpose; it is Heaven (Nature) operating of itself.

Fumo (Marginal Notes)

“Losing me” means forgetting the self; forgetting the self, one aligns with Heaven. To wander with Heaven as one’s guide is called “making equal.” Recognize where the sounds arise from, and without waiting for the wind to stop, one is already equal. “Who is it that rages?”—No one does it deliberately; Heaven is doing it.

Plain-Language Reading

To “lose the self” is to forget the self; when you forget the self, you align with Heaven. You roam with Heaven as your guide: you know, yet do not treat what you know as something you already possess as knowledge; you speak, yet do not treat what you say as something you already possess as words. That is why the text speaks of three kinds of “pipes” (lai) and finally returns to tianlai, the sound of Heaven.

Lai refers to bamboo pipes and the like—tones that can be high or low, straight or crooked—standing for the unevenness of how things are judged. What people blow is renlai, human pipes. Dilai, earth pipes, are the many holes and hollows in wood. Tianlai is sound that comes forth though there is no sound—a metaphor for how all sounds under Heaven seem as if some true master (zhenzai) were at work, yet you cannot find its form or trace.

The holes in wood: two holes like nostrils, one like a mouth, slanting ones like ears, square ones like bracket arms (bi), round deep ones like rings, shallow ones like mortars, curved ones like low places, broad ones like muddy pools—a few lines that vividly sketch those cavities. The text also says: the “ji” kind stops abruptly; the “he” kind rushes away with urgent sound; the “chi” kind bursts out coarse; the “xi” kind draws in thin; the “jiao” kind is high and sharp; the “hao” kind is low and muddy; the “yao” kind is deep and lingering; the “yao” (bite/bark) kind is like a dog’s continued bark. “Yu” and “yong” are light song and heavy chorus. Dafeng is wind in front and behind like ranks; lingfeng is a light breeze; piaofeng is swift wind; lifeng is fierce wind. The blast stirs ten thousand differences, yet each is left to itself—“each takes what it takes from itself” (xian qi zi qu) should be read as one phrase: sounds differ in countless ways, yet all are said to come from themselves, not from Heaven. Then who is it that roars in anger inside those holes? Clearly a true master is directing things—only its trace cannot be seen, which is why it is called tianlai, the sound of Heaven.

Proper Names and Terms

• Sanlai / tianlai: Human blowing, earthly hollows, and Heaven’s “soundless sound”—a famous image in Zhuangzi’s “Discourse on Equalizing Things.”
• Zhenzai: The one that truly governs the myriad things—a Zhuangzi term whose “zhen” (signs, traces, visible form) cannot be seen.
• Bi: A wooden bracket or dougong-like member in building.

This passage comes from the Zhuangzi, in material related to the “Discussion on Equalizing Things” (Qi Wu Lun), with Guo Xiang’s commentary appended. The first part is Zhuangzi’s original text (on knowledge, speech, dream and waking, fear, and right and wrong); the second is Guo Xiang’s explanation of the “True Ruler” (Zhenzai) and “True Lord” (Zhenjun), and why people toil all their lives yet do not feel their own grief.

Zhuangzi’s original meaning

On knowledge and speech: Great wisdom appears broad and penetrating; small wisdom nitpicks and divides self from other. Great words are vast and clear; small words are petty and narrow.

Dream and waking: In sleep the spirit weaves through dreams; awake, the body meets the outer world. Contact with things stirs calculation in the mind, as if slowly bound by ropes; what is deeply hidden in the heart is like treasure stored in a cellar; what is kept secret is like something locked in an inner room. Small fear makes one tremble; great fear numbs and dulls.

Right, wrong, and mechanisms: A single trigger is like being caught in a mechanism, devoted to judging right and wrong; holding to a position is as stubborn as an oath or covenant. (A repeated stretch—“great knowledge at ease… holding fast like a sworn pledge”—says the same thing.)

Wearing down and drowning: When this state flares up, it is like autumn and winter killing off things—meaning day by day one is worn away. Drowning in what one does, one can hardly turn back. Pressed down by desire, as if the mouth were sealed—meaning the heart of old age, sickness, and stagnation, nearing death; do not expect it to recover Yang (vital warmth) again.

Shifts of feeling: Joy, anger, sorrow, delight, brooding, sighing, change, fright, frivolity, indulgence, release, and posturing—these arise like music from empty space, like mushrooms from steam; day and night they alternate before the eyes, yet no one knows where they sprout from. Enough, enough! Morning and evening receiving these—is that what we call life coming from somewhere?

Self and other, the True Ruler: It is not that there is only “that” and no “I,” nor only “I” and no taking; seen this way one is already near the Dao (the Way), yet one does not know what drives it. As if there were a True Ruler, yet in the end no trace of it can be found.

Form and feeling: Conduct can be tested and trusted, yet its form is invisible; there is feeling without a visible shape. The hundred bones, the nine openings, the six viscera (the five organs and related stores)—all complete and coexisting—which should I be closest to? Do you all delight in them equally, or favor some? If all favor them equally, are they all like servants? Servants are not enough to govern one another; do they take turns as lord and subject? Or is there a True Lord who exists?

Seeking the real and taking form: Whether one obtains its reality or not, does that add or subtract from the “true”? Once one has received Qi (vital energy) and taken form, one does not forget it and waits for death’s end, harming and rubbing against outer things, moving as if galloping without stop—is that not pitiful? Toiling all one’s life yet seeing no success, exhausted yet not knowing where one is going—can one not grieve? What good is it if people say “one does not die”? When the body transforms, the heart transforms with it—can one not call that great grief?

Gloss on terms (as commentators use them): Xianxian = broad; jianjian = dividing self and other; yanyan = splendid; zhanzhan = narrow; man = ease of heart; jiao = deep heart; zhuizhui = cautious; manman = leveling life and death; zhi = unmoved; zhen = sign; gai = complete.

Guo Xiang’s commentary in brief

Knowledge, speech, dream and waking, contact, fear, and the difference of motion and rest: “At ease” (xianxian) and “dividing” (jianjian) are differences of knowing; “splendid” (yanyan) and “narrow” (zhanzhan) are differences of speech; spirit mingling and body opening are differences of sleep and waking; man, cellar, and secrecy are differences in how one meets others; zhuizhui and manman are differences in degree of fear; judging right and wrong and holding victory are differences of stirring and stopping; daily wearing away is like decay and killing; “cannot be made to return” is drowning and going straight on; yan and sealing are sinking in desire; laoxu is growing old and more trapped; “near death” is slighting calamity and weighting profit and harm; “do not let Yang recover” is yin knotting and will fulfilled. Below joy and anger are differences of nature; music from emptiness and mushrooms from steam are differences of changing events. The above briefly samples the directionless sound of Heaven (Tianlai)—nature’s voice without fixed direction; below he will explain the nature behind the directionless.

Each thing is natural: Heaven and earth and the myriad things change and renew daily, going with the times—what “sprout” is there ruling? Everything is simply thus by nature. What is called “coming from which” means each generates itself: that is nature; nature generates me, I generate naturally—so “nature” is “my nature,” not something far off.

True Ruler and True Lord: Not knowing what drives is because the myriad things are each thus—not mutually commanding one another; trusting each to its nature, principle arrives of itself. Myriad things, myriad feelings, likes and dislikes differ—as if a True Ruler made it so; if you seek signs of the True Ruler, you never obtain them, and should understand: things are all natural; there is no need for another lord that makes things thus.

The hundred bones, delight, partiality, and servants: The actor can be trusted by conduct, yet its form is not seen; there is feeling without formless form. The hundred bones and nine openings are entrusted to nature—none fails to be complete and preserved. If one “delights” in them, there is partiality; with partiality, one cannot be complete and preserved. When will exceeds its allotment and high and low encroach, one cannot speak of who is servant. If lord and subject were like heaven high and earth low, seen within nature, the True Lord is letting each be natural—not human contrivance.

Wise and foolish each keeping their place; both contrary and compliant are grief: Whoever obtains true nature and uses what is self-so—knowing and not knowing each stay as usual. The knowing guard knowledge till the end; the foolish cling to foolishness till death; contrary and compliant intersect, each trusting a partial view and going as they please, unable to turn back—this is as lamentable as what ordinary people grieve, yet they need not grieve over it, because nature is originally thus. Each thing’s nature is so—what is there to grieve? Yet lifelong servitude and exhaustion—though alive, in fact the same as death—this again is great grief, and people never take it as grief; then whatever is grieved over is also not worth grieving.

In one sentence: Guo Xiang reads this passage mainly as interpreting “True Ruler” and “True Lord” as each thing’s own nature, with no added lord; Zhuangzi’s original depicts how, as heart and outer things meet, knowledge, speech, feeling, right and wrong, and fear arise and perish day and night, while one finds no ruler and cannot stop the gallop—hence grief and lament.

“Leisurely ease” and “narrow scrutiny” speak to differences in the sharpness of discernment; sleep and waking, receiving and constructing, differ in density and sparseness, like fine silk versus a cellar vault. Likes and dislikes hide in the heart; when outer things touch them they spring forth, like the trigger (jiguan) on an ancient crossbow; reputation and integrity are displayed outward, and when things pull at them they halt, like a sworn covenant. These orientations of “exhaustion” face different ways; desire is like the killing frost of autumn and winter, deep or shallow in degree; the showing of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight each takes its own outward form. All of this is “the ten thousand being blown differently”—each goes its own way, as music rises from emptiness and fungi grow from steam; day and night alternate, and one cannot tell where anything begins—this is the working of the Heavenly Sound (tianlai) in non-action (wuwei).

Vessels are large or small; the directions of exhaustion and desire differ—is that not like the varied shapes of holes in the tower gate (or “fear” gate)? “Leisure,” “narrowness,” “fine silk,” “apprehension,” and the many moods of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight—is that not like roaring in different throats, each voice unlike the others? Music from emptiness, steam forming fungi—try to chase the root cause and you cannot catch it—is that not like wind passing through hollows, whistling and rustling, with no knowing where it all settles? Seen this way, where exactly is this “I”? Can the form still fail to resemble withered wood? Can the heart still fail to resemble dead ashes?

The Heavenly Sound is hard to know; the True Ruler (zhenjun—the authentic master of body and mind, not a worldly lord) is hard to see. Only by “sloughing off the self” (sang wo) and meeting it heart to heart can one perhaps realize in a morning and an evening: life arises from this; though one does not know where it sprouts, one can align the heart with it. Since one cannot obtain its omens or see its traces, one cannot grasp that “driver”; searching everywhere inside the bodily form, one can know it was never within the form to begin with; seeking within the form that “messenger” who acts—ultimately it cannot be found—thus one knows the True Ruler truly exists. There is no one without a True Ruler; one need not add extra benefit for failing to grasp its disposition, nor add extra harm for not grasping it. Why? That is not something “without mind” can be obtained nearby, nor something “with mind” can be obtained from afar.

(Note: The above repeatedly develops “aligning heart with it,” “not obtaining its signs,” and “seeking within the form the acting messenger and not finding it—then the True Ruler is present,” in line with the received Zhuangzi, “Equality of Things” (Qiwu lun), on the True Ruler (zhenzai/zhenjun) and “sloughing off the self”; individual phrases may differ through transmission or variant readings; this exposition follows the thread of Lü’s commentary.)

New Commentary

Whether one has great or small wisdom, speaks grandly or modestly, sleeps or wakes, feels great or small fear—whoever has a body cannot escape being pulled by that body. Where there is form, one is driven by “transformation” (hua: change, the work of nature); once driven, there are motion and rest, and one never quite escapes weariness. If one can be without form, so that transformation cannot drive one, the situation is different—and that level is what only Shen (spirit, the heart-mind) can reach.

Xuxi

The three occurrences of the particle zhi in the line are empty function words with no solid meaning. The general sense is: once a person is sunk in a certain way of acting or a certain line of thought, it is often hard to return and do things exactly as before.

Xie (a ditch) is sometimes full and sometimes dry; if one reads only “dry” and omits the word for “first,” the sense runs more smoothly and matches common readings.

Ordinary anger, grief, joy, pleasure, and the like—the author, starting from states such as grief and anger, also writes lü, tan, bian, and zhi as intermediate conditions; and from joy and pleasure he writes yao, yi, qi, and tai—“qi” is the spirit opening and overflowing; “pleasure” is like answering to empty space, unobstructed and free; while what is pent up is like yin qi congealing into fungus—all of these are natural feelings, not deliberate artifice.

Xunben (Seven Emotions and Twelve Modes)

Joy, anger, grief, pleasure, lü, tan, bian, zhi, yao, yi, qi, tai—here the seven emotions are unfolded into twelve affective modes.

Zhi combines “grasp” with “heart”: the heart is held fast and cannot let go.

Yao is alluring beauty that pleases the eye; yi is reckless release; qi is opening intelligence and penetrating clarity; tai is bearing and attitude. Xunzi has a line akin to “none fail to be lovely, coquettish, in strange dress, with women’s adornments, blood-and-qi bearing and attitude”—the phrasing is close to this passage.

Guanjian

Lü is anticipating and measuring what is to come; tan is lamenting and sighing over what is past; bian is light and rash movement; zhi is fear that dares not move; yao is fattening oneself on what is pleasing to the eye; yi is indulgence in pleasure until one forgets to return; qi is the feelings opening and being taken by outer things; tai is arrogance that grows proud.

This describes the person who chases things and forgets the self: in one and the same person these different modes appear. Counting gain and fearing loss is like scorching fire or like congealed ice—body and heart dwindle day by day, approaching a state of “death” (spiritual desiccation, not bodily death alone).

[Commentary] What follows describes how the human mind changes, and how images such as “wind above,” “wooden form,” and “sound” relate to “guard” or “defense.”

“Great knowledge is at ease” (da zhi xian xian) corresponds to what Mencius says: “The wise do what is as if nothing were the matter”—the wise act as naturally as if nothing were at stake. If instead one is jian jian (nitpicking, drawing sharp lines between self and other), that is only the petty cleverness of small-minded people.

“Blazing” (yan yan) means spirit shining upward. “Chattering” (zhan zhan) means lining up front and back, fussy and verbose. “The slack” (man zhe) refers to those who are loose and unbroken—smooth, ingratiating people. “The burrower” (jiao zhe) means those who hide their schemes and show nothing—secretive, sinister people. “The close” (mi zhe) means those who count every grain—finicky and harsh. “Anxious” (zhui zhui) means troubled in mind. “Loose and drifting” (man man) means those who scatter, lose themselves, and wilt. “Those who manage right and wrong” (si shi fei zhe) are people who live by quarreling over right and wrong—meaning “middling” people who hunt the other’s weak point, sharp as ji gua (a trigger or notch on a crossbow). “Those who cling to victory” (shou sheng zhe) are those who stick to their view, like a curse or oath once sworn that they dare not break.

Such is the inner strife of small-minded cleverness. Natural simplicity wears away day by day, again and again, until the heart is dead without their knowing it. Hence “it kills like autumn and winter”—speaking of drying up day by day; and again “what drowning does cannot be made to return”—like drowning, hard to recover. Drowning and killing are paired; this sort of scheming mind only deepens with age, hence “old xi” (xi, ditch or drowning). Yan is like the yan in the Great Learning’s “yan ran” (composed, at ease). Jian means sealed and hidden. If the human heart is not dead, there is still life that can turn to spring; but this nearly dead heart—can it be made yang again? It cannot. The above has already explained the inner life of small cleverness; what follows uses twelve phrases to sketch how such a person meets the world.

Though they are like this, they are not free: like music rising from emptiness, now up, now still; like steam mushrooms that flash into being and vanish; day and night alternate before them, yet they do not know what is sprouting—what is called “the ten thousand things blown differently—who is it that blows?”

“Enough, enough”—morning and evening one gets this, and that is what one lives by. The word yi is the who of “who is it that blows?”; below, “without that other there is no me” swaps this for bi (that other): without that other there is no me; without my taking or leaving him, he cannot appear on his own. Like wind apart from holes, in the end there is no sound. To speak of creation this way seems reasonable; but how do we get its zhen (sign, trace)? Hence it is said one does not know what it does, as if there were a True Lord (zhen zai)—yet one cannot get its zhen: read as one sentence—only if one could get its zhen would the True Lord have form; now the True Lord makes everyone act accordingly, and ran (thus) everyone also believes it, hence “it can be done and is trusted”—only because its form is not seen, so no zhen can be obtained.

Yet though the True Lord has feeling without form, one must recognize it in what has form; hence the hundred joints (bai hai), the nine openings (jiu qiao), the six viscera (liu zang) are brought up: do they favor themselves? Is there a True Ruler (zhen jun) dwelling in them? Both “yan” and the three “hu” are question words—questions piled on questions to make one think deeply for oneself. “Seeking its feeling” (qiu de qi qing) is the “feeling” of having feeling without form. “No benefit or harm to its truth” (wu yi sun hu qi zhen) is the “truth” of True Ruler and True Lord. This “truth” in a person is neither harmed nor helped by anything—lost, one is ordinary; awakened, one is sage.

(This passage is commentary in the Zhuangzi Yi on Zhuangzi’s Qi Wu Lun from “Great knowledge is at ease” through the lines on the “True Ruler,” in the usual annotated format—not Zhuangzi’s original text.)

This passage comes from an exposition of the Zhuangzi (with Guo Xiang’s annotations interwoven). Its main theme is that human life is already immersed in obscurity, yet each person takes themselves to be clear; if we take fixed, already-formed opinions as standards and make one another teachers, we fall into endless dispute over right and wrong. The argument unfolds in several layers.

The formed mind and right and wrong

Human life is like dwelling in a haze of obscurity (“mang”): am I alone obscured while others are not? If we follow each person’s already-formed “formed mind” (chengxin)—set views—and treat that as the basis for being one another’s teachers, who lacks a “teacher” of their own? Why wait until one understands generational change before using the “heart-mind” to seize upon right and wrong? Fools too have a formed mind; before the formed mind exists, whence come right and wrong? This is like saying “today I set out for Yue and yesterday I already arrived”—treating “nothing” as “something,” treating “what is not” as “what is.” Even a sage like Yu could not straighten this out; what can I do?

Words, “blowing,” dispute, and the unsettled

Speech is not what the wind “blows” out (“blowing” stands for empty piping); the one who speaks is “having speech.” Yet what is said never quite settles: is there truly settled speech? Or has there never been settled speech? People think that because it differs from the first peep of a fledgling (“guyin”), there is argument—but how can one fix whether there is argument or not? Where could the Way (Dao) hide, that there is true and false? Where could words hide, that there is right and wrong? The Way is everywhere and present; words too are present and cannot be exhausted in saying. The Way is obscured by “partial completion” (xiaocheng—narrow achievement, partial insight); words are obscured by “flowery brilliance” (ronghua—ornate language, reputation). Hence Confucians and Mohists each cling to one pole of right and wrong: each affirms what the other denies and denies what the other affirms. If one tries in turn to affirm what the other denies and deny what the other affirms, better to use “illumination” (ming—comprehensive seeing, clear insight) to break through.

Mutual dependence of “that” and “this,” and the pivot of the Way

Nothing is not “that”; nothing is not “this.” Seen only from the side of “that,” one does not see; known only from the side of “self,” one takes it as “knowing.” Hence it is said: “that” emerges from “this,” and “this” also depends on “that”; “that” and “this” arise together, like an unfinished ring (“mutual arising”). Even so: alive and dead arise together, dead and alive arise together; possible and impossible arise together, impossible and possible arise together; from “this” comes “not-this,” from “not-this” comes “this.” Therefore the sage does not follow the ordinary path of quarreling over right and wrong, but “reflects it in Heaven (tian),” also following this “this.” This too is “that”; “that” too is “this.” “That” too is a pair of right and wrong; “this” too is a pair of right and wrong. Are “that” and “this” really fixed? Are “that” and “this” really not fixed? When “that” and “this” cannot be paired and fixed, this is called the “pivot of the Way” (daoshu). The pivot lies in grasping the “center of the circle” (huanzhong) to respond to the inexhaustible: “this” too is one inexhaustible, “not-this” too is one inexhaustible—hence “nothing better than using illumination” (mo ru yi ming).

Main drift of Guo’s note (the “Guo zhu” portions in the text)

“Mang” is obscurity; another reading takes it as “busy,” in the same vein as “mangmangran” (distracted, bustling). The knower need not borrow another to know for them and become a teacher; another reading takes “dai” as generational turnover. “Blowing” is piping (wind-pipes). “Gu” is a chick about to break the shell. “Shu” (pivot) means the crucial point, the key.

What people today call knowing is often not knowing how one knows, yet taking oneself to know; the living often do not know how they live, yet taking themselves to live. Things differ, but as for “living,” it does not depend on “knowing”—there is no difference in that—so under Heaven none is free of “mang.” When the heart-mind suffices to govern the uses of the whole person, that is the formed mind. If people only take their own formed mind as teacher, then everyone has their own teacher; when each has a teacher, leave each to what they should follow—no need to force substitution. Using “completion” to stand in for “incompletion” is not true knowing; it is only the heart-mind’s self-satisfied grasp. Fools too will take their formed mind as teacher, unwilling to use only what they call shortcomings and discard what they call strengths.

“Today setting out for Yue yet yesterday already arrived”: before the formed mind, whence right and wrong? Seeing that right and wrong are what the multitude cannot do without, the perfected person’s twofold accord has no fixed right and wrong from the start; the confused take there to be some, treating non-being as being. Once the confused heart-mind is formed, even a sage cannot force clarity—one can only leave it to its nature and not insist on knowing.

Speech each has its referent (“zhi” = what is pointed at), hence it differs from blowing. What I call right, the other calls wrong; what the other approves, I again reject—so it stays unsettled. Unsettledness comes from partial feelings of “that” and “self.” Treat it as having speech? That still cannot fix it. Treat it as speechless? By that criterion there already is speech; speech and the fledgling’s peep share one import. Hard to fix whether there is dispute or not; feelings under Heaven need not match, yet what is said cannot but differ—hence names of right and wrong tangle without settlement.

How could the Way not be present? How are words hidden that names of true and false, right and wrong arise? “Partial completion” and “flowery brilliance” hide themselves from the Way, yet the Way cannot truly be hidden; true and false, right and wrong move in flowery brilliance and stop where appropriate, appear in partial completion and vanish in the great whole. Confucians and Mohists further deny one another, each privatizing what they see: what is affirmed as right and wrong is what Ru and Mo affirm; what is denied as right and wrong is what Ru and Mo deny. Now if one wants to affirm what they deny and deny what they affirm, one wants to clarify “no right, no wrong”; to clarify no right and no wrong, better to use Ru and Mo to cross-check each other. Cross-checking shows that what they call right is not right and what they call wrong is not wrong. Each thing is right unto itself, hence no “not-right”; each thing is “that” to one another, hence no “not-that.” No “not-that” means under Heaven there is no “this”; no right and wrong means under Heaven there is no “that”—no “that,” no “this,” hence equalization.

Things do not see what “that” sees yet each alone knows what it knows; knowing what one knows, one takes oneself as right; taking oneself as right, one takes “that” as wrong. Hence “that emerges from this, this also depends on that”—“that” and “this” arise mutually. The shift of life and death is like spring, autumn, winter, summer; the forms of life and death differ, yet each resting in what it meets is one. If the living call living “living” and the dead call living “death,” there is no living; if the living call death “death” and the dead call death “living,” there is no death. No living, no death, no possible, no impossible—Ru and Mo’s disputes cannot agree; as for each resting in its allotment, they cannot differ—hence the sage follows the world’s right and wrong yet has no right and wrong of his own, does not follow the path of right and wrong yet no right or wrong is inappropriate, directly clarifying Heaven (tian) without depriving anything.

“This too is that”: I too am what “that” takes as “this.” “That too is this”: “that” too takes itself as right. “That” is whether there is or is not, still undecided. “Ou” is paired opposition; “that” is relative opposition—the sage accords with both. Not following the path of right and wrong yet no right or wrong is inappropriate, directly clarifying Heaven without depriving anything.

“This too is that,” “that too is this”: “that” is whether there is or is not, still undecided. “Ou” is paired opposition; the sage accords with both. The no-mind person accords with things (fang) yet never sets himself against the world. “Shu” is the crucial point; dwelling at the pivot, guarding its extreme, to respond without fixed direction. Right and wrong chase each other, turning back endlessly—hence called a “ring”; the ring’s center is empty; taking right and wrong as the ring and gaining its center is no right, no wrong; no right, no wrong, hence able to respond to right and wrong; right and wrong are inexhaustible, hence response too is inexhaustible. Under Heaven nothing fails to be right unto itself, nothing fails to deny the other—hence one right, one wrong, two tracks without end; only one who touches emptiness and gains the center is vast and unburdened, riding it to wander.

“Nothing better than using illumination”

“Mang” is obscurity; another reading: busy, same as “mangmangran.” Formed mind, blowing and pipes, gu, pivot, center of the circle, partial completion, flowery brilliance, Ru and Mo, that and this, pivot of the Way—these are all concepts from Zhuangzi’s discourse on equalizing things and equalizing discourse. The whole passage aims at: not forcing others as teachers through the formed mind, not taking Ru–Mo mutual seizure as the final word, but through the center of the circle and illuminating insight, responding to inexhaustible right and wrong.

Plain-language interpretation

The Dao is everywhere—so whatever people say in speech is, in a sense, the Dao. Why should the Dao hide itself while people still split “true” and “false”? All things are none other than the Dao, and speech is none other than the Dao—so why should speech hide itself while people still split “right” and “wrong”?

If you know the Dao is everywhere, you find it wherever you go. If you know all speech is the Dao, what could fail to stand as real? Yet there are cases of “not standing” and “not being possible”: because partial, small accomplishments obscure the Dao, the great whole is not seen; because flashy words obscure speech, the root meaning is not seen—and so the Confucian–Mohist dispute over right and wrong arises.

To affirm what the other side denies and deny what the other side affirms, the best approach is to use “illumination” (ming). Illumination means returning to destiny (fuming) and knowing the constant (zhichang). Today’s Confucian–Mohist right and wrong never leave clever knowing, yet they never truly use illumination—so they fall short of a proper standard of right and wrong. If you set aside clever knowing, turn the light inward, and look with illumination, then “that” and “this” in things never had a fixed substance to begin with. Without fixed substance, there is no absolute “that” or absolute “this”; without fixed substance, people still insist on “that is right” and “this is right”—like the living who treat birth as only birth, or the newly dead who treat death as only death, treating what was never there as if it were there.

Seen from the Dao: when life begins, where does life come from? When death arrives, where does death go? Know that death and life are originally one body—the reason “just born” is “just born” is precisely because of “just died”; the reason “just died” is “just died” is precisely because of “just born.” “Possible” and “impossible” work the same way.

All of this is the heart’s fabrication. Exhaust the heart, fathom spirit, and return to no-self—the root body was never twofold. Affirming because of denial, denying because of affirmation—that is simply mutual use of each other, nothing more.

Xunben

“Speech is not blowing”—when people speak, it is not like wind (the spontaneous sound of Heaven) that moves the ten thousand things without intent. Words come from the human mouth, and it is hard for a person to be entirely without intent, so speech itself is not fixed and cannot be taken as an absolute standard. How others take these words sometimes seems almost like nothing at all, and so one asks: are these words really there, or was there never speech to begin with?

Xixi

“Speech is not blowing”—speech is not like wind, which is without feeling and without intent; in words there is always some “meaning”; yet that meaning is still not settled. What I take as right, you take as wrong—contention between self and things begins here. But for one who has already attained thorough understanding, all of this, between Heaven and Earth, is like the first cries of a fledgling in the ear: there, and yet as if not there.

Jingchuan

Blowing is what arises naturally; speech has intent, hence “speech is not blowing.” “Illumination” (ming) is great wisdom; when one sees through completely, there is no other-and-self and no right-and-wrong. Things have an “other” aspect and a “this” aspect, hence “there is nothing that is not ‘other,’ nothing that is not ‘this’”—what arises from “conditions” (yin, causal relativity). Because there is “other,” there is obstruction; the whole is not seen; only with wisdom can one illuminate it. “Other” and “this” should be read as the two words “other” and “this.” Once one enters into “other” and “this,” one falls into “being” (you), yet nothing has ever been truly fixed. “Illuminate it with Heaven (Tian)”—use Tian to illuminate; this “illuminating” belongs with the earlier “knowing” and “illumination”; Tian here means without right and without wrong; first clarify the realm without right and wrong, and then right and wrong can be dissolved.

Fan Wuyin said: Before chengxin (the “formed mind,” with fixed views already set), true nature is whole and of the same measure as the Great Void (Taixu); once chengxin appears, one has already left native nature, and then there is good and evil. In worldly dealings, chengxin is hard to avoid; at such times one should take the “teacher” as model and return to the time before chengxin—then good and evil cannot be split apart, right and wrong have no boundary, and what could fail to be equal?

Stopping thoughts is not difficult; what is difficult is not letting thought cease and then immediately pick up again. If from the very first arising of chengxin one takes the teacher as model and seeks the state before chengxin, thoughts no longer run on in a chain and nature can be restored. Therefore, when facing outer things the mind stirs; when outer things are forgotten, nature shows itself. The mind is like fire: fire cannot display its form by itself and must cling to something; if the mind is commensurate with the Great Void, it has nothing to cling to. Moreover, for the mind to cling to things and act for good is still inferior to no-mind and wuwei (non-action); how much more when it clings to things and acts for evil?

Guan Yin Zi said: Those who come to me are like a spark from flint—over in an instant; they meet things with nature, and things drift lightly—this is the gist of leaving things behind, separating from entanglement with persons, and gathering emotion back into nature. “Knowing substitution while the mind takes for itself” (zhi dai er xin zi qu, from the “Human World” chapter of Zhuangzi) points precisely at those who make their own mind the teacher: using clever knowing in place of natural responsiveness, appropriating the Dao for themselves, and treating that as chengxin.

(Note: chengxin is Zhuangzi’s term for fixed views or a hardened mind; Taixu is the void as ultimate ground; Guan Yin Zi is a Daoist classic attributed to Master Yin of the Pass; zhi dai er xin zi qu appears in Zhuangzi’s “Human World” and refers to substituting artifice for the natural and letting the mind seize the Way on its own.)

Plain-Language Commentary

(The commentary continues:) “That” does not spring up from nowhere on its own; precisely because there is “that,” there come to be both “that” and “this.” “This” likewise does not spring up from nowhere on its own; precisely because there is “that,” “this” becomes what it is. So we say “that” is distinguished from within “this,” and “this” also exists only in relation to “that.” Each side arises from non-being into being—this is what is meant by the first stirrings of “arising together at once.”

Although once “life” appears it is paired with “death,” and once “death” appears it is paired with “life”; once “possible” is established there is “impossible,” and once “impossible” is established there is “possible”—“one affirmation, one denial” match up like partners. Yet clinging to such distinctions is the reckoning of the human heart, not how Heaven (nature) is in itself.

The sage does not follow the worldly “that-and-this”; he illuminates with Heaven: standing beyond right and wrong, wandering alone with the “Creator of Things” (natural transformation)—how could that be compared with people in the world who bristle with opinions and fight over this and that?

Still, the sage does not simply cast aside right and wrong and ignore them: what the world calls right, he goes along and accepts as right; what the world calls wrong, he goes along and accepts as wrong—in the end it is no more than this. This word “yin” (following, adapting to circumstances) is exactly the core of Laozi and Zhuangzi, which is why the text below repeatedly answers with “yin.”

Once you see this, you know: this is that, and that is this; what is right or wrong on that side is what is right or wrong on this side—can there really be a sharply divided distinction? Can there really be no distinction at all? “That,” “this,” pairing, and mutual seeking never grasp anything solid; and the “pivot of the Dao” (daoshu) lies right here.

The ten thousand things have the odd and the even, the paired and the square; what is circular has no beginning and no end, empty in the middle—one who obtains the pivot of the Dao is like standing at the center of a ring, using that one point to respond to endless change. To walk the path of inexhaustible right and wrong while the inner “neither right nor wrong” nature stays at ease—only one who illuminates with Heaven can do this. That is why Zhuangzi says: better to meet it with clarity (ming).

(These two layers—“yin” and “distinction”—are also what Laozi and Zhuangzi repeatedly ask us to hold; the text below continues with “that-and-this,” “center of the ring,” and related themes in the same vein: amid inexhaustible right and wrong, to hold the center of the ring and illuminate with Heaven is “nothing better than clarity.”)

Rather than using a finger to explain that “a finger is not what the finger points to,” it is better to use “not-finger” to show that pointing is not what is pointed at. Rather than using a horse to illustrate that “a horse is not what the name ‘horse’ denotes,” it is better to use “not-horse” to make the same point.

Heaven and earth may be treated as one “finger”; the myriad things may be treated as one “horse.” Can we say this works? If we say it works, it also does not work—the Dao, through the process of becoming, forms the myriad things; things become “thus” through names—why call them “so”? In the dimension of “so,” we say “so”; why call them “not so”? In the dimension of “not so,” we say “not so.” Things inherently have a “thus” side and inherently have “acceptable” and “unacceptable” sides; without “not so,” there would be no “unacceptable.” Hence arise disputes of right and wrong.

Putting a blade of courtyard grass (ting) beside a pillar, or a repulsive affliction (li, sometimes read as ugliness) beside Xishi (the famed beauty), along with what is vast, strange, and anomalous—all of these, on the Dao, can be understood as passing through to oneness. Where there is division there is completion; where there is completion there is ruin; nothing has absolute completion or ruin, and in the end all pass through to oneness. Only one who has attained thorough understanding knows this “passing through to oneness,” and so does not cling to one side, but lodges insight in the yong (the ordinary, the useful in use).

“Yong” is “use”; “use” is “pass-through”; “pass-through” is “attainment.” When one hits the right measure, one is close to it. Following this “yes” far enough is already sufficient, yet without knowing why it is so—this is called Dao. To strain the spirit seeking a single “one,” without seeing that things were originally the same, is called “morning three.”

What is “morning three”? A keeper of monkeys divided acorns (xu) and said: “Three measures in the morning, four in the evening.” The monkeys were angry. He said: “Then make it four in the morning and three in the evening.” The monkeys were pleased. The name and the actual amount were not diminished, yet joy and anger were manipulated by wording—this too arises from “yes/no” distinctions. Therefore the sage harmonizes right and wrong and rests in the tianjun (the natural balance of Heaven)—this is called “liang xing” (two courses): both sides of yes and no can stand in parallel without clinging to one pole.

Notes woven into the explanation: Ting: fine grass in the courtyard; ying: pillar; li: foul, ugly, sometimes read as a skin affliction; hui, gui, jue: vast, perverse, anomalous. Jugong: monkey keeper; xu: acorn; morning three evening four / morning four evening three: the total is still seven measures—only the allocation differs.

People commonly assume they are right and others are wrong—that is human nature. Zhuangzi uses the “finger” as an analogy: if I use my finger to argue that “your finger does not count as a finger,” then from your standpoint my finger can likewise be said “not to count as a finger”; conversely, if you use your finger to make the same point about mine, I can be treated the same way. When we use each other this way as mutual examples, it becomes clear that both sides can “take themselves as right” and both can “take the other as wrong.” Since each can treat the other as “wrong,” there is no absolutely fixed “right” in the world; since each can also establish itself, there is no absolutely fixed “wrong.”

If there were a truly absolute “right,” people would not keep using fingers to refute fingers like this; if there were a truly absolute “wrong,” the world would no longer wrangle over “right” and “wrong.” Today, with no single judge of right and wrong, many voices speak—each clinging to its own view, yet all caught in partisan “either this or that.” Look up, look down—everywhere it is the same. Therefore the perfected person understands that Heaven and Earth can be regarded as one, and the ten thousand things can be treated with equal regard. When the heart is vast, there is peace; each rests in its allotted place and obtains what belongs to it, without forcibly splitting “right” from “wrong.” What fits oneself is called “acceptable”; what does not fit is called “unacceptable”—yet the Dao accomplishes nothing that is not accomplished, and nothing among things is not “so”; each is as it is, each is acceptable as it is acceptable.

“Qi” (making equal / the equal) does not necessarily mean that outward form or measure must be literally identical—just as a blade of grass and a pillar, or an ugly woman and Xishi, should not be forced onto one scale for comparison. What “qi” means is that each occupies its proper place and shares in self-sufficiency—not that length and shortness, beauty and ugliness, are violently flattened into a single shape.