《庄子翼》Vol. 10

Scriptural Fragment

When you have reached that realm, there is no need to keep arguing about it; if you are still arguing, you have not truly arrived. What you see in the open you still cannot grasp; disputing is inferior to silence. The Dao cannot be held by hearing; hearing is inferior to stopping up the ears and eyes—this is called “great attainment.”

[Note: The fruit of a tree is called guo; the fruit of an herb is called luo. Tao is the case that holds a bow; zhi is the wrapper that holds books.]

Guo Xiang’s Commentary (in Plain Language)

“Obscure darkness,” “formlessness,” and “the Dao” all mean the same thing: the Dao exists alone before the myriad things and does not borrow form from anything else. Form arises from essence (Jing) and grows from fine to coarse. Though the myriad things beget one another through form, all of this is simply natural; even embryo and egg cannot change species in birth—this shows that spirit and qi (the root of life) cannot be forced by human artifice.

Follow the nature of things, wander in a realm without tracks, release the body to heaven and earth, and lodge spirit beyond the eight directions. Then there are no gates or rooms, yet the four ways are open; you roam freely through the six directions and move with transformation. When human life meets this Dao, inborn nature is complete and spirit is settled; heaven, earth, and the myriad things are all like this by nature—it is not that the Dao deliberately makes them so. Therefore the sage abandons cleverness and entrusts everything to nature, only letting each thing keep its proper place, with no need for artifice.

Like the sea, it holds the immeasurable; it ends and begins again, turning with transformation. It uses things without being used by them, so it never lacks—this shows that the Dao’s provision for things lies in “non-provision”: not deliberately nourishing, yet things are naturally full; hence this Dao. Speaking of the utmost Dao, its achievement is “non-achievement”; only non-achievement is worthy of being called the Dao.

Neither yin nor yang, no partial name; upright yet human, proudly self-released, at ease with whatever one meets, utterly without fame or merit. Returning to the ancestor means not chasing minor ends. Yin yi (gathering qi and sealing the voice) toward things is simply gathering qi in one straight flow. If life and death need not be sharply distinguished, how much less the gap between long life and early death?

Guo and luo each have their principle; nothing is without principle—one should simply follow it. Human relations breed change through cleverness, hence difficulty; yet cleverness and artifice mesh like teeth—one should simply follow and accept: meeting without resisting, going along with what one encounters; passing without clinging, passing when one should pass. “Tiao ou” means harmonizing and pairing. The rise of emperors and kings is nothing more than this.

The gap-steed (white colt at the window) vanishes in an instant—not worth lingering over. “Going out and coming in” means change—nothing under heaven is unchanging. Having transformed, one is born; having transformed, one dies—all is transformation. Living things mourn for the dead; dead things do not mourn. People grieve for the dead; the dead do not grieve.

Unstringing the bow case (jie tao), dropping the book wrapper (duo zhi)—this speaks of solitary release. Fen wan is the swirling mist of change; the great return is wuwei (non-action), with no mind applied in its midst. Not fixing on form, form is complete; if one clings to form, form collapses. “Wu ze bu zhi”—bowing down without noticing, one comes to this. Seeing clearly is worthless; arriving in obscurity is what counts. Silent and sealed, there is nowhere to run—hence great attainment.

Commentary on Lü’s Annotation:

When spirit and mind still cling to the Dao yet retain distinctions, they remain bright; at the utmost reach of the Dao, however, all is dark and obscure. The birth of the ten thousand things each follows its own pattern: their essence is utmost truth and originally has no form; yet the ten thousand things arise depending on form, coming and going without trace, reaching everywhere in all directions.

If one abides in this state, one can take the ten thousand things as one’s body and rest and nourish life; though the body is strong, one does not rely on clever scheming, and one’s efficacy is inexhaustible. The arising of heaven, earth, and the ten thousand things is never otherwise.

“Broad learning” is not true wisdom, and “eloquent disputation” is not true insight—the sage long ago guarded against this confusion. What seems “gain” is not necessarily real gain, and what seems “loss” is not necessarily real loss—this is what the sage preserves. Deep and vast as an abyss, broad without bound—no one knows where it begins; it has movement and measure, yet lies nowhere outside the Dao. What the ten thousand things rely upon is not apart from the Dao; if one seeks the Dao from here, one finds where it dwells. Neither yin nor yang—only the Dao is followed; upright as a person, dwelling with others, one turns back to the root and merges with Heaven as one.

Speech that is dumb or foul is not what is truly valued; viewing long life and early death as equal, what is there to distinguish between Yao and Jie? Fruit and grain each have their principle; human relations each have their order—the sequence of the great Dao: neither violate nor cling, neither leave nor grasp—this is called “harmonizing and responding.” It is how De subtly completes the ten thousand things and how the Dao pairs with and responds to the ten thousand things—there is no need for deep investigation, no need for loud proclamation. The rise of emperors and kings is nothing but the working of this same Dao.

Human life is like a white colt flashing past a crack in the wall—it cannot long remain. Things mourn and people grieve because they do not understand the principle that one has “never been born and never dies.” Release bondage and tension and slackening need not be constrained; drop the scrolls and rolling and unrolling are unobstructed. Spirit and soul depart and the body follows; words do not step outside the “great forge”—form that is not form, formlessness within form—what the multitude knows in common, yet not something to chase as a “destination”; when it is reached, one embodies it; when it is not reached, one merely discusses it.

When clarity appears in the Dao, there is nothing to “encounter,” so disputation is inferior to silence; when one truly hears the Dao, there is nothing heard, so listening is inferior to stopping the ears. The speaker has no words, the listener has no hearing—this is called “great attainment.”

Zhuangzi Yi: Xunben and Buzhu in Plain Language

Xunben (First Section)

Plain language:

People do not need broad or forceful disputation to establish a view—the sage already has a settled understanding. When you truly awaken, it shows in how you live; if you have not awakened, it is only talk. Once the Dao is clear in the heart, you no longer know things by “matching” or “hitting the mark,” so disputation is not as good as silence. When you truly listen from the Dao, it can feel as if there is “nothing to hear,” so listening is not as good as stopping up the ears. This is called great attainment.

Xunben (Second Section)

Plain language:

Once the sage’s teaching is fixed, it cannot be added to or taken away; it is deep as the sea—ending and beginning again, turning without rest. The sage’s way measures things without being exhausted; the noble person’s way is like this too—yet the noble person still has a distinction of “mind turned outward.” Outer things all come to be taken and given, yet the source is not drained; that is the gap between “the Dao” and “words cannot exhaust the Dao.”

There are people in China (the kind Zhuangzi calls “perfect persons”) who step beyond yin and yang, stand between heaven and earth, temporarily take human form, and in the end return to their root—the root is the Great Void (taixu). From the Great Void’s view, human life is like long-fermented plum wine (classic commentary: yi, long brewing; however long the plum brew keeps, how long can it last?). What ordinary people dispute and spread is all talk of a moment.

Fruit may be small, yet branch, twig, flower, and fruit still have their order (like the roles of ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, friend and friend)—it looks tangled, but that is the work of mutual ordering. The sage within human relations meets them without going against what is due (fulfills what should be fulfilled), passes through without clinging (does not stick or linger), harmonizes and responds—that is De (Virtue/Power); pairs with things and responds—that is the Dao. The rise of emperors and kings is nothing outside this pattern.

“Tangled and turning” describes the state of loosing the ties and letting the scrolls fall—form from no-form, being from non-being, form’s beyond form, transformation from nothing. Zhi (encounter, correspondence) means meeting and pairing. The crux of the great Dao: what is clear in insight cannot be grasped by “encounter and matching,” so disputation is not as good as silence.

Buzhu (Supplementary Note)

Plain language:

Things usually exist by pairing and facing each other; the Dao is simply one. When you see the Dao clearly, you enter oneness, so there is nothing to call “correspondence” (you no longer stay on the plane of pairwise opposition).

Dongguozi asked Zhuangzi: “Where exactly is the Dao that people talk about?”

Zhuangzi replied: “The Dao is nowhere absent.”

Dongguozi said: “You have to point to a concrete place, or I cannot understand.”

Zhuangzi said: “It is in ants.”

Dongguozi said: “How can it be so low?”

Zhuangzi said: “It is in weeds.”

Dongguozi said: “How can it be lower still?”

Zhuangzi said: “It is in tiles and bricks.”

Dongguozi said: “How can it be even more debased?”

Zhuangzi said: “It is in excrement and urine.”

Dongguozi said no more.

Zhuangzi said: “Your question missed the point from the start. Zheng Huo asked a market official how to judge a pig’s fatness: the lower on the body you look, the truer the picture—the farther down you examine, the better you see how things really are. You too should not fix on one spot; the Dao is in all of them. The same holds for the broad account of the Dao. Zhou, bian, and xian are three names, but what they point to is one; they share the same aim.”

“We once wandered together in the palace of nowhere-at-all, joined in discussing the Dao without end; we once rested together in wuwei, calm and still, clear and quiet, harmonized and at ease. My mind had opened wide; I did not know where I was going. I went and came back without knowing where I would stop; I moved back and forth without knowing where I would end. I drifted in the vast expanse; great understanding entered there and did not know where its limit lay.”

“That which makes each thing what it is has no boundary with things; yet between thing and thing there is a dividing line—what is called the boundary between things. But non-boundary and boundary are originally one: the boundary of non-boundary, the non-boundary of boundary.”

“What people call fullness and emptiness, decline and perishing: as the Dao (or the real) presents fullness and emptiness, it is not ordinary fullness and emptiness; as it presents decline and perishing, it is not ordinary decline and perishing; as it presents root and branch, it is not ordinary root and branch; as it presents gathering and scattering, it is not ordinary gathering and scattering.”

Guo Xiang’s Commentary

“Only after it is fixed can one say whether it fits”: one must first determine what is being pointed to before one can judge whether the designation is apt. “Nature” (zhi) means essential character. The point is that the Dao is present everywhere, yet if one insists on matching it against the things listed below as if they were its “nature,” the comparison misses what is essential. “Xi” means a large pig. In the market, those who appraise pigs test fatness by stepping on the animal—the more one presses on the parts where fat is hardest to accumulate, the better one grasps the key to the pig’s plumpness. Today, when people ask “where is the Dao?” they repeatedly use things lower and more base as analogies; this shows that the Dao certainly does not stand apart from the myriad things. If one must claim that nothing at all can escape the Dao, then the Dao could not pervade all things; if it cannot pervade, it does not deserve to be called “Dao.” The same holds for great discourse (supreme principle): those who understand the Dao know that the Dao does not flee from the myriad things. If one merely roams within “being” (you—the realm of formed, manifest things), one cannot pervade and communicate everywhere; therefore one must treat them together in a single account, and only then realize that the Dao is nowhere absent. Knowing that it is nowhere absent, one can be vast and unburdened, roaming in the inexhaustible.

“Tranquil, still, vast, clear, harmonized, and spacious”—all belong to the condition of Wuwei (non-action). “My mind already emptied and still”: the will is vacant and empty. When the will is vacant, there is nowhere it must go; with nowhere to go, one advances without knowing where one arrives. If there were a fixed destination, principle would not yet move but the will would already be startled beforehand. Coming and going without knowing where to stop—this is following nature. Not knowing where coming and going end means that coming and going do not depend on “knowing”; it is not that one neither comes nor goes. Coming and going are the constant pattern of nature—how could they have an end? “Feng hong” denotes boundless emptiness. Great understanding roams in that vastness, following wherever change leads, and therefore need not deliberately “know.” “Wu wu” (treating things as things): do not fix any one thing as “the thing,” but let each thing be what it is for itself. Having said that the myriad things each are themselves, one speaks of “ming” (obscure unity). Things and things have boundaries, so they often cannot merge in obscure oneness; what is truly called “ji” (boundary) is precisely this dividing line. Saying “not at the boundary” means that although there is the name “wu wu,” it only marks that things are each themselves; in the end “wu wu” has no fixed “thing.” Where then is “boundary”? Once it is clear that “wu wu” has no thing, and also that a thing need not confine itself to one thing, then who is “the one who does it”? Everything is suddenly just so of itself.

Lu Huiqing’s Commentary

Ants have awareness yet are extremely small; tare plants have no awareness yet possess life; tiles and bricks have no life yet have form; excrement and urine have form yet are foul and corrupt. If one takes these as “where the Dao resides,” one can know the Dao is nowhere absent. To think the Dao must be in what is lower and more base, and yet keep pressing the question, is to fall short of the essence. Those who test a pig’s fatness by stepping lower and lower can judge more accurately; if from this one infer that “the Dao must be in what is lower,” would one not judge further and further from the essence? Yet to insist that only escaping outside things counts as “nowhere absent” is mistaken. The first four differ, yet none lacks the substance of the Dao—this is like saying pervasion and thorough communication, with one aim throughout. Roaming in the palace of “nowhere” and attaining union—how could any of the four not be the Dao? The myriad things arise together, yet constantly associate in Wuwei; what is “tranquil, vast, harmonized, and spacious” none fails to return each to its root. “My mind already emptied and still”: not chasing externals, there is nowhere to go and no knowing of arrival; in coming and going one also does not know where to stop; in interchange one does not know an end—this is that the Dao never clings to being “one thing,” while things are never not the Dao. Hence one wanders in Feng hong; great understanding enters it without knowing exhaustion. From this one knows that “wu wu” has no boundary with things, and large and small cannot be equalized; what is called “the boundary of things” is not “wu wu” itself. The boundary that is not a boundary, the boundary of not-boundary—like form without form, form that is not form: fullness and emptiness are things; what makes for fullness and emptiness is the Dao. That which brings decay and killing, root and tip, accumulation and dispersal, follows the same pattern. Then who is it that treats tare, ants, tiles and bricks, excrement and urine as the Dao and draws these distinctions?

Answering by Sticking to the Root

The questioner spoke in general terms and did not get at the root, so that was why I answered as I did.

What “Zheng” and “Huo” Mean

In the Yili (Rites of Zhou), at drinking and archery ceremonies there are offices such as Sizheng (master of correctness) and Sihuo (master of capture); in the market there is also the jian shi lü xi—someone who oversees trade and, by stepping on a pig, judges its weight by feel. Sizheng, Sihuo, and jian shi lü xi hold different duties, yet all appear in the context of drinking and archery ritual, which is why they are used as analogies.

How “Lü Xi” (Stepping on the Pig) Works

Lü xi means stepping along the pig from the upper part of the body down to the lower; the farther down one steps, the more one must compare and contrast, and the clearer the pig’s fatness or leanness becomes. Folk custom also judges whether a pig is plump by whether the two hind quarters (thighs) are even and symmetrical—expressing the same idea.

Relation to the Dao

The deeper and finer the discourse, the stricter and more explicit the comparison; viewed through this layered way of analogy, the import of the Dao gradually comes into view.

Supplementary Notes (Commentary)

“Xi” means a large pig; “lü” means to kick with the foot. Whether a pig is fat or lean shows when you kick its rump. The rump is the lower part of the body, so when one speaks of “below,” there must be a “qi”—a definite, expectable point. It is precisely because of this “qi” that the later question arises—“Why must you fix it?”—meaning one need not insist that the Dao must reside in some fixed place. Where in the world could there be a “Dao” that could be named apart from concrete things? In the end, Dao and qi (concrete things) are originally one. The highest Dao is so; the highest speech is so. The three words “zhou,” “bian,” and “xian” differ in form, yet their import converges.

To talk of mystery all day and stop at the lips is little different from chaff or the dregs left when ashes are burned out. I use words to speak of the Dao; you use questions to ask about the Dao—neither words nor questions are the Dao itself. Better to go a step further with you into the “Palace of No-Thing,” and together discuss learning that merges into one and has no end. This “merging into one” means I have nothing left to say and you have nothing left to hear: wuwei (non-action), tranquil and still; vast, yet clear; harmonized and spaciously at ease—such is the far reach of the intent. Speaking of “far,” it seems there is somewhere to go, yet there is nowhere to go; only when there is no fixed “going” does one abide serenely. If there is coming and going, it is simply following the time of coming and the time of going—resting in the times, accord with change—without clinging to where one stops. Once one clings to a single place, one knows only going and not coming, or only coming and not going; that is grasping, not the natural course. I have already moved back and forth within it without knowing what it is like, and so wander in the open wilds; resting in the times and accord with change, not knowing where to come to rest. Then one enters again into “Great Knowing” (here, the great Dao), not knowing its limit. What is meant by roaming with you in the Palace of No-Thing, merging in discourse, and learning without end—is just this.

“Wu-wu” (thing-ing things) is the Dao: the Dao has no fixed abode, yet is not outside any thing, so it has no boundary with things. “Ji” means a dividing line; if one says there is a boundary, that becomes a “boundary of things.” The Dao is “the boundary of non-boundary”—not a Dao apart from these things, but rather that “boundary” itself is not bound by boundary. The “boundary” spoken of here refers to fullness and emptiness, decline and destruction, root and branch, accumulation and dispersal—all paired opposites; the Dao treats them as fullness-and-emptiness without being identical to fullness-and-emptiness, as decline-and-destruction without being identical to decline-and-destruction, as root-and-branch and accumulation-and-dispersion without being identical to root-and-branch or accumulation-and-dispersion. Zhang Zai’s “because both are present, it cannot be measured”—that is roughly the idea.

In the passage on Fang Sihan, Zhou Bianxian is a metaphor: many formulations and different lines of reasoning all point to one and the same purport. Liaoji should be read with what comes before: if a person can practice wuwei (non-action), keep the mind light and detached, and harmonize spirit and breath, that counts as reaching the utmost. The term liaoji praises a state of utmost emptiness and stillness—silent and undisturbed.

Where there is a boundary, one can know where it stops; where there is no boundary, one cannot know where it stops. Whoever does not know where the limit lies is wuwu—taking things as things and transforming with things. Wuwu refers to bi (the “other” side relative to “this,” the side of the absolute). Only bi can seem at once full and empty, declining and dying, without that being the usual senses of fullness, emptiness, decline, or death—it is another way of speaking of the utmost stillness, not a crude pairing of opposites.

Where there is a limit, one knows its end; where there is no limit, one does not know its end. Whoever does not know its end is wuwu, and wuwu is bi. Only bi can be “full-full, empty-empty, decline-decline, kill-kill,” and that is not to be taken as literally meaning fullness, emptiness, decline, and killing. This is the juncture of non-juncture: no fixed dividing line, yet in every phenomenon its “juncture” shows; margin and no-margin are one.

First passage (the death of Laolongji)

Ahegan had studied together with Shennong and Laolongji. One day Shennong was dozing with his head on the table. At noon Ahegan came in and said, “Laolongji is dead.” Shennong leaned on his staff to stand up; the staff fell to the floor, and he suddenly burst out laughing. He said, “Heaven knows I am narrow-minded, crude, negligent, and changeable, so it had Laolongji die first and left me behind. If he were still here, he could still listen to my wild talk; now there is no one for me to talk wildly to—so for me he is as good as dead.”

Second passage (Yan Goudiao’s comment)

When Yan Goudiao heard this, he said: Those who can embody the Dao (the Way) are precisely what the gentlemen of the world rely on. Laolongji had not touched even one ten-thousandth of the tip of an autumn hair’s breadth of the Dao, yet he knew enough to hide his wild words and die; how much more so one who truly embodies the Dao! The Dao has no form when you look at it and no sound when you listen; when people discuss it they can only call it “dark and obscure.” Therefore, when you use words to discuss the Dao, what you discuss is not the Dao itself.

Third passage (Taiqing asks about “knowing” and the Dao)

Taiqing asked Wuqiong, “Do you know the Dao?” Wuqiong said, “I do not know.” He then asked Wuwu, who said, “I know.” Taiqing asked, “You say you know the Dao—does your knowing have number and order?” Wuwu said, “It does.” Taiqing asked, “What is that number like?” Wuwu said, “The Dao I know can be honored or despised, can be condensed or spread out—that is what I call knowing the number of the Dao.”

Fourth passage (Taiqing asks Wushi again)

Taiqing took this and asked Wushi: “If that is so, is Wuqiong’s ‘not knowing’ or Wuwu’s ‘knowing’ right or wrong?” Wushi said, “Not knowing goes deep; knowing stays shallow. Take ‘not knowing’ as inner and ‘knowing’ as outer.” Taiqing sighed halfway through and said, “Is not knowing really knowing? Is knowing really not knowing? Who can grasp ‘knowing that is not knowing’?”

Fifth passage (Wushi on the Dao)

Wushi said, “The Dao cannot be heard; if you hear it, it is not the Dao. The Dao cannot be seen; if you see it, it is not the Dao. The Dao cannot be spoken; if you speak it, it is not the Dao. Are you asking about form, or about what makes form not form? The Dao should not be trapped in names.” Someone else asked about the Dao; the one who answered did not really know. The asker did not truly hear the Dao either. The Dao is not a question, and a question has no answer. To ask when there is nothing to ask is to exhaust questioning; to answer when there is nothing to answer is to have no inner ground. Treating “no inner ground” toward “exhausted questioning” in this way, one neither looks outward at the cosmos nor inward knows the Great Beginning (Dachu); thus one cannot pass Kunlun or roam in the Great Void (Taixu).”

Note: The received text has copyist variants (e.g. “Ahegan,” “Yan Goudiao,” and other readings differ slightly from other Zhuangzi editions). The English above follows the sense of this version’s wording; names such as Shennong, Laolongji, Taiqing, Wuqiong, Wuwu, Wushi, Kunlun, and Dachu are kept as in the original.

Guo Xiang’s commentary:

Zigong rose and realized that death was nothing to dread, so he put down his staff and laughed. From Jianwu downward, all took words of utmost truth for mad talk and would not believe—so unless someone was of Laolong’s or Lian Shu’s kind, they were not worth talking about the Dao with. What the noble person holds to in “speech” is the root of one who embodies the Dao; the tip of an autumn hair is already extremely fine, yet it still falls short of one ten-thousandth of the Dao. Hiding mad speech and using death to show it: the utmost Dao is not something one can get by speaking—only by self-attainment; even in the dark murk one still cannot say one has clarified the Dao—the Dao is originally without name. Whatever is attained is not by intellectual knowing but by silent accord, hence it is quietly completed in a realm of no seeing and no hearing before one arrives. To know the “formless” in “form”: to speak of “form” is only form itself; what forms form ultimately has no thing. A name that has the Dao still ultimately has no thing, so the name cannot fit. Not knowing, one asks; if the question gets an answer, that is not the Dao; if there is no answer, that is not what the questioner attains—so though one asks, one never hears in the end. No question and no answer—this is the sense of cutting off learning, abandoning teaching, and returning to Nature. “Questioning the void” means pressing the empty: what is really absent is falsely treated as present in answering—only outward show. If one is like one who falls through heaven and earth, wanders the void and crosses far, and enters the dark murk—that is merely not answering.

Lu Huiqing’s commentary:

One who embodies the Dao is what the noble people of the world hold to; sage, king, and achievement all tie to this. Now on the Dao they have not even one ten-thousandth of an autumn hair—yet one strand of its fineness reaches what cannot be divided (what is called reaching oneness), and still one knows to hide mad speech and die—how much more one who embodies the Dao with endless transformation! Laolong hid mad speech and died; generally those who take the Dao as a thing find it is not within sight or hearing; when people discuss it they call it the dark murk—not something speech can discuss—so they discuss the Dao and yet it is not the Dao. Taiqing heard “discussing the Dao when it is not the Dao” and thought that was enough to pursue the boundless—but the boundless does not know. Wuwei is the root; Wuwei knows it has nothing to act on and therefore is Wuwei—thus it knows; otherwise it would be the same as the Dao. To know that the Dao can be honored, can be slighted, can be condensed, can be scattered—is still not free from reckoning. Wuwu (No-beginning) then exhausts where beginning comes from, hence knows: not knowing is depth, knowing is shallow; not knowing is inner, knowing is outer. Midway Taiqing sighed: not knowing is knowing—Wuqiong (the boundless) is that; knowing is not knowing—Wuwei is that. Who knows “knowing that does not know”? Then only Wuwu. The Dao cannot be heard or seen; speech then is heard, hearing and seeing see speech—who is the speaker? There is form and then there is name; to know that what forms form is formless—this is why the Dao cannot be named. Then the hearer of hearing does not hear, the seer of seeing does not see, the speaker of speech does not speak—this can be known. There is question and answer—one does not know the Dao; even the one who asks the Dao has not heard the Dao—the Dao has no question, because the questioner cannot obtain it; the question has no answer, because the answerer cannot obtain it. All take their “not yet having a thing” as enough. No question yet questioning—this is questioning the void; then one does not know its boundlessness and has no way to take questioning as real. No answer yet answering—this is no inner; then one has not attained “not yet having a thing” within. To wait for questioning the void with no inner—if like this, one does not look upon the cosmos, does not know the great beginning—then one is not bound by time and place, yet also does not pass Kunlun, does not wander the great void—then one does not know how high form is while heaven, earth, and the myriad things are stored within it.

1. Opening the Door, Laolongji, and “Kuangyan” (Wild Speech)

Someone flings the door open with a bang, then sets down a staff. Heaven seems to point at Laolongji and say: I can no longer find anyone to question or verify things with. My “kuangyan” (wild, unrestrained talk) will die with me—meaning that most of what I usually say sounds arrogant and ignorant; yet though the human form stands tall, heaven and earth and the ten thousand things are all nourished within it.

Explanation in the original vein: While Laolongji was alive, I could still ask questions and ask him to correct me; when Laolongji died, I had nowhere to turn with questions, and those kuangyan vanished with me. Now, on the Dao, not even one ten-thousandth of the tip of an autumn hair can be spoken of—here the reference is to Shennong (the Divine Farmer). “Hiding one’s kuangyan” means no longer developing or outwardly proclaiming. When people discuss the Dao, they can usually only call it “mingming” (dark, obscure)—because the Dao has no form and no sound, and apart from saying “mingming,” nothing else can be said.

2. Guangyao (Luminous Radiance) Questions “Wuyou” (Non-Being / Nothing)

Guangyao (bright radiance) sought instruction from Wuyou (non-being): “Sir, do you exist, or do you not?”

Guangyao got no answer, so he looked closely at Wuyou’s form—empty and vast. All day he looked but saw nothing, listened but heard nothing, reached but grasped nothing.

Guangyao sighed: “This is the utmost! Who can reach such a state? I can still distinguish ‘you’ and ‘wu’ (being and non-being), but I have not yet attained ‘wuwu’ (non-non-being—even ‘non-being’ is dropped); if one stops only at the level of ‘youwu’ (being and non-being), how can one arrive at Wuyou from there?”

(Note: Some editions read “ji wei youwu” (reaching being-and-non-being); in textual criticism this is often emended to “wuwu,” i.e., not yet having passed the gate of wuwu.)

3. Guo Xiang’s Commentary (Main Idea)

All of this speaks of juexue (cutting off learning)—on the Dao, thoroughly letting go of the obsession with outward “learning.” For the Dao, only when outward pursuit is cut off does the learner truly come from the root. So those who truly study the Dao are, in that sense, non-learners—not that they never read, but that they do not treat “learning” as something to cling to and climb by.

4. Lü’s Commentary on “Guangyao / Wuyou”

Guangyao stands for the great cosmos shining forth, able to illuminate the ten thousand things; Wuyou has not even that “shining,” so Guangyao cannot tell whether the other is “you” or “wu,” and questioning yields no answer.

“Yaoran, kongran” (deeply still, utterly empty)—beyond what sight and hearing reach—this is what “Wuyou” means.

Because Guangyao still remains in the opposition of you/wu (being/non-being), he cannot yet achieve wuwu, and so cannot reach Wuyou. Once one truly reaches Wuyou, there was never a path “from here to there” in the first place, so there is nothing to say about “how to get from here to there.”

Overall meaning: The classic text and commentaries all say: the Dao cannot be exhausted by questioning or speech like ordinary learning; when someone upright and genuine like Laolongji was present, wild speech still had something to latch onto; when that person is gone and the Dao hides, only mingming remains. The parable of Guangyao and Wuyou depicts Wuyou as “invisible, inaudible, ungraspable,” and shows that staying in the binary of you/wu never reaches Wuyou; Guo’s and Lü’s notes stress juexue, return to the root, and wuwu, in the same line as Zhuangzi’s “words exist to convey meaning; once the meaning is got, forget the words.”

Plain-Language Reading of Passages Related to Zhuangzi Yi

1. Da Ma and the Old Craftsman Who Forged Hooks

There was a man named Da Ma (note: some say “Da Ma” means Grand Marshal; in the Jiangdong region through the Three Wei territories, forging was called “chui,” and “gou” here means hook-shaped weapons or hook-shaped tools). He had an old craftsman in his employ who specialized in forging hooks. The man was eighty years old, yet the hooks he made were off by no more than a hair’s breadth or the tip of an awn.

Da Ma asked: “Is your skill dexterity, or is it mastery of the Dao?”

The old craftsman said: “I have a method I hold to. From twenty I loved forging hooks; I did not look at anything else—if it was not a hook, I did not examine it closely. Thus what needed to be used could borrow what was provisional (relying on external things), and what did not need to be used was left empty; in this way I long preserved the part that ‘could be used’—how much more so the great Dao that uses nothing yet uses everything? What among the ten thousand things does not depend on it?”

Guo Xiang’s commentary in gist: Weighing the hook’s heft without missing by a hair’s breadth comes from having no other concern in the mind—when externals arrive, one responds naturally.

Lü Huizheng’s commentary in gist: Useless yet using everything—only the Dao is like that.

2. Ran Qiu Asks Confucius: Can One Know the State Before Heaven and Earth Existed?

Ran Qiu asked Confucius: “Before Heaven and Earth existed, can that condition be known?”

Confucius said: “It can. The ancient is like the present (in what can be known, they belong to the same structure).”

Ran Qiu’s question was off the mark, and he withdrew. The next day he came again and said: “Yesterday I asked whether one can know the time before Heaven and Earth; the Master said yes—the ancient is like the present. Yesterday I thought I understood; today I am confused instead. May I ask what this means?”

Confucius said: “Yesterday you understood because your spirit had already received the answer inwardly; today you are confused because you went seeking again with what is not spirit (not in direct communion, not in immediate accord). There is no ancient and no present, no beginning and no end. No descendants yet already having descendants—is that possible?”

Ran Qiu could not reply. Confucius said: “Enough—no need to answer. Do not use life (living) to live-and-die life; do not use death (dying) to die-and-die death; are life and death mutually facing, mutually dependent relations? They both belong to one whole. Did Heaven and Earth come first, and only then the ten thousand things? Thing is thing—‘thing-ing’ things (treating things as things) is not a thing; things emerge from the Dao—there cannot be a ‘thing’ before things; as if there were already things, one is still speaking on the level of ‘having things.’ There is no limit (the Dao cannot be exhausted). The sage loves people; love to the end never ceases—this too is taken as norm from this ‘one body,’ from this Dao.”

Note: This section mixes Zhuangzi main text with commentaries by Guo Xiang and Lü Huizheng, and outer-chapter themes spoken through Confucius on “ancient like present,” “spirit receiving,” and “life and death as one body,” and the like—Zhuangzi-lineage thought that should not be equated simply with Confucius’s sayings in the Analects.

What Confucius meant by “heaven and earth are always there” is that before the myriad things had yet to appear, heaven and earth were already present. If a person can empty the mind, keep still, and align with heaven’s mandate, the spirit can naturally receive and follow the Way of heaven. If one keeps using thought to chase “what comes first and what comes after, being and non-being,” the more one seeks, the more tangled things become—not only does “non-being” fail to turn into “being,” but “being” also cannot revert to “non-being.” So as things that are “being,” however they change in countless ways, they can never become complete “non-being” in the end. Thus, from the time when there was no “particular thing” in antiquity, heaven and earth as a whole have been there all along.

“Descendants” means generations extending without end: the myriad things each have a source and cannot arise from nothing, hence succession from generation to generation—you cannot have a grandson without a son. Heaven and earth are the same: it is not that at first there was nothing and then heaven and earth suddenly appeared. What we call death is each thing on its own transforming into death, reaching its own limit; it is not that “the living side” goes and kills something else. Birth is the same: each on its own transforms into birth. Birth and death do not wait on or depend on each other; each transforms and each completes its own form, and that is already enough. Then who could stand before the myriad things and be their “first cause”?

Some say yin-yang come before things, but yin-yang themselves are also a kind of “thing”—who could come before yin-yang? Others say “spontaneity” (ziran, things as they are of themselves) comes before things, but ziran is simply things being thus on their own, without more. As for the “ultimate Dao,” that is utmost “non-being”; once it is “non-being,” what sense is there in asking who is before and who is after? So there is no absolute beginning placed before the myriad things—and that just shows that the myriad things are thus of themselves, not deliberately made so by anyone.

The sage’s love for the people and unceasing grace also take this “self-so-ness” as their model. That is why virtue and kindness can flow down through a hundred generations without failing.

Lü Commentary

Who can say clearly how the names “Heaven and Earth” came to be? Whoever can explain how Heaven and Earth were named is already close to grasping what gave rise to Heaven and Earth; push further back, and before Heaven and Earth had appeared there was still only a single “present moment”—Shen (spirit, here the pre-form awareness or root source) was first to receive its subtlety, gaining insight without deliberate calculation. People then ask why things that are “not marvelous” are as they are; past and present, end and beginning depend on each other, and if “being” and “non-being” must wait on each other, nothing can stand firm. Whoever truly understands this grasps what the classic means by “before Heaven and Earth existed.”

When Heaven and Earth had not yet formed, a person could still comprehend something; extend that, and it is as if “there were no descendants yet descendants already existed”—which tells us not to answer hastily, but rather not to seek with a “deliberate mind”: first fixing in the mind that “only where there is life can death be born from life,” or that “only where there is death can life be born from death,” and pursuing with such discriminating mind—that is going astray. Do birth and death wait on each other? As far as intrinsic nature is concerned, there is originally no waiting; whether one speaks of “there is waiting” or “there is no waiting,” one still remains on the level of “there is a body.” Recognize birth and death as one body, and where would there be one who “gives birth to things before Heaven and Earth”? If one insists Heaven and Earth came first and the myriad things afterward, everything is treated as “things of things”; if “things of things” are still taken as “things,” things cannot appear before “things.” “There was something undifferentiated, born before Heaven and Earth” only means it seems like a “thing,” yet also seems not even to be a “thing”—it speaks of the layer where “there is not yet any thing.” The sage’s love for the people never runs dry because he takes this as his model; Qian’s origin therefore encompasses the Way of Heaven, and the noble person embodies this to “nourish and sustain the multitude”—the principle lies here.

Doubt About Solitude (Yidu)

Before Heaven and Earth opened, was it truly unknowable? Traced back from the time when Heaven and Earth already existed, something can be known. Xunzi said: the Way of the hundred kings is embodied in the later kings; a thousand years ago is today. Ran Qiu at first asked with an empty mind—when the mind is empty, Shen arises, and thus one can see clearly; in the end he only heard words… (In transmitted texts this passage may connect with the theme of “the long-lived person”; here only the existing wording is briefly explained.)

On “Solitary Wondering”

Before heaven and earth had taken shape, was there any way to know what things were like? By reasoning from how they are after heaven and earth have formed, one can know.

Xunzi said: the way the sage kings of old governed is embodied in every sage king who comes after; a thousand years ago and the present day share the same underlying principles.

At first Ran Qiu asked questions with an empty, receptive mind; when the heart is empty, the numinous brightens, so he could see clearly. Later he heard words but could not penetrate them, because fixed opinions and “things” had lodged in his heart—not the state of the numinous—so other thoughts crowded in and he grew dim.

From the standpoint of the numinous, there is neither ancient nor modern, neither beginning nor end.

Originally there is no independent entity called “death”; death only shows itself as such because of life. Originally there is no independent entity called “life”; life only shows itself as such because of death. Life-with-death and death-with-life each complete their own whole; they do not depend on or wait for each other.

What the Great Change (Yijing) discusses is the stage before qi has appeared—neither form nor yet qi—and so it can “make the myriad things be the myriad things.” What can “make the myriad things be the myriad things” is not itself one thing among the myriad; if you treat it as one thing, even though it appears before the myriad things, it cannot truly be “prior to the myriad things.” To call it “having a thing” is already not to say it is “prior to things”; once you say “having a thing,” reason has no end.

The sage does not “love” the myriad things in the partial way ordinary people do, yet care for them never ceases—his principle is probably drawn from this.

Ran Qiu’s question came on like thunder splitting a mountain; Confucius answered with ease, and Ran Qiu could not press further and withdrew—so one can gauge what sages are worth.

The human body takes heaven as its model and earth as its image; before heaven and earth, the nature that is originally ours was already there. Once you know that original self, you can also know heaven and earth; and to know what came before heaven and earth, you can work backward from what came after they arose. The sage “holds to the Dao of antiquity to govern the present age” and can surely use the present to clarify the past—this is not merely “knowing what a hundred generations hence will be like.”

Heaven and earth are no more than a tiny mote in the void, yet among the ten thousand things they are the greatest; the formed arises from the formless and in the end must perish. People live in a brief span; what the eye cannot reach is like the summer insect that knows nothing of ice.

As for the meaning of shen (spirit): those who can receive it first know what spirit is and take spirit as spirit; yet one must also seek from what is not spirit—why, in unknowing and non-spirit, does spirit still abide? Why look outward any further? It is enough to turn the light back upon the heart’s source, to gain without gaining anything, neither bright nor dim, with no ancient and no present, so that birth and death cannot bind one. Not treating life as life and not treating death as death is what is called solitary transformation: it does not depend on anything else—much as one breath is not the next, or one flame is not the next.

The question is raised again: is there a “thing” that existed before heaven and earth? The answer: only the Dao stands before heaven and earth; there is no “thing” before heaven and earth—what we call a thing is not a true thing. The Dao begets heaven, earth, and the ten thousand things; the name “thing” cannot be forced upon it. Once there is a thing and one is caught up in physical form, it can no longer be called a prior thing. Because there are things, from one arise the many, crowding before the eyes day after day, yet few can stand apart and not be confused. From this we know that persons and things are inexhaustible because creation is inexhaustible; the sage’s benevolence reaching things is likewise inexhaustible—yet in the end one cannot avoid the drift from plain simplicity into decadence, and the governance of primordial wuwei (non-action) cannot be recovered.

If one wishes to restore that primordial governance of wuwei, I fear there is only one road: to seek well one’s own innate primordial nature—and nothing else.

Plain-Language Commentary

Yan Hui asked Confucius: I once heard you say that one need not deliberately see people off or insist on going to meet them—I would like to ask what kind of way of living in the world and roaming the heart that describes.

Confucius said: The ancients could let their outward form and bearing change with circumstances, while inwardly they kept their proper place and were not wholly carried away by external things. People today often stir up their inner minds first with fixed views and desires, then force themselves to cope on the surface. Those who truly “transform together with things” still hold fast in the midst of myriad changes to that root which cannot be transformed away. They can abide both in change and in what does not change; they may rub against and depend on external things, yet need not fight to take more than their share in every affair.

The parks of the age of Xiwei, the preserves of the Yellow Emperor, the palaces of the Youyu era, the halls of Tang and Wu—each generation’s scale grew larger. People of the gentlemanly sort, such as Confucians and Mohists with their separate lineages, often set up barriers of “right and wrong” and reproach one another; how much more so ordinary people in the world. The sage in dealing with things does not harm external things; one who does not harm external things is also not harmed by them. Only one whom external things do not harm can naturally go along with others, meet and part without getting stuck.

Mountain forests and hill wastes—all of these I gladly take as my joy; yet before joy is spent, grief quietly arrives. When joy and sorrow come, I cannot block them; when they go, I cannot hold them—how lamentable that is. People treat the myriad things almost as guests in an inn, and themselves as guests too. They only know what they “encounter,” not what they “do not encounter”; they only know what they “can,” not what they also “cannot.” Not knowing and not being able—such limits are inherent in being human. Yet they still strain to escape what cannot be escaped—is that not pitiful? Words of the utmost Dao often need not be many; the conduct of the utmost Dao often need not be forced action. If one uses wisdom only to level and judge what one knows and sees, that reach is still shallow.

Let the mind follow the form, and the form will transform on its own; if you use the mind to drive the body, you will treat external things as “unchanging.”

When you constantly keep “no-mind,” then even the “One” (the whole, the suchness of things) is not forcibly altered; only when the One does not change can you transform together with the ten thousand things. Whether things transform or not, leave it to the things themselves—that is no-mind. No-mind and letting things be natural is not deliberately welcoming or sending off, or straining to comply; it is being at ease with them. There is no need for many words—neither welcoming nor sending off; enough is enough.

Gardens and palace halls mean that only no-mind and letting transformation run its course is where all sages roam. “Hard to harmonize”: teachers of Confucianism and Mohism are among the hardest people in the world to reconcile; someone without mind can still be in harmony with them—how much more so with ordinary people. Dealing with things without being harmed is utmost compliance; things cannot harm a person—the key lies in oneself. No-mind is utmost compliance; utmost compliance can leave nothing violated, and one still upholds righteousness amid welcoming and sending off.

Mountain forests and riverside meadows do not necessarily suit my heart from the start, yet I immediately delight in them—this is “delighting without cause.” Delight without cause also brings grief without cause; what one delights in is not enough to count as true delight, and what one grieves is not enough to count as true grief. People in the world cannot sit in forgetfulness and find self-sufficiency (by forgetting the self and resting content in what is natural), but instead lodge joy and grief in external things, like guests staying at an inn.

What one meets, one knows; what one does not meet, one does not know; what one cannot do, one cannot force. Seen this way, knowing and not knowing, ability and inability, are not ruled by me—they should be entrusted to nature. Ignorance and inability are unavoidable for people—each life has its allotted portion. Ultimate words and ultimate action all come from self-attainment; what is gained only after learning is borrowed and therefore shallow.

Note: The passage above is Guo Xiang’s commentary on a section of the Zhuangzi; punctuation and the sense of individual phrases differ among scholars. This rendering follows the usual reading of Guo’s commentary; technical terms are kept where possible and briefly explained.

【Lü’s commentary】

The ancients outwardly transformed along with the myriad things and vanished together with them, yet inwardly they held to “non-transformation,” so something that was “not forgotten” still remained. People today inwardly transform with external things—the heart changes along with things—while outwardly they do not transform with things: they fix on what is right before them and cannot day by day pass away together with things. To transform together with things is to be one with them and not to preserve a separate “non-transformation” on the side. If one both speaks of transformation and speaks of something that does not transform, that is not genuine non-transformation; how then can one comply and go along with things? Action is like galloping that will not stop. If one’s contact with things is not excessive, there is no need deliberately to go out to meet them or send them off—one only responds and does not hoard in the heart. This is the point of the metaphors of the park, the garden, the palace, and the chamber: as the age declines, fewer can roam within them, and the space one inhabits grows narrower. A gentleman such as those of the Ru and Mo lineages still guard against one another over right and wrong between teacher and disciple; guard too fiercely and one harms oneself. How much harder is it for people today even to rub along with things—not to mention chasing without cease? If one is not overly entangled with things, one neither goes out to meet nor sees off, but responds without storing—again the park, garden, palace, and chamber: the age wanes, roamers are fewer, dwelling is tighter. Ru and Mo teachers still use right and wrong to guard against each other and greatly harm themselves; today it is even harder to polish against things. The sage dwells among things without harming things, lets both paths of right and wrong run their course, and rests in tianjun (natural balance); how then can things harm him? Thus, though he goes back and forth with others in mutual greeting, he roams alone where there is nothing to meet or to be met. People of the world are driven by external things; joy and sorrow can enter the heart. Mountains, forests, and marshlands once made people rejoice; before joy is spent, sorrow follows—the two alternate without end. What comes cannot be refused; what goes cannot be held back. The body is merely lodged by things, like an nülu (inn). One knows what one passes through but not what one does not encounter: when there is encounter, one joins with things; when there is no encounter, one parts from things. One can manage what is “able,” yet does not understand what is “unable”: in the able, one is enslaved by things; in the unable, one enslaves things. Ignorance and inability are what people cannot escape. If one turns around and strives to escape what people cannot escape, one loses one’s nature to a grievous degree—is that not lamentable? The ultimate word discards words; the ultimate deed discards deeds—yet one uses what intelligence knows to force sameness and strives to escape the inescapable. Though one takes oneself to know, in truth one is shallow.

【Following the root text】

Outward transformation, inward non-transformation: one responds to things while the heart does not migrate with them. Inward transformation, outward non-transformation: the heart has no fixed ground and is turned by affairs—is that not lamentable? The ultimate word discards words; the ultimate deed discards deeds—yet one uses what intelligence knows to force sameness and strives to escape what people cannot escape. Though one knows, one is still shallow.

Outwardly changing with things while inwardly not changing with them means responding to external affairs while the heart does not run off with those affairs.Inwardly changing with things while outwardly not changing with them means the mind has no fixed standard and is pushed, bumped, and led by outer things. Changing with outer things is called “outer transformation”; what stays unchanged and holds to the root is called “inner non-transformation.”

Then what does “peace” (an) refer to? What is “transformation,” what is “non-transformation”? If one insists on rubbing and wearing against outer things, one will be ground down by them in the end, and little will remain. From Xiwu, the Yellow Emperor, Youyu, Cheng Tang, and King Wu down to Confucians and Mohists, each school already used debate over right and wrong to guard against and oppose the others—how much more so people today? Mutual guarding is worse than mutual friction—like a garden plot narrower than an enclosure, an inner room deeper than the main hall: the further in one goes, the tighter it gets. The word “injury” here pairs in meaning with “grind” and “guard.”

Supplementary note

What a person can reach through thinking is called “encounter,” but what is encountered is limited; what can be done through strength is called “capacity,” but capacity is also limited. Thus there is always what one does not know and cannot do. If one is not at peace with the natural disposition of nature and life (xingming) but vainly seeks beyond one’s proper place to know and do everything, even exhausting body and mind, the unknown and undoable only increase—hence the pity. Here one need not develop the whole “Heaven vs. human” framework at length.

This chapter takes zhi (knowing) as its theme: knowing arises from deliberate action and articulated speech. “Wandering north” suggests a turn toward the root and a movement of return to the source. Gun—father of Yu the Great, here perhaps a parable figure—handled flood control with supreme skill, yet still retained the merit of “benefiting things”: intention in doing work can serve as a likeness for cultivating the Way; wuwei (non-action), free of pointless striving, then merges with the Dao.

Three questions, and he does not know; the answer is not knowing—and not knowing is true knowing. The Yellow Emperor grows clearer with every reply, and thus drifts further from the Dao. Why? The sage leaves form behind and strips away knowing, casts off the body and dims the senses; through wuwei the ten thousand things come to completion, and without speaking the world is transformed. The Dao cannot be grasped by “knowing”; the body cannot be privately possessed; things arise from non-being, and heaven and earth are pervaded as one qi (vital energy). Wonder and putrefaction alternate in mutual generation; yin and yang are mute and give birth to themselves; they burst forth and pour back in—what the multitude shares alike. To become one with things in transformation without being transformed oneself—that is reserved for the sage alone. Life and death follow transformation; folding the scrolls and letting them fall of themselves—then one dwells within transformation and entrusts oneself to it: no transformation without all transformation, forgetting transformation so that transformation keeps transforming, at ease in transformation and at ease in non-transformation. Hence “the lower one goes, the clearer the Dao”—the Dao is in roof tiles and broken pots; one uses the provisional form without clinging to use. Thus the craftsman skilled at forging hooks—with today’s knowing, one cannot fix the before and after of heaven and earth; not abiding, one does not depart; without welcoming or seeing off, one penetrates the transformation inside and out, resting in things without harm. From this we know: one who is not still because of circumstances is nowhere not still; one who is not joyful because of things has nothing that is not joy; neither transformation can manipulate nor burdens can invade; one day may count as a hundred years, and a hundred years as one day. Who can be sure that what we dwell in today is not the heaven and earth inside the gourd? Calmly observing how people of the world are travelers among things, they often ruin life and injure nature through what they encounter and what they can do—no different from sinking aloeswood into a furnace: the fragrance is not yet guarded, and the form is already ash. Better not to meet and not to be capable, so as to preserve what is truly oneself. The Supreme One (Laozi) said: the teaching that uses no words, the benefit of wuwei—under heaven, few attain them. Therefore the Nanhua classic (Zhuangzi) uses utmost speech to discard speech and utmost action to discard action, bringing the aim of the outer chapters to a close.

Laozi (Laodian) had a disciple named Gengsang Chu who had grasped his master’s teaching fairly deeply. He traveled north and settled on Mount Weilei. Attendants who looked especially “clever” left; those who looked especially “benevolent and righteous” also kept their distance. Only people described as plain-looking and clumsy in their movements stayed to serve him.

After three years, the country around Weilei had a great harvest. The locals said to one another: “When Gengsangzi first came, we thought him odd; now day by day the yield seems thin, but year by year there is plenty—perhaps he is already a sage? Why not honor him together as one would the spirits, and revere him as one would the community and grain gods?”

When Gengsang Chu heard this, he sat facing south, still troubled at heart. His disciples were puzzled. He said: “Why are you not as you were before? When spring qi stirs, the hundred grasses grow; when autumn comes, the myriad things ripen. Do spring and autumn happen for no reason? The Great Dao is already at work. I have heard that the perfected person (zhiren)—one of the highest attainment—sits quietly in a small room while ordinary people find their own ease and do not know where to turn. Yet now these common folk of Weilei want in private to set me among the worthies and honor me with sacrificial vessels (zudou, ritual implements used in sacrifice). Am I the sort of shallow figure who belongs only on a spirit tablet? That is why I still cannot put aside what Laozi said.”

Note (for reading the original): Here “servants” means Laozi’s disciples. “Those who suddenly seem knowing” and “those who conspicuously seem benevolent” refer to people who show off cleverness or virtue before others. Gengsang Chu deliberately avoided such attendants and kept those described as lumpish in body and awkward in handling affairs—plain in looks and clumsy in manner. Later texts sometimes write his name as Kangsang or Kangcang; Mount Weilei is linked in commentaries with ancient places such as Mount Yu and is usually read as an allegorical name.

[Guo Xiang’s commentary]

Dressing up cleverness and staging benevolence and righteousness is the opposite of plain clumsiness (yongzhong) and self-content busyness (yangzhang). “To marvel at him” means to wonder at his abandoning cleverness and trusting simplicity. One who moves with the four seasons does not chase immediate profit; the birth and completion of things through spring and autumn all follow the natural Way, hence “does not act” in that contrived sense. The utmost person sits still like the altar attendant (shizhu), and the people come and go on their own—not through scheming—so he does not wish to be the visible “measuring rod” (biao shuo) that everyone imitates. Laozi said: when the work is done, the people feel “we have always been like this ourselves.” Wei Lei today is the opposite, so the utmost person cannot rest at ease there.

[Lü Huiqing’s commentary]

Old Dan’s Way—“cut off benevolence, discard cleverness; do not exalt the worthy”—is not about keeping the people stupid. It means that ministers and attendants who live by benevolence and cleverness all stay away, leaving only people like those of “plain clumsiness” and “self-content busyness”: “plain clumsiness” is dullness, “self-content busyness” is being tied up in routine—not truly entrusting affairs to cleverness or benevolence. The people of Wei Lei were transformed by (Nan Guo Ziqi / the Way of Chu): they no longer relied on clever tricks and only cared for food and clothing, so harvests were abundant; what Chu did was enough to refresh eyes and ears, so they openly called it marvelous. That Way accomplishes without deliberate action, hence “day by day the accounts fall short, year by year there is surplus.” The altar attendant and the officer of the soil and grain originally served the ruler and the ancestral temple; here it is said the people wanted to honor him. Spring and autumn are both heaven’s doing; the ten thousand things do not know it. Therefore the sage “sits like a corpse,” and the people do not know where they are going. Now the petty folk of Wei Lei want to offer sacrificial vessels and treat him among the worthies—what is meant by “cannot make people not cling to him”; how could I refuse and not become someone else’s “standard” (biao)?

[Xunben]

The utmost person dwells in a ring of bare rooms; the people “run wild” and do not know where they are going—the utmost person stays hidden, and people do not know his name, so they wander without knowing where to return. “Shuo” and “biao” are the same: raise a piece of wood as a marker, and everyone sees it (becoming a visible model for others).

Liu Kai said: When achievements are complete and affairs settled, yet the people all believe things happened “naturally, of themselves”—that is the Daoist ideal of governance. Yet the people of Weilei wanted to make Geng Sang Chu their ritual shizhu (the one who stands in for the spirit and delivers the prayers at sacrifice).

Seen this way, had Geng Sang Chu’s grasp of the Dao still not gone deep enough? It is also said: if one truly has De in substance and others press titles upon you while you stubbornly refuse, misfortune may follow instead. Now we hear that even after “facing south” and being honored as head of the community, his heart is still unsettled and cannot rest easy—then on the level of “following things and not interfering,” he probably has not arrived home either.

It is also said: Yao did not “possess” the people, nor did he “put on a show before them”; what remains after countless generations is only traces. Given that, although Geng Sang Chu’s cultivation has reached the realm of Wuwei, he still seems short on “going along with how things naturally are”; or put another way, though he is close to Wuwei, he has not yet reached wuwei er wu bu wei—that higher stage where one does not force action, yet nothing is left undone and all affairs complete themselves of their own accord.

The disciple said: That is not so. In an ordinary ditch, a large fish cannot even turn its body, yet little minnows and dace lord it there; on a mound only a few paces high or a few ren low, a huge beast cannot hide its bulk, yet a wild fox is taken as a lucky sign. All the more so when honoring the worthy and appointing the able, putting goodness before profit—Yao and Shun did this from antiquity, and the people of Ailei urge you in the same way; you ought to heed them.

Gengsangzi said: Boy, come here. A beast big enough to fill a cart, once it leaves the mountain forest, cannot escape the net; a fish big enough to swallow a boat, once stranded on a sandbar, is bullied even by ants. Therefore birds and beasts do not disdain height, and fish and turtles do not disdain depth; those who would preserve their form and keep their lives likewise do not disdain deep concealment—that is all there is to it. As for those two, Yao and Shun, what is there worth praising? Their disputing and governing is like recklessly hacking walls to plant wormwood—combing hair though it is already thin, counting grains one by one when there is little rice to cook, pinching and scraping; how could that save the world?

When worthies are promoted, the people undercut one another; when cleverness is employed, the people steal from one another. These ways do not make the people secure. When the people chase profit too fiercely, sons kill fathers and subjects kill lords, rob in broad daylight, and break through walls to steal at noon. I tell you: the root of great disorder must have arisen in the age of Yao and Shun; its corrupting stream reaches a thousand years onward, and after a thousand years there will surely be people who eat people.

(In ancient measure: eight chi make one xun; twice an xun is a chang; six chi make one bu; seven chi make one ren. Here “xiang” [auspicious sign] means an omen of the uncanny.)

Summary of Guo Xiang’s commentary: The disciple thinks that a great man ought to enjoy generous emolument, and therefore urges the master to listen; Gengsangzi replies that one should leave profit behind, flee harm, and preserve oneself—if one delivers one’s person to stipend and profit, that is shallow, not even matching fish and turtles. To hold that the two [Yao and Shun] are not worth praising is to warn that later ages will rashly carve and drill and breed foul disorder. “Combing though the hair is sparse, counting grains to cook” tends the tip of the awl—while blending in unity and not being driven by outer things is what truly helps the world. If one goes against one’s nature to court what is admired, and where truth falls short one patches with cleverness, that is pretense; pretending in order to live is no different from theft. When the people are too zealous for profit, they spare nothing. Yao and Shun left their tracks and spread ornamented pretense to later ages—and that produced this harm.

Laozi treats the root—the origin and the Great Dao—as what truly matters, and regards concrete things as coarse and secondary. He holds that amassing surplus is itself a kind of lack, and that with a tranquil heart one communes alone with the spirit-breath of the divine (shenming zhi qi).

When the state of Chu received Laozi’s Dao, it could withdraw into seclusion and remain hidden in remote places without weariness; its virtue likewise set aside the model of Yao and Shun and did not strive to imitate them deliberately.

In the primordial condition in which “the myriad things have not yet come to be,” to go on debating whether Yao or Shun is higher is like boring holes in a wall to plant wormwood: it is both inappropriate and pointless.

When the sage governs the realm, only by following the natural course of things and not daring to act willfully does governance stay simple and effective. Otherwise it is like counting every grain of rice on the stalk—when fussiness reaches that extreme, how can it save the world?

Seen from how Yao and Shun ruled, they could not avoid elevating the worthy and relying on cleverness; carried further, that leads people to undercut and steal from one another—“having wisdom and taking purposeful action” is exactly the deep root of great disaster. The people’s innate nature is pulled off course by such methods, and disorder grows from there.

Nangong Chu suddenly straightened his posture and sat properly. “Someone my age,” he said, “what practice and what level of attainment could ever match what you have just described?”

Gengsang Chu replied, “Keep your body intact, hold fast to your life and vital nature, and do not let your mind scatter in restless plotting and turmoil. If you can do this for three years, you may begin to speak of truly understanding these words.”

Nangong Chu said, “Eyes and body—I see no difference between them, yet the blind cannot see themselves. Ears and body—I see no difference between them, yet the deaf cannot hear themselves. Heart and body—I see no difference between them, yet the deranged cannot govern themselves. One body and another were never naturally open to each other; is something external wedged between them? Each tries to reach the other and fails. You tell me to preserve my form, hold my life, and stop scheming—I strain to hear with my ears and grasp the Dao only on the surface.”

Gengsang Chu said, “I have said all I can.” He went on, “The small parasitic wasp cannot hatch the large green caterpillar inside the bean pod. A chicken of Yue cannot hatch a swan’s egg; a chicken of Lu can. One chicken and another are not different in kind—some can, some cannot; native endowment was always larger or smaller. My capacity is too slight to transform and guide you. Why not go south and visit Laozi?”

Guo Xiang’s commentary: To preserve your physical form is to keep to your proper place; to embrace your vital life is not to let life slip outside yourself. Eye matches eye, ear matches ear, heart matches heart—forms resemble one another, yet capacities differ; where they differ, you cannot forcibly imitate others. No one shuts the senses off; two bodily forms stand open yet cannot fully merge, for something always lies between them—once the body is divided, transformation and nurture become difficult.

Lu’s commentary: In virtue, to leave behind Yao and Shun without a trace is already the utmost—what more need be done to guard against karma, or how can one speak of reaching this point? Answer: Human form alike preserves spirit to live—why must things become a affliction? Once eyes and ears follow sound and color, mouth and nose follow odors, and the heart is enslaved by things, the form is incomplete, life cannot be held, thought never rests, and one cannot leave external things. Only by fully preserving form and embracing life, without thinking or deliberating, does the ordinary heart remain—how then could so-called sage wisdom, benevolence, and righteousness find room? When eyes and ears do not split sound from color and the heart does not know right from wrong, what the world calls deafness to sound or wild confusion all falls in this category. Those who cultivate the Way take not seeing oneself as blindness, not hearing oneself as deafness, not attaining oneself as wildness; wildness and sageness lie only between thinking and not thinking. My form and another’s form both preserve spirit—spirit has no fixed direction, so how could there be blockage without passage? Mutual seeking yet not attaining is merely things standing between. Chuy may say he has not heard the Way, yet what he knows already differs from ordinary people—he simply cannot yet make the words of Chu match his heart.

Bixu: What the skin receives can reach the ear; when spirit awakens, it penetrates the heart. In hoof-print puddles, how could there be the transformation of kun and peng? Inside a wasp nest, how could there be peng fledglings? The principle is just so. Gengsang therefore deflected Chuy’s question—to hide his bold words and preserve himself, and to trace the utmost principle back to Laozi.

Oral Explanation

The human heart, along with the ears and eyes, is naturally open and unobstructed, yet those who are frantic and disordered still cannot find peace—just as the deaf and blind hear and see nothing at all. My form and the form of others ought to be transparent, without barrier; now they are cut off by desire for things. Using one heart to seek another, neither can reach the other. The Master taught me: do not let thought run back and forth in busyness. If one still forces oneself to listen for the Dao here, perhaps one might yet get through? Nanrong Chu spoke in this way and still had no release; Gengsangzi also wanted to guard against this change and could not—hence the saying “words have gone as far as they can go.”

Main Text

Nanrong Chu shouldered grain and walked seven days and seven nights to reach Laozi’s dwelling. Laozi asked: “Did you come from the region of Chu?” Nanrong Chu answered: “Yes.” Laozi asked: “How is it that you came together with so many people?” Startled, Nanrong Chu quickly looked back over his shoulder. Laozi said: “Do you not understand what I am saying?” Nanrong Chu bowed his head in shame, then looked up and sighed: “Just now I forgot how to answer you, and I also lost what I had come to ask.” Laozi asked: “What do you mean?” Nanrong Chu said: “If I am not clever—people call me foolish. If I am clever—it only adds worry to my person. If I am not humane—I harm others. If I am humane—it only adds worry to myself. If I am not righteous—I injure others. If I am righteous—it only adds worry to myself. These three phrases are exactly the sickness of my heart. I wished to borrow this journey through Chu to come and seek instruction from you.”

Laozi said: “A moment ago, seeing you between your brows and lashes, I had already seen you clearly. Now you speak again as if it were real—proper and restrained—like one who has lost parents and goes to the sea with a pole to search for people. You have already lost your true nature! Dazed and confused, you want to return to your genuine disposition but cannot find the door—pitiful!”

(Note: Ying means to carry on the shoulder; in Qi, Chu, Chen, and Song, people called “carrying” ying.)

Guo Commentary

“So many people came with you”—because in his heart he carried the distress of those three (cleverness, humaneness, righteousness) did he come.

Commentary (Lü)

Zhao wished to cultivate the Way, yet in his heart he could not hold to “single-minded unity” (zhiyi gui yi); he still carried several doctrines and several turns of mind, and therefore felt that the crowd who had come along with everyone else was good enough. When he used the Dao to confront the mundane world head-on, his heart had nowhere to settle and could not stay hidden—hence Laozi’s saying that one may awaken in “the space between eyebrow and lash”—in the turning of an eye, in the immediate present.

The Dao is far and the path is long; only a heart that “attains to oneness” (zhi yi) can grasp it. Zhao, however, stayed correct and formal yet would not release his non-unified heart, seeking in boundless infinity—like parents dead and raising a pole to fish for them in the sea, lost and adrift. Wishing to return to original nature yet finding no entry: this is what the perfected person (zhiren) pities.

General meaning

The Way is far and time is long—this layer of meaning only sinks in slowly. So Laozi once examined the matter: forget the answer and lose the question too.

In “forgetting the answer and losing the question,” what is excessive and mixed is as good as dead; what is single and one is alive. Knowing stiffens into death; not-knowing stays alive. Clinging to answer and question leads to death; awakening and then releasing even that awakening, until even forgetting is forgotten clean—that is being alive.

(The same passage also says: the Way is far and time is long—only attaining to oneness can obtain it. Yet Zhao still uses a non-unified heart, searching wildly in the infinite, like mourning parents and fishing for them in the sea with a pole, dazed and helpless; wanting to turn back to true nature with no way in—the perfected person’s pity.)

Nanrong Chu asked to live at Laozi’s place. As Laozi had told him to do, he gathered what he favored and cast off what he disliked, brooded alone for ten days, then came to see Laozi again.

Laozi said: “Have you washed yourself clean? Why are you still heavy-hearted? It is as if something foul still sits in your mind.” “Someone ruled only from the outside cannot be tied with many ropes from without—instead the pressure goes inward; someone ruled only from within cannot be yanked hard from outside—instead the impulse rushes outward. A person bound both within and without cannot even keep hold of the Dao and De—how much less one who has released the Dao yet still strays in disorder?”

Nanrong Chu said: “When someone in our village is sick, people go to ask him; the sick person can describe the illness very clearly, yet he is still as if not truly ill—not sick to the root. If I, Nanrong Chu, listen to the Great Dao, it is like taking medicine that only makes the sickness worse. I want only to know the main points of how to preserve oneself.”

Laozi said: “The main points of preserving oneself: Can you hold to the One? Can you keep from losing it? Can you know good and ill fortune without divination? Can you stop? Can you finish and let go? Can you leave the crowd and turn inward? Can you be free of bonds? Can you be without knowledge and without deliberate knowing, like an empty heart? Can you be like an infant? An infant cries all day yet its throat does not grow hoarse—this is harmony at its utmost; all day it keeps its little fist clenched yet the hand does not grasp—this is De naturally gathered in the palm; all day its eyes are open yet the pupils do not wander, because attention is not fixed on the outside; walking, it does not know where it is going; staying, it does not know what it is doing—it follows things in yielding compliance and moves in the same wave as things. That is the essential of preserving oneself.”

Notes on terms in parentheses (to help when reading the original): “Shu” here is the same word as for “thoroughly cooked / ripe,” meaning whether the washing is complete enough; “sa” means loss of voice; “nie” is clutching or striking with the hand—Liu’s commentary says the hand’s sinews are tight; “gong” is read like “gong” (to arch), meaning the natural curved fist, an inward posture, not forcefully grabbing something.

Guo Zhu summary:

“Qian” (mutually restraining) means mutual obstruction and constraint. The ears and eyes belong to the outer realm; xinshu (the heart-mind’s methods of thought and steadfast inner practice) belongs within. To preserve the bodily form and guard vital life, it is best to forget the heart’s clever contrivances and also to set aside reliance on the ears and eyes. If sounds and colors surge in from outside, xinshu will be blocked within; if likes and dislikes flood from within, the ears and eyes will fail outwardly. Therefore one must achieve “no gain and no loss”—then the path of the heart opens. To lean to one side alone is already wrong; how much more when inner and outer are both pulled and disturbed?

Even if you press down hard with the hands and bind tightly with rope, you cannot stop the ears and eyes from being deluded outside or xinshu from wandering within. What is called “embracing the One” (bao yi) is not departing from one’s original nature; what is called “do not lose” (wu shi) is not departing from what is originally attained. Align with the proper measure and there is good fortune; exceed the measure and there is misfortune—there is no need to seek divination elsewhere. “Stop” (zhi) means stopping at one’s proper share; “already” (yi) means no longer chasing old tracks.

“Set aside others and seek within oneself” means completing oneself and not imitating others. Xiaoran is having no obstructive traces of form; tongran is having no cramped restraint in self-control. The throat does not force sound—let voice emerge naturally, not shaped by joy or anger; the hand does not deliberately clench—let the hand close naturally, not as arbitrary tight grasping; the eyes do not stare fixedly—let sight see naturally, not tied to appearances; in walking one does not know where one is going—only trust the feet to move on their own, without limits; in dwelling one does not know what one is doing—let the body be at ease; wei yi (going along in winding compliance) with things is following things; tong qi bo (going with the same wave)—when things rise in waves, the self rises in the same wave.

Lü Zhu summary:

If the heart-mind knows slick cleverness, casts off “bad mind” and detests desire, and tries through cleansing to return to emptiness and stillness, this is still the approach of “summoning what one likes and rejecting what one dislikes” (zhao hao qu e)—one has not yet truly put it into practice, so one still worries for oneself and is gloomy like waves on water.

Lu Commentary

“Knowing yet not knowing, casting off the slippery, chaotic mind and loathing it, wishing to wash clean and return to emptiness and stillness”—this is still inviting what one likes and rejecting what one dislikes. But one cannot yet achieve it, so one troubles oneself; stagnant qi overflows and leaks outward in abundance. Once there is hu (the fixation of binding things with leather thongs and guarding against externals), what sticks is hard to peel away. Now, loathing that eyes and ears are bound by sound and color, yet wanting to use external things to tie down external things—that is the more one does, the more tangled; the tighter one grasps, the tighter it binds. Better nei jian (“bolting the door from within”): the heart does not race outward, and externals cannot bind you—this is what Laozi means by “block the openings, shut the doors.” If heart-craft is bound by affairs and achievement, yet one tries to stop each affair one by one, that is the more one reasons, the more confused; the more one catches, the emptier it gets. Better wai jian (“keeping externals from entering”): things do not enter within, and the heart is not tied either—this corresponds to Laozi’s line of teaching about “opening the gate, unraveling the tangle.” Thus, still and unmoving, the ten thousand things cannot disturb the heart; otherwise, even those with De and those who hold the Dao cannot hold fast—how much less those who imitate the form without the substance? Those who are said to have heard the Dao know that originally there is no fixed “thing,” and therefore nothing is done with deliberate intent.

Chu knew his illness was not yet deep and could not yet bear the “medicine of the Great Dao”; he only wished to hear the “classic of nurturing life.” Nurturing life takes wuwei as its root: “the One” (shou yi) is where the Dao is born and where auspiciousness rests—why need divination? All of this is the work of stopping thought, fabrication, and seeking inward. (Repeated sentences below carry the same sense: stop thought-as-action and seek within oneself.)

Free and unattached, simple and unobstructed—like an infant: grieving and angry, it cries, yet does not deliberately round its voice—can it avoid being hoarse? To the point of holding something without knowing one holds, seeing without knowing one sees, moving and stopping wholly from no-mind, turning with things in the same wave—this is the “classic of nurturing life.”

Tracing the Root

Hu means binding things with leather and setting up defenses; jian means a door bolt, closing. If one only controls the outside, there are too many items to grasp, so one must shut them out within; if one only controls the inside, the path of principle goes awry and cannot be grasped, so one must shut it out from without—inside and outside are both bound by hu; the illness lies here.

Brush Notes

To embrace the One and not lose it is the Daodejing’s “Carrying soul and body, embracing the One—can you not depart?” To know fortune and misfortune without divination is “Without leaving the door, know the world; without peering through the window, see Heaven’s Dao.”

Commentary (Explanatory Notes)

“Being able to hold to the One and not lose it” is what the Daodejing means by keeping soul and vital breath together and embracing unity without scattering (baoyi: holding to oneness without dispersing). “Knowing fortune and misfortune without divination” is like “knowing the world without leaving the door” and “seeing the Way without peering through the window.” “Being able to stop” is knowing where to stop; “being able to be content” is knowing sufficiency. Turning from outward seeking to inner work on oneself is “those who know themselves are enlightened; those who overcome themselves are strong.” “Carefree and at ease” (xiaoran) resembles “it flows everywhere, it can go left or right”; “simple and undifferentiated” (tongran) resembles “blended, it is like muddy water.” “Like a child” is the state of “concentrating breath until it is soft—can you be like an infant?” When harmony reaches its peak, De (Virtue/Power) stays within and does not lean on external conditions—what is called “those thick in virtue are like a newborn”—is roughly this meaning.

Dialogue in the Main Text

Nanrong Chu said: From this view, is this the De of the perfected person (zhiren)?

Answer: Not yet. This can only be called “ice thawing and bonds loosening”—like ice melting and constraints slackening; it is still not the perfected person himself.

Perfected persons eat together on earth and take joy together under heaven; they are not stirred by each other’s gain or loss from external things, do not blame each other, do not scheme against each other, and do not use each other as tools for tasks. Coming and going they are carefree and simple—this is what is called the “constant way of nurturing life” (weisheng zhi jing: the regular path of preserving the body and following life’s flow).

Nanrong Chu asked again: Then surely this counts as having arrived?

Answer: Still not. I told you long ago: can you be like an infant? The infant moves without knowing why, acts without knowing where it is going; the body is like a withered branch, the mind like dead ashes. At that stage, calamity does not arrive and blessing does not come—no thought of fortune or misfortune, no hatred of people, and no inviting disaster from human affairs. This is still one stage of cultivation, not the full measure of the perfected person’s De.

This passage collects how various commentators develop the “Perfect Person” and the “classic on nurturing life” in the Zhuangzi. The core point is that the state of the Perfect Person is not something you can claim for yourself by memorizing a few lines or tweaking habits.

Guo Xiang asks on one hand: if one could reform oneself and live accordingly, would that count as possessing the virtue of a Perfect Person? He also uses “ice thawing and melting” as a metaphor—whether one can achieve that kind of thaw-like openness shows that it is not entirely within one’s deliberate control; only when one shares food and joy with things, dwelling with them without a private, partial mind, does one truly co-exist with the world. Yet he also asks: does hearing these words mean one has “arrived”? The answer is: it is not that these words themselves are not “ultimate,” but that those who hear and study them are not thereby ultimate themselves; if one has not truly arrived on one’s own, then even upon hearing the most ultimate teaching, one can at best recite it like scripture—how could that count as “ultimate”? Hence: “those who study do not arrive; those who arrive do not [merely] study.” Fortune and misfortune arise from gain and loss centered on the self; human calamity arises from love and hate. If the Perfect Person is like withered wood and dead ashes, without clinging, then love, hate, gain, and loss no longer originate in “me.”

The Lü commentary compares the human mind to clear water: when knowledge forms obstructions, it is like water freezing into ice; to know the constant way of nurturing life is like ice melting and the freeze releasing. The Perfect Person’s mind is always like clear water, so there is no need to force cultivation of virtue, yet things are not left behind; sharing food and joy without being stirred by benefit and harm, not vying with the world for novelty or plotting together, without attachment or hindrance—why must one rigidly “embrace the One and never lose it”? This carefree state of moving with things is the Perfect Person’s ordinary way of “nurturing life”; yet this “ultimate” also stops at what is not known—like an infant who does not know where it is going or what it is doing, again like withered wood and dead ashes. Fortune and misfortune originally exist because there is body and mind, overseen by Heaven, Earth, ghosts, and spirits; when body is withered and mind is ashes, one suffers less from their pull.

A humble view puts it briefly: true nature is originally like clear, empty water; when desires and things obscure it, it is like freezing into ice—water is inherently most clear, yet when it congeals it becomes ice. If the mind is withered wood and dead ashes, outer conditions can hardly burden it further.

Read together, the three strands show: ultimate words can be heard and studied, but “arriving” lies not in the name of hearing and learning, but in a mind like still water, ice melted and without clinging, roaming with things without disturbing oneself with benefit and harm; withered wood and dead ashes describe non-attachment—they do not teach one to sit lifelessly without vitality.

Personal View

True nature is like water: empty yet aware, bright, clear—neither purely “is” nor purely “is not.” Once it is blocked by worldly desires, it is like water freezing into ice: water was clear, but ice is not; spirit was aware, but once fixed in form it is no longer aware. When one hears the Way and awakens to principle, it is like ice melting—how could clarity and awareness be diminished? The trouble is simply that people will not turn and seek within themselves.

When people exchange food on the earth and plow and dig to supply one another; when they share joy under heaven and are equally molded in great harmony—if it were so, from where would benefit and harm spread between people and things? What use would strange conduct and scheming be? How could comings and goings be anything but ease? How could livelihood be anything but secure? Learning the Way to this point is already the utmost, yet one still says “not yet”; pressed for the ultimate, one is again told with the earlier passage about the “son”—this is where commentators shift their brushwork and turn the reader’s ear and eye, so that one does not cling and get stuck.

Scripture Text

When inner peace is vast and settled (the heart at ease and gathered), what issues forth is heaven’s light (natural clarity, not human show). Where heaven’s light issues, people see people as people and things as things—each sees what should be seen, without peering into one another, and so can be at ease and settled.

One who cultivates has constancy from then on; one with constancy—people may leave him be, and heaven assists him. One whom people leave be is called a tianmin (one who accords with heaven and dwells in peace); one whom heaven assists is called a tianzi (one who, aided by heaven, governs outward affairs).

The learner learns what he cannot learn; the actor does what he cannot do; the debater argues what he cannot argue; when knowing stops at what cannot be known, that is the utmost. If there is one who does not accord and is not assisted, he is called tianzi… (The learner learns what he cannot learn… when knowing stops at what cannot be known, that is the utmost)—if there is one who does not accord, tianjun (heaven’s balance, the Way’s judgment) defeats him.

Guo’s Commentary

When virtue’s domain is vast and settled, what is expressed is heaven’s light, not human glare. Heaven’s light shines by itself and illumines by itself—people see people as people, things as things; each sees on their own side without mutually seeing the other, and so can be vast and settled.

If one cultivates the way of being human, one gains something thereby; hence one is constantly at ease, can return to dwell in one’s own home, and naturally receives assistance. Outwardly one may be tianzi, inwardly tianmin—both take being at ease in oneself as root; they are not obtained by deliberate grasping.

Therefore whatever one can do: though one acts, it is not contrived action; though one practices, it is not forced learning; though one speaks, it is not argumentative debate; what cannot be known must not be forced—stopping there is the utmost. Even if the will would act, the actor must fail; principle in the end cannot be violated.

Commentary (Lu’s Annotation)

Section One

The “body” is like the house one lives in (yu—the dwelling, the space). When the body is neither denied nor thrown into disorder, the “light of Heaven” (tianguang) shows through.

That light is not something grasped by discrimination or reckoning; it is clear and penetrating without forced knowing. Others see only your form, yet cannot reach your “Heaven”—outwardly a person, inwardly joined with Heaven.

What you can do, once done, is not deliberate action; what you can learn, once learned, is not “seeking learning”; what you can say, once said, is not disputation. Conversely, what cannot be done, what ought not be forcibly “known”—do not strain to know it. To understand stopping here is to have arrived where one should arrive.

Section Two

(Continuing the above) If the body holds steady without disorder, the light of Heaven appears of itself. That light means: not leaning on views, not demanding knowledge, yet being lucid and thorough. People see the form and do not know the Heaven—the form is human, but one whose heart is united with the Dao is Heaven.

Only with genuine cultivation does one have constancy in the present and take the Dao as home; one must return to Heaven to endure. When the multitude gathers and relies on one another, it is called “human lodging”; when Heaven alone completes its Heaven, it is called “Heaven’s assistance.” “People of Heaven” (tianmin) are not a title ordinary folk may casually claim; the “Son of Heaven” (or one born of Heaven) is born according to the Heaven one receives.

In the world, what can be known may be known, what can be learned may be learned, what can be practiced may be practiced, what can be argued may be argued—only the Dao cannot be “known” by ordinary means, so learning never exhausts it, practice never reaches an end, and disputation never settles it completely.

The classic says: “learning non-learning,” “acting what cannot be acted”—the “Way that is not the Way,” “wordless disputation that disputation cannot dispute.” To go against these is still to fall into deliberate action and, in the end, only failure. (The text repeats once to stress: forcing against the grain must fail.)

Bei wu yi jiang xing (using external things to support and settle one’s physical form): one employs outward things to uphold and compose the body. Cang bu yu yi sheng xin (hiding what cannot be foreseen to nourish the mind): one keeps unforeseen and unexpected matters within the heart, using them to cultivate mind and will. Jing zhong yi da bi (with reverence and centeredness to reach the other): with an inward attitude of reverence and holding the center, one extends toward outer things and affairs. If one can do this, even when various calamities arrive, one should attribute them to Tianming (Mandate of Heaven, fate) rather than blame human affairs; then one will not disrupt what is already settled, nor pour defilement into the Lingtai (Spirit Platform—the seat of the heart and spirit in Zhuangzi’s usage).

The Lingtai inherently has a certain way of holding fast, yet often does not know what it is actually holding. What truly cannot be forced is this: not seeing that one is already insincere yet still rashly revealing oneself—once revealed, it is often inappropriate; fault enters the heart and one cannot bear to let go, and every time one changes the label it is still a mistake.

Wei bu shan hu xian ming zhi zhong zhe, ren de er zhu zhi (who does evil in plain sight, people will punish); wei bu shan hu you xian zhi zhong zhe, gui de er zhu zhi (who does evil in hidden recesses, ghost or spirit will punish—“gui” may read as “shen”; some Haiyi editions have “you an” for dark places). Only one who understands human affairs and understands the principles of ghosts and spirits can alone uphold the covenant bond. Quan nei zhe xing hu wu ming, quan wai zhe zhi hu qi fei (within the bond one acts without seeking name; outside the bond the will rests on expectation and expense): inwardly keeping the covenant without chasing reputation; outwardly the mind lodges in seeking and squandering. One who acts without name finds brightness only in the ordinary; one whose will is set on expectation and expense is merely in a merchant’s frame of mind. People see him on tiptoe, strutting, yet still standing tall as if alone; pressing things to the limit, things turn and invade him; contending with things without end, he cannot even contain himself—how then contain others? One who cannot contain others loses those closest; when closest kin are all lost, the person is exhausted. No military disaster is more bitter than the will lodged in the breast; Mo Ye (an ancient sword name, figure for sharp weapons) is a lesser marauder; the greatest robber band is Yin-Yang (the qi of heaven and earth, the pressure of creation)—nowhere under heaven and earth can one flee them. It is not that Yin-Yang themselves are thieves, but that when the heart is stolen, the heart drives the person into their grip. (Where later lines overlap “cannot contain others, no kin, no disaster worse than will in the breast, Yin-Yang,” it is mostly the same teaching repeated in transmission—still aimed at holding the center, sincerity, containing others, and not letting mind and will be enslaved by outer things and Yin-Yang.)

All things are inherently complete from the start; each follows its own way of taking form. The heart-mind too arises naturally—it is not something schemed out in advance. The Way opens of itself; it is not something performed with outward deference and inward pride.

When this is so, even when myriad evils come, the pattern of Heaven has its own limits of decline and renewal. Evil that people deliberately bring on through action belongs to human affairs; one should accept it as fate (an zhi ruo ming), and then what is achieved will not slip away.

Lingtai (the spirit platform—the heart-mind and spirit) is the heart. When the heart is clear and unblocked, worry and harm cannot enter. “Having a hold” (you chi) means not being tugged by outer things—it is not literally grasping something. If you know you ought to hold fast and then force yourself to hold, the moment you hold, you have already lost it.

What springs forth without being under your control—how can sincerity (cheng) come from that? If affairs are not kept within your proper share, that is loss. With nothing to hide from in dark or light, one can walk alone without fear—this is keeping to one’s place. Those who move within their share act without chasing reputation; those who move outside their share weigh profit and loss and treat what was never theirs as goods to sell. Those who act without chasing a name already have light within and use it as events require; those whose aim is “expense and gain” (zhi qi fei), though they own nothing, still peddle through others. The person of “expense and gain” is already seen straining on tiptoe (qi), yet thinks he dwells in constant poverty (an qiong). To speak of what is outside the bond (quan) while straining on tiptoe—one who strains cannot stand on his own, so how can he contain himself? Unable to contain himself, how can he contain others? When people are not given room, how can there be closeness? Thus everything becomes “the other”; wherever the will is snagged, it is like scorching fire and frozen ice. As a weapon, this is worse than sword and shield—for when the heart commands qi (vital energy), yin and yang clash and knot in the five viscera; yin and yang are everywhere within, so there is no escape.

Commentary (Lü):

To speak of “the ten thousand things and I are one,” one must first have external things in readiness and the bodily form properly settled. The meaning is: without deliberately going out to seek them, the ten thousand things will naturally follow along. Things come from without; the mind moves from within—this is not something that holds only in ease and leisure. At such a time one should guard life with reverent caution, and through that reach the other shore—not by hanging fixation on outer things, but by nourishing the inner with upright reverence. If one acts thus and every kind of calamity still arrives, that is the mandate of Heaven (tianming); because what one does is not reckless action (wangwei), one does not ruin oneself, and it is not enough to disturb the spirit platform (lingtai).

When the spirit platform is unmoved, it seems as if something is being held—but who or what is doing the holding cannot be pinned down. In truth one holds by “not holding.” To understand this is what is meant by “when sincerity of self issues forth, it necessarily hits the mark.” Otherwise, reckless movement invites misfortune—how could that be fitting? When karmic burden invades from without and there is no master in the heart, one will also find it hard to let go; what is called “not letting go” is that departure comes very quickly. Time and again one changes course, yet still misses the mark—worldly learning that tries to recover the original state cannot help becoming the deluded common crowd.

The “voucher” (quan) is what dominates outer things and possesses them: when sincerity is within oneself and one acts, that is the inner voucher; when sincerity is not within oneself and one acts, that is the outer voucher. The one with the outer voucher does not show sincerity toward oneself; the hidden and the manifest cannot become one. The nameless is precisely the Dao (the Way), so one can trust it without having to expect anything, and being with it does not drain one. The one with the outer voucher must expect first before trusting, must spend first before being with. Only ordinary people scramble to get ahead; without using the outer voucher, one returns to one’s own clarity. Only merchants can haggle in the market—that is all. People see their lack and stand on tiptoe envying them, yet they still strut as if towering over others. If a person can see that “there has never yet been a thing,” then with things one reaches the limit and there is no self; with no self, things enter without obstruction—this is called knowing constant capacity (changrong). Otherwise one both fights and guards against things, and cannot even contain oneself—what is meant by “your whole body will not be accepted by Qi,” “your single joint will not be borne by earth”—how then could one contain others? One who cannot contain others has no closeness; with no closeness, all people can be known for what they are.

Ambition is like a weapon edge—it wounds the human heart. Mo Ye (an ancient famed sword) wounds only the human body. A robber-bandit may sometimes escape; the robber of Yin-Yang has nowhere to flee between Heaven and Earth. The Perfect Person (zhiren) softens ambition and need not force contention, hence has no “army”; hidden in what is neither yin nor yang, without mind and without clinging, so the ten thousand things cannot rob him.

Hong Mai’s Remarks

Guo Zixuan said: What is meant by “holding” (chi) is simply that the mind is not pulled about by external things—it is not that there is some real object called “that which is held.” Chen Bixu said: The True Lord is within, and one takes one’s cue from the formed mind. Both of these read meaning into the text beyond the words themselves. Guo again expounds by citing Zhuangzi’s original passage, yet that reading likely diverges from Zhuangzi’s intent.

Hong Qingshan once explained it this way: This chapter is about the rationale of “holding the mind”; if one tries to “hold” without knowing what holding rests upon, one can no longer hold at all. The two interpreters above were led by the word “two” (liang) and spun their remarks in that direction.

Scripture

The Dao runs through “division” and through “completion and ruin.” People dislike “division” because they treat what is divided as insufficient and try to make it “complete”; they dislike “completion” because the mind already clings to the idea of being “complete.” When the mind races outward and does not return, one sees “ghosts” (death, illusion); seeking outwardly and calling it “gain” is really “gaining death.” If after extinction one still treats it as a solid “ghost,” one remains stuck in the bias of “oneness.” Using the formed to symbolize and fix the formless is to fix form.

Emerging without root, entering without opening; there is reality yet no fixed abode, there is extension yet no root-tip or tip-end. What emerges without an opening is Yu (space—it has the four directions and above and below, yet those directions are inexhaustible); what has length without root or tip is Zhou (time—it has past and present, yet past and present are limitless). There is birth, death, emergence, and entry, yet between entry and exit one cannot see their trace—this is called the Tianmen (Gate of Heaven). Tianmen is “non-being.” The ten thousand things are born from “non-being”; “being” cannot take “being” as its origin—it must arise from “non-being,” and “non-being” is again a “non-being.” The sage rests in this truth.

Guo Xiang’s Commentary (in plain language)

Completion and ruin have no fixed identity; viewed separately each has its portion, yet the Dao pervades them all. Not staying in one’s place yet wanting everything complete is why one dislikes “division”; one’s place was never whole, yet one seeks “completion” from outside—that is why one dislikes “completion.” If one’s place were originally sufficient, why loathe anything? Not returning to one’s place, death comes quickly; seeking outwardly and calling it gain is really gaining death. When nature is extinguished, though there is such “life,” how is it different from a “ghost”? Though there is form, if one can be open and unattached, life is whole and form is settled.

Suddenly self-arising—there is no root; suddenly self-perishing—there is no stem. To speak of “emerging” is only to say there is “reality” in appearance; what emerges has neither root nor opening. Yu has the four directions and above and below without end; Zhou has the length of past and present without limit. Death, birth, emergence, and entry are all suddenly self-so, with no source—hence their form cannot be seen. Tianmen is the general name for the ten thousand things, like speaking of the “gate of manifold mystery.” Death, birth, emergence, and entry are suddenly self-so—not something deliberately done by anyone; only when there is gathering, scattering, hiding, and showing do the names “entry” and “exit” appear. The names exist alone, with no real gate of entry and exit—where would that gate be? Hence take wuwei (non-action) as the gate—to take non-action as gate is to have no gate.

When “being” has not yet arisen, by what could it arise? There must be self-arising—how could “being” produce “being”? This shows “being” cannot make itself “being”; it is self-so—it is not that “non-being” turns into “being.” If one says “non-being” cannot become “being,” then what does “non-being” refer to? Once there is one “non-being,” even “non-being” is dissolved; when non-being is no more, “being” suddenly self-arises and the principle is clear. Therefore the sage lets things arise of themselves and does not add an extra act of “begetting” them.

In Lü Huiqing’s commentary: All things fully possess the Dao, so there is no fixed, unchanging “completion” or “destruction.” What we call “division” is precisely for the sake of thoroughgoing connection; what we call “completion,” seen from another angle, is “destruction.” Those who loathe “division” do so because, once there is “full provision,” they split things apart; those who loathe “full provision” do so because, once there is “division,” they set about making “provision.” “Division” and “full provision” stand opposed: where there is provision, there is counterparting; where there is counterparting, there is “division”—and then “division” diverges from thorough connection. If “provision” is not the natural wholeness of Wuwei (non-action) but each thing clinging to its own partial sufficiency, that becomes “having”—and then it differs from “destruction” as well. Such is the way the Dao disperses and becomes the myriad things.

Only when one is “divided” yet does not know there is “provision,” and is “fully provided” yet does not know there is anything called “being provided for,” is there nowhere that is not connected. The Dao in itself has no birth and death; where there is birth, one must return to what “has never been born”—only then is birth complete. If one only goes out and does not know return, then even in living one only sees paired “going-out” and gain—birth arises from purposeful action, so death follows as a matter of course. To perish while still holding to concrete reality, yet not knowing there is “provision,” likewise prevents return to “no-thing.” What difference is there between going out without return and “going out with gain”? Thus their “going out” is one and the same. Only when “having” is used to settle the formless does one truly settle; once settled, one is not thrown into disorder by birth and death.

When things emerge, they must have a root; if the root is placed in the Dao, then that root is also never merely a root. When things enter, they must have an opening; if they enter the Dao, then that opening is also never merely an opening. What has concrete reality must have somewhere it abides; if emergence has no root, then there is reality without abode. What has extension in time must have beginning and end, root and branch; if entry has no opening, then there is extension without root and branch. The classics ought to say: what emerges without root is called “extension,” what enters without opening is called “reality”—only then is the sense complete. Space has the four directions and above and below, and so there is “reality.” I take “above” as above, yet what is above my “above” takes my upper “above” as its “below,” and the same holds for “below” and the four directions—where is any fixed place? Time has past and future, and so there is “extension”; taking the past as past, the future later takes the present as past—where is any fixed root and branch? Awaken to this, and neither cosmos nor universe can constrain you; the six penetrations and four openings (above, below, the four directions, past and future) are nowhere absent. Though there are birth, death, emergence, and entry, their forms are unseen—this is called the “Gate of Heaven.”

The Gate of Heaven is “non-being and being.” “Being” cannot make itself “being”; it must emerge from “non-being and being”—things under Heaven are born from “being,” and “being” is born from “non-being.” If one posits another so-called “non-being and being,” that is not true “non-being and being”; when “non-being and being” unify in form, this is what is meant by the Gate of Heaven: the Gate of Heaven is “non-being and being.” “Being” cannot be “being” by itself; it must come from “non-being and being.” Things under Heaven are born from “being,” and “being” is born from “non-being.” To speak of a separate “non-being and being” is not the genuine “non-being and being”; when all returns to “non-being,” that is what is called “non-being and being.”

The sage stores himself here, wanders where things cannot escape, and the myriad things are all thereby preserved.

Commentary in Plain Language

“Dao” is the primordial simplicity (pu) that existed before heaven and earth were divided. Once simplicity disperses, distinctions arise; with distinctions come completion and destruction—yet Dao has never parted from any of this. Whoever can move through “division,” through “completion,” through “destruction” finds nothing that is not Dao. When you stand in “division,” Dao is right there in division; you need not force yourself toward “unity” to seek wholeness. The same holds in completion and destruction: each keeps its place, rests in what the moment allows, and then there is nothing to hate.

People hate “division” mostly because the heart that “seeks wholeness” drags them down; they hate that seeking because they already hold a standard of “wholeness” inside. Once that standard exists, they see only “the whole” and not “the part”; at the slightest split they worry. They see only “completion” and not “destruction”; at the slightest ruin they grieve—because they do not know that “Dao leaves nothing blocked.”

Those who truly know are otherwise: they can rest at ease in completion, destruction, division, and unity alike. When the time to die comes, they rest in death and need not chase another wholeness in “life.” So “going out and not returning”—if you take that as only a surface image, it is a metaphor: the person whose intent is nailed to one direction and never turns elsewhere. Ordinary people think that is “death,” yet how could they know there is a persistence that “dies yet does not perish”? Hence “the square yet holds reality”—the butterfly is the image, and the truth of creation and transformation is no more than this: using visible forms to settle invisible principle, and human affairs are thereby fixed. Once fixed, the heart no longer seeks wholeness; completion, destruction, division, and unity can all be accepted.

At birth there is no root, so it is said “going out has no root”; at death there is no opening, so it is said “entering has no aperture.” No root, no aperture—no fixed place—so it is said “there is reality yet no fixed abode”; no head or tail, so “there is length yet no beginning or end marker”—that is the real principle. Reality without a fixed abode is sameness in all directions above and below; length without head or tail markers is sameness through past and present. Going out, entering, death, and birth all proceed through this. If you cling only to bodily form, nothing can be grasped at all—hence it is called the “Gate of Heaven (Tianmen).” To say “take non-being (wu) as the Gate of Heaven” is not to treat “nothing” as a thing, but to release both “being” and “non-being,” forgetting self and norms alike, dispelling both the one who knows and what is known. The sage must nourish spirit (shen); apart from this there is nowhere else to turn.

The ancients understood that what awareness can reach unfolds in layers.

First layer: holding that originally there were not yet “things”—this is taken as the ultimate limit, beyond which nothing further can be added.

Second layer: holding that “things” already exist, and then treating birth/life as a kind of loss and death as a kind of return—at this point, one is already cutting up the world with a discriminating mind.

Third layer: saying that first there was “non-being,” then there was “being”; once “being” arises, it quickly moves toward death. Taking “non-being” as the head, “birth/life” as the body, and “death” as the tail (the rump). Whoever can hold fast to the person for whom “being and non-being, life and death” are originally one body—I will befriend that person.

Although the three layers above differ in wording, they are like different branches within one clan (such as the Zhao, Jing, Zhu, Dai, Jia, and Zhu-feng lines)—not one person, not one way of awakening. Once one fixates on “there is life,” one sinks into dimness; the “shift-the-categories” talk (yishi: forcibly sliding “this/not-this” and “right/wrong” into one pile) is the sort of thing people keep on their lips; as for the part within “shift-the-categories” that truly cannot be spoken through, that was never easy to clarify in words in the first place.

At a sacrificial feast, the dried meat from the thigh and calf can sometimes be portioned out cleanly and sometimes not; the person who inspects the rooms walks through the ancestral temple and the inner chambers, yet in the end must return to the place where he himself lies down—when people speak of “shift-the-categories,” it is the same: a long detour, yet one must still come back to what is immediately at hand.

If we try to use “shift-the-categories” to describe how people in the world talk: they take being alive as the root, take intellect as teacher, and hitch a ride on disputes over right and wrong; if they insist on matching names to realities, they take the self as their substance, make others take them as their standard of conduct, and then use death to “pay off” that standard. Thus: useful means clever, useless means dull; smooth success means having a name, poverty and obstruction mean disgrace—what “shift-the-categories” refers to is people today.

This is the same kind of “sameness in sameness” as the cicada and the little dove, each guarding its own small sameness and each claiming its own great sameness.

In Guo Xiang’s reading, to live is like holding a funeral for scattered qi that is being gathered again; to die is to return and melt back into oneness. Even if you try to erase these distinctions, things have already parted ways. Some then say “what exists turns into non-existence,” some say “what exists returns to the One,” some say “divide and then make equal”—these three approaches, some exhaust the matter and some do not, yet all can keep the heart from tangling in right and wrong, which is why the text speaks of “Gongzu, Zhao, Jing, Zhu, and Dai” (Gongzu together with Zhao, Jing, Zhu, and Dai; the Jia clan and Zhu Feng—these four groups are nominally all “gong,” yet…). Even when you aim to treat them the same, they have already split into this and that. So again there are “either non-existence, or oneness, or divide-and-equalize”—the three paths differ in whether they run out of things to say, but each can stop yes-and-no from rising in the chest, hence “Gongzu, Zhao, Jing, Zhu, and Dai.” The Jia clan and Zhu Feng, though in name they belong to the gong lineage, are no longer one body.

“Yan” means qi gathers and takes shape; once a clear split appears, each side claims its own “this is right,” with nothing fixed forever, so it is called “yi” (shift)—the shift of what counts as “right” is often settled before a word is spoken. If that shift is not spoken, others have no way to know, so the text tries to explain it in language.

Sacrificial meat: spleen and skin each have their use, a likeness for how the ten thousand things each suit their place. “Yan” here means the privy screen—the ancestral temple is for feasting, the privy screen for relieving oneself. When someone uses the privy, the “rightness” that belonged in the temple has shifted to the privy. The shift of right and wrong is sometimes on that side, sometimes on this; who can stay unchanged forever? The perfected person rides along with such shifts as they arise, and then the ten thousand things are equalized.

The changes of the ten thousand things never cease to be “birth”; while in birth, wherever one stands is that thing’s “root.” Taking “knowing” as teacher, what is known differs, yet each takes its own knowing as teacher. Riding the shifts of yes and no so one can keep going, the perfected person mounts them and equalizes.

The ancients had no yes and no no in the heart—where was any “shift”? So the text also says “shift the ‘this is right’”—it speaks of people today: everyone together clings to what each calls “right,” no different from the cicada and the wren each guarding its own corner.

“Zhi” is the master: each thing takes itself as right and that suffices to be master of yes and no; everyone says “I am right,” and they cannot reach one another. What they hold to is not true release. Those who care about cleverness and stupidity, fame and shame cannot settle wherever they meet things, so the ancients had no yes and no no, while people today align with “this is what each takes as right,” the same as the cicada (chán) and the crested wren (xiāo qiū).

Lü Commentary

The three positions differ, yet in the end all return to the Dao. It is like branches of the Chu royal house: the Zhao, Jing, Zhu, Dai, and Jia lines each held their own fiefs, and their nearness or distance from the center was not the same.

At the level where there are not yet things, to speak all at once of “having birth” is like a dark mole appearing on the skin—it is not what the body is in itself. Yet the two schools each cling to one side: one holds that things already exist and treats “birth” as a kind of loss; the other holds that at first there was nothing and that birth came only later. Thus the whole domain of “not yet having things” is shifted onto the “dark mole” of “already having birth,” and the matter cannot truly be clarified.

Think of the hundred offerings laid out at the winter sacrifice: among them is sliced meat with entrails. That counts among the “hundred things,” yet you cannot take it apart and spread it out—for it is only the lower portion of the carcass. Or consider the main hall and the Zhou ancestral temple: one may lie down inside them; lying there is not failing to be “in the chamber,” yet one cannot call it the “grand vista,” because the place is lowly. The Dao is nowhere absent, so it is hard to speak casually of “shifting”; what people argue over is mostly of this sort.

Each school insists it alone is right, hence they say that one-sided “shifting what is right” is incomplete and has not gone far enough. This way of “shifting what is right” starts from “having birth” and takes birth as the root; birth arises from having knowledge, and knowledge is taken as teacher—they multiply against each other, and right and wrong multiply. Once right and wrong shift, names and realities appear, and then each side treats itself as right. Carried to an extreme, people die for what they treat as the integrity of the “self,” not knowing that what we call “self” was never fixed as one thing. Use and abandonment, hardship and ease are not for “I” alone to decide, yet people rashly divide wise from foolish and honor from disgrace. That is the fault of “shifting what is right” among people today—like the wren that matches itself only to its own kind, how could it know the vastness of the heavenly pool?

Bixu Commentary

Zhao, Jing, and Qu are different surnames within the house of the Chu lord; “Zhu” and “Dai” refer to splendid dress and cap; the Jia line refers to a lofty clan and rich commanderies and counties. The cases differ, but none strays from the Chu capital; as birth and death differ yet both issue from primordial qi.

(The closing passage agrees with Lü’s point: use, abandonment, hardship, and ease are not “me”; to divide wise and foolish and fame from shame in vain is the harm of “shifting what is right”; the wren equals itself only to the like-minded and does not know the breadth of the heavenly pool.)

Bixu (continued)

Zhao, Jing, and Qu are different surnames belonging to the Chu lord’s clan; Zhu and Dai mean magnificent robes and headgear; the Jia line means a honored lineage and fertile lands. Though the particulars differ, in essence none departs from the Chu capital; though life and death differ, both arise from primordial qi.

Following the Original Text (in light of Guo Xiang’s reading)

Dai (official rank), zhi (office and duty), and feng (feudal grant) differ in name, yet they resemble the Zhao, Jing, and Qu lineages among the Chu nobility: all spring from the same royal house; some become famous through office, others through a fief—nothing more than that.

Qing is the soot that cakes at the bottom of a cauldron—seemingly formed yet not truly formed, appearing because there is form; once it flakes and scatters, nothing can be pinned down. What is called yi shi— ceaselessly shifting what counts as “this”—is exactly this.

La is the name of the sacrifice held on the third xu day after the winter solstice. Pi (tripe) and gai (the fleshy web between the toes) are cut from the victim and set on the offering stand—then they are “ divisible”; yet the whole carcass taken together is “indivisible.”

Again, guan shi (viewing the hall): only by walking through every part of the ancestral temple can one speak of “the whole hall”; yet if one views only the yan (resting) quarters, each stop forces a “division,” and viewing them together again forces “division within unity”—which part is truly “the whole hall” cannot finally be said.

Seen this way, what fixed and unchanging “true this” could there be? Tiao (the cicada) and xue jiu (the small bird) are already alike in their respective confinement; if people cling just as stubbornly to their own “this,” they are no different—hence tong yu tong (sameness in sameness).

A Limited View (the editor’s own)

To receive bodily form and become human is already to fall among xing er xia (the realm below form); to return to the state “before there was anything” is no easy matter. Whatever exists is illusion; where the mind is, things are; where the mind is not, things are not. When my mind does not arise and I dwell alone with empty vastness, that may be called “before there was anything.” Reaching this, even birth and death are no more than lodging for a while.

The ancients who attained the Dao could do this. A step lower: though things and the difference between life and death remain, they treat life as loss and death as return—not like ordinary people who drift and change with birth and death. Lower still: even the difference between life and death vanishes; head, trunk, and kao (buttocks) differ in part yet all issue from the Dao—like the Chu nobility from one source, with the surnames Zhao, Qu, and Jing.

Qing is soot at the cauldron’s bottom: form-like yet not form. People lodge in form and so have life, like qing; in a moment it scatters, and the so-called “I” shifts elsewhere—being and non-being cannot be fixed. Consider: at the la sacrifice, pi and gai are offered to the spirits, and the whole victim cannot be divided; after the rite, when the flesh is apportioned, it can be divided. Viewing the temple inspires reverence; entering the yan (privy) invites neglect—all of this allows yi shi. The five characters yi shi belong before “and this cannot be known”—as Guo zhu (Guo Xiang’s commentary on the Zhuangzi) shows.

People take themselves to be right because they first have “life”; with life comes “knowing,” and they take knowing as their teacher—the two multiply without end. If they hold this as name-and-reality and as their own substance, they think it cannot be changed. Failing to see through illusory dust and mistaking emptiness for the real, taking name-and-reality as one’s measure and paying with death—all arise from insisting on one’s own “this”; the world follows the habit and no one sees the error, no different from tiao and jiu who know only the comfort of yu fang (small trees) and not the peng’s journey of ninety thousand li.

Plain-language reading of passages related to Zhuangzi Yi

Main drift of the passage

If you step on someone’s foot in the market, ritual expects apology and yielding; toward an elder brother you speak in a senior’s tone to reassure; toward those closest you often skip formalities altogether—so Zhuangzi says: the highest li (ritual propriety) need not treat others as outsiders; the highest yi (righteousness) does not treat outer things as “outside”; the highest zhi (knowing) does not rely on clever scheming; the highest ren (humaneness) does not cling to near versus far kin; the highest xin (trustworthiness) need not use gold and jade as proof.

Main points of Guo Xiang’s commentary

Step on a foot in the market and you may plead that you are a rough country person to apologize; to an elder brother you say something like “little brother didn’t know better”; to intimates you often need not say much thanks at all—this shows: utmost li is “not treating people as outsiders,” utmost yi is “each thing resting in its place,” utmost zhi is “not planning first and only then knowing,” utmost ren is “not fixed on who is kin,” utmost xin is “not relying on gold and jade to swear.”

Six that “stir the will,” six that “distort the heart,” six that “weigh down de,” six that “block the Dao”

Name, profit, rank, wealth, display, and dignity—these six stir the will (turn the heart outward to climb);

bearing, movement, complexion, qi, principle, and intent—when these six chase outer conditions in disorder, they disturb the root mind;

aversion, desire, joy, anger, grief, and pleasure—when these six run loose, they drag down de (virtue/power);

leaving, approaching, taking, giving, knowing, and ability—when these six cling to worldly use, they block the great Dao.

These four groups, twenty-four items in all—if they do not churn in the chest, the mind can be upright; upright it can be still, still it can be clear, clear it can be empty, and emptiness nears wuwei (non-forcing action)—yet wuwei is not doing nothing, but acting in accord with xing (innate nature).

Dao, de, xing, and life

Dao is the root of de; de is the radiance of life; xing is the texture of life. When xing moves it is called “acting”; when acting loses genuineness it is called “loss.” Knowing meets things; scheming calculates. To know what one does not know is still like looking sideways—one cannot see the whole. Movement that comes only when one cannot help it is called de; movement that all issues from the true self is called good order (zhi).

Name and reality often run opposite (names cross while reality aligns): ordinary people prize names, sages prize reality; when each gets what fits, self and things have no gap—that is shun (accord).

Guo’s commentary continued

“Not treating as other person” means seeing others as oneself, with no inner–outer split—so excessive thanks are unnecessary; that is the extreme of li. “Not treating as outer thing” means each in its place, so the ten thousand things are all within me. “Not scheming” is because knowing is originally natural, not know-after-plan. “No partial kin” is like the five viscera not being “kin” to one another yet ren is already complete. “Avoiding gold as token” is because great trust does not rest on small pledges of metal.

Authentic and inauthentic, acting and not acting: the eye sees—not “knowing one must see and therefore seeing,” but seeing naturally; if one must know first and only then act, that is already artificial. Already sufficient yet still forcing movement—that is loss. Modeling oneself on outer things to move creates self and other, and name and reality part; return from name to reality and that is shun.

When someone else draws a bow to shoot at me, I might smile and reason with him—for he owes me no kindness, I expect no gratitude from him, and even if he steps on my foot I would only politely demur, as one who is free and unconstrained. When a brother draws a bow to shoot at me, I would weep and reason with him—for he has shown me kindness, I look to him for gratitude, so even if he steps on my foot I would not take it as lack of love, but would treat him as gently as one treats an elder, without excessive refusal. Toward those closest to us, when kindness has reached its fullness, there is no need to force “gentleness”—it comes naturally. From this we see that when ritual (li), righteousness (yi), benevolence (ren), and wisdom (zhi) are fully realized, nothing more need be sought outward.

To grasp the purpose of li yet not perform worldly rites for show—that is not letting others’ rules bind you. To act appropriately without seeking “appropriateness” to please external things—that is not taking the “yi” of outer objects as one’s own yi. To respond when things arise without calculating beforehand—that is zhi without premeditation. To treat the people like straw dogs (grass dogs used in sacrifice, discarded after use—an image of impartiality), and have all under Heaven guard together—that is ren without partiality. To speak and be as good as one’s word, without prior agreement—that is trust (xin) as firm as splitting metal. When one truly attains the Dao, none of these five virtues fails to be fulfilled.

Ambition (zhi) is what the mind aims at; mind (xin) is where De (virtue/power) gathers and harmonizes; De is how the Dao appears in oneself. Hence one must utterly release ambition (chezhi) before one can untie the mind (jiexin); only by shedding various burdens can one be unobstructed and not blocked (dasai).

Nourishing ambition values softness and yielding—if one takes wealth and rank as ambition, that is not softness but deviation, so one cannot fail to “chezhi.” Nourishing the mind values emptiness and stillness—if one takes receiving and acting as the mind’s content, that is not emptiness but error, so one cannot fail to “jiexin.” De must return to original undifferentiated wholeness to be supreme De; if likes and dislikes remain, they are burdens on De and must be removed. The Dao takes unity in the One (tong yu yi) as its openness; if oppositions like “going and staying” remain, they block the Dao and must be cleared. When these burdens no longer churn in the breast, the Dao gathers in the person. Without honoring the Great Dao, one cannot speak of walking the Dao; the Dao is what De rests upon—without sheng (vitality, manifestation), De cannot be seen; sheng is the brightness of De; xing (nature) is the texture of sheng. When xing moves, there is deliberate action; deliberate action is wei (artifice/falsity), and true authenticity is lost. Being alive does not require knowing (zhi) to survive—zhi arises from contact with things, it is not innate. To calculate first and then use zhi makes zhi into mo (scheming, clever planning). To know what one does not know—that is why zhi is zhi, just as what the eye has not seen marks the limit of what “seeing” can be. Thus action that springs from necessity is the natural expression of xing; action from forced artifice is wei—only then is it called the Dao (here, the Dao of authenticity). Action need only come from “me” (the self as it naturally is); self and things were originally one—why use outer things to disturb that? Truly so, the world’s right and wrong, the names of self and other—though they may seem opposed, in fact they never fail to accord, because the Dao is nothing other than the self as it naturally is.

Hou Yi excelled at hitting the tiniest bull’s-eye, yet was clumsy at getting people to stop boasting about themselves. The sage is skilled at following Tian (Heaven, the natural and self-so), yet clumsy at human artifice and cunning. To both follow Heaven and handle human affairs well—only the “whole person” (the complete person; in Guo Xiang’s commentary, this is the sage) can do that. Only insects can rest content in an insect’s station; only insects can be so close to Tian. The whole person even rejects what Tian detests and what people detest—that “human Tian”—let alone choosing between “my Tian” and “my human side.”

When a sparrow flies toward Hou Yi, he is sure to bring it down, relying on intimidating force. If you treat the whole world as one great cage, the sparrow has nowhere to flee. That is why King Tang of Shang used a kitchen servant to draw in Yi Yin, and Duke Mu of Qin used five sheepskins to win over Baili Xi—clearly, unless you “build the cage” with what the other party truly values, there is almost nothing you cannot obtain.

One whose limbs are maimed (a jiezhe) no longer adorns the outer self, and others’ praise or blame cannot move him. Xumi, who bore punishment without clinging to life, could climb high without fear because he had let go of life and death alike. As for those who habitually practice “bu kui” (one reading: “without shame”) yet still guard against people—and who, by guarding against people, get treated as “celestial persons” (tianren)—some may honor them without their delight, or insult them without their anger; only one merged with “Tianhe” (the harmony of Heaven) behaves like this. The saying “anger that comes forth yet is not anger” means the anger really springs from non-anger; “action that comes forth yet is non-action” means the action really springs from Wuwei (non-action). If you wish stillness, regulate Qi (vital energy); if you wish spirit, align the heart-mind. If you must act, it should arise from “having no choice”—what is born from that necessity is the way of the sage.

(Guo Xiang’s commentary in brief: hitting the mark and winning reputation are often one and the same in principle; trusting the natural is “Tian,” deliberate contrivance is “human.” Saying “skilled in Tian” and also “good among people” points to the whole person, the sage. Insects keeping to insect roles is “being capable of Tian”—wholly unknowing yet letting be, which is what “skilled in Tian” means. Seizing things by force makes them flee; things under Heaven each have what they love, and only by following what each loves can they be caged—how could that mean scheming for others? Painting adorns the face; one already mutilated by punishment no longer cares about beauty or ugliness, so he beats down vanity and casts it off. Xumi had nothing to rely on in life, so he did not fear death. “Bu kui yet guarding against people” means not recognizing what others cherish. Without the private “human” attachment, one is naturally a tianren; even one mutilated like Xumi still shares Tianhe—how much more so the Tianhe that is originally so? “Anger coming forth yet not anger, action coming forth yet non-action” is exactly the meaning that nothing cannot generate something, and something cannot generate life. When Qi is level, there is stillness; when the heart-mind is accorded, Shen (spirit) arrives. When conduct arises from necessity, nothing is amiss; the sage takes this as the standard—how could that mean seeking Wuwei outside of vagueness and trance?)

The scripture already speaks of levels such as Heavenly Person (Tianren), Spirit Person (Shenren), Utmost Person (Zhiren), and Sage (Shengren); here it adds “Whole Person (Quanren)”. The Sage can transcend change and, though skilled at aligning with the Way of Heaven (Tiandao), may seem awkward in human affairs; the Whole Person goes further—skilled in Heaven’s way and at ease in the human world alike.

Creatures that walk on feet, breathe through beaks, each of its kind, flocking together—insects and small beasts—can each rest in its kind and fulfill its nature, yet need not understand why things are so yet naturally so. The “Heaven” shown in insects is not what the Whole Person takes—that is what people call “human Heaven (ren zhi tian)”: seeming to know a little, yet unable to say why it is so. “Heaven’s Heaven (tian zhi tian)” lies in not treating what one has not grasped as already understood, and in staying alert to what makes things so. Even “knowing a little without being able to say why” is worth vigilance—how much more when one forcibly splits Heaven and human and traps them in concepts?

When a sparrow meets Yi the Archer (Hou Yi), it often cannot escape, because his power is precisely aimed at such targets; if one is not in range of his skill and pattern, that power cannot hold one. Take all under heaven as one great net—the ten thousand things are within it, and none can truly get out; sparrows all the more so. Only someone whose mind is deep, deep, and who can fathom the hearts of all under heaven can treat the realm as such a cage—so figures like Yi Yin and Baili Xi also could not escape this net, for the world gathers them by what their hearts love and seek.

A one-legged man (jiezhe) who has suffered foot amputation does not lose his composure over others’ praise or blame; he can still calmly paint before a portrait artist and not follow the usual rules. Xu Li—those facing execution—do not lose their resolve over the shadow of life and death; they can still climb high without fear. How much more one who can truly “guard against people”—seeing through and dissolving troubles in human affairs—should be able to meet them again and again without ruin.

Habit becomes second nature; if after long practice one still cannot guard against what people fail at, one does not deserve the name “guard against people.” If one takes “guarding against people” as the whole of Heaven and human, one is off mark. The meaning of Heaven and human (Tianren) is not limited to guarding against people; guarding is only one strand. Those who align with Heaven and with knowing in this way should be respected without delight, insulted without anger.

Anger often springs from what is not anger, from Wuwei (non-action); deliberate action (youwei) often springs from the constancy of non-action. Not anger, not forcing action—that is the state where “nothing is yet fixed into a thing, yet things arise of themselves.”

Qi (vital energy) is originally empty, waiting on outer things; people often cannot hold the center and turn violent, hence unrest. If one can level the qi, there is no unrest.

The heart-mind (xin) in a person is Shen (spirit); people often cannot follow its natural course and slip into disorder, hence lack of spirit. If one can follow the heart, spirit is never lacking.

The desire for deliberate action should begin with sincerity toward oneself. Hesitating before acting, cautious (yu) as if crossing a river in winter—both mean “acting because one must”: not showing off strength, but moving carefully under the pressure of circumstances.

Brief notes on terms

• Whole Person (Quanren): A concept in the Zhuangzi lineage; more integrated in Heaven’s way and human affairs than the “Sage.”
• Yi: Hou Yi, the ancient master archer.
• Yi Yin, Baili Xi: Famous ministers of Shang and Zhou; metaphor for how talent too lies in “heaven’s cage.”
• Jiezhe, Xu Li: See Zhuangzi and related texts; figures whose bodies are maimed or who face death yet keep a steady mind.
• Xu Li: In context, often those under punishment or awaiting execution who do not lose composure.

Fangzi Ji (Excerpt)

What Zhuangzi calls the “whole person” is not someone who despises Heaven; it is someone who despises people for damaging Heaven. Once people use human standards to lock up and suppress Heaven, the heart of the thief appears. If even “Heaven in human affairs” must be guarded against, how much more the more primordial “Heaven that is mine”? Among people, can anyone truly dominate others forever and hold a single supreme place? Only insects can fully follow their inborn nature—that alone is “Heaven’s Heaven.” If one constantly guards against others and schemes against them, one shares the same kind of “Heaven” as insects. The “Heaven” of the whole person runs on the same line as the sage’s teaching; only the rhetorical force rises and falls. So the chapter closes by saying: one speaks the Dao only when there is no alternative—that is the sage’s way.

Overview of My Reading

Gengsang Chu’s grasp of Laozi is already quite concrete, with a side of caution and holding fast; yet where he has not fully arrived, he still clings and still takes stands. He lived alone at Weilei, and the people praised his virtue—the ordinary path by which sages and worthies benefit the world. But once hearts rejoiced and wanted to elevate and honor him, traces of partial love and profit showed; things and self interacted and private feeling grew. What Nanrong Chu saw resembled Weilei: Gengsang Chu feared his virtue was not enough to transform others, so he sent him to see the master, hoping through the master’s gate to turn his heart and awaken him—this is “changing hands to receive someone”: first make the person trust without doubt, then utmost words can enter. So when Nanrong entered, a single shout struck home—no question, no answer; question and answer both empty—like letting go on a cliff edge. How often does one meet that at the root of life? Sadly Nanrong could not accept it on the spot; instead he wandered in fragments and piled up long speech. Laozi gauged the root illness, applied a fierce needle, and only then did he withdraw to worry, sweep, and bow again—one may say he knew how to be taught and could renew himself. At the next meeting Laozi seized the moment and pointed straight through, clearing away his habit of clinging to good and bad, then gradually applied the medicine. Nanrong judged his vessel shallow and asked only to hear the “classic on preserving life”—the essential method of the Dao, when fully spread, is nothing but on the person. Laozi taught him to embrace the One, seek himself, return to the infant, and follow things; the “classic on preserving life” is largely here. When questioning reached the limit, it came back again to “Can you be like a child?”—words have their source, affairs have their lord.

Next comes “the great space issues from Heaven’s light”: the numinous terrace does not know what to hold—meaning the chamber is empty and whiteness arises of itself; there is no need for deliberate mind, deliberate action, or anxious outward seeking. Talk of tokens outside and inside, the metaphors of will and the Mo-ye sword, all aim to let the learner know weight from light and cut a decision. Non-being and being, life and death, before and after are one body; sleeping hall, ancestral temple, leaning privy—high and low each in place—intended to awaken to “the root of life is originally non-being” and break the delusion of “shifting this.” Then the surge of esteem, wealth, desire, and aversion: when will goes astray the heart turns crooked, so one sees that will and desire must be unified and the heart must be emptied. Whatever touches things and burdens and blocks empty clarity must be abandoned and left behind. Sacrificial gear and blistered skin may be scattered—they are not constant; Yi the archer hits the mark yet is clumsy at hiding praise—all common talk for releasing fixation, opening the transformation of empty darkness. Guard against mixed Heaven, human artifice, and clumsiness, and rise above the right and wrong of self and things; guard against ruin and praise, respect and insult, until one reaches non-doing and non-anger. In stillness, level the breath; in spirit, accord the heart—then one dwells calmly alone with spirit brightness, settled in oneness and responding without fixed direction.

Xu Wugui (Chapter Twenty-Four)

Xu Wugui, at Nu Shang’s suggestion, went to see Marquis Wu of Wei. The marquis welcomed him and said: “You have had a hard time of it, Master—wearied in the mountains and forests before you were willing to come and see me?”

Xu Wugui replied: “If we speak of hardship, it is really that I would trouble you; what hardship have you on my account? If you indulge appetites and feed likes and dislikes, the root of life and nature will sicken; if you suppress appetites and forcibly rein in likes and dislikes, the ears and eyes will sicken too. It is I who would trouble you—what hardship do you have toward me?” The marquis looked unsettled and did not answer. After a while Xu Wugui said: “I once told you how I judge dogs: the lowest kind, once full, stops—that is the nature of a cat or weasel; the middling kind seem to stare at the sun; the finest kind hold their spirit fast, as if forgetting themselves—they look like wooden cocks. Yet judging dogs is not as good as judging horses: straight ones fit the line, curved ones fit the hook, square ones fit the square, round ones fit the compass—that is a horse fit for the state, still not equal to a horse of the realm. A horse of the realm has already matured in talent; sometimes alert, sometimes as if something were missing, yet it can leave dust and break from the track—you never know where it will stop.” The marquis was greatly pleased and laughed. Xu Wugui took his leave.

Nu Shang asked: “How is it that you alone pleased our lord? When I please the lord, I may expound the Odes, Documents, rites, and music, or set forth the Golden Board and Six Satchels (Taigong’s military writings, or classics kept in a golden chest)—those who achieved great deeds in his service are beyond counting, yet he never opened his mouth. What words did you use to make him so happy today?”

Xu Wugui said: “I spoke plainly: I was only judging dogs and horses. Have you not heard of people from Yue living far from home? After a few days away, they are glad to see anyone they know; after a month, they are glad to see anyone they often saw at home; after a year, they are glad even to see someone who looks like a countryman—the longer one is away, the deeper the longing. What of someone who has fled to empty valleys, using wild greens for pillars and dwelling on weasel paths, staggering in the void—at the sound of a human footfall they are delighted? How much more when kin and friends murmur softly at one’s side? For so long, has there never been someone using a true person’s words to whisper guidance beside the lord?”

(Guo Xiang’s commentary, in essence: Only when there is nothing inside or outside to pull at appetites and likes and dislikes can one speak of “sickness”; the marquis was displeased with the words and “did not answer.” How yielding true speech is—each follows what its nature favors. Expounding the Odes, Documents, rites, and music while the lord never opened his mouth is like using bells and drums to please a wren—hence Nu Shang’s worry. Hearing of judging dogs and horses and being glad is like people of Yue missing home, each longing for its own nature; when one gets what it favors, there is no idle thought; without idle thought one guards what brought the joy—so true speech matches the lord’s nature. At first he hears and is glad; in time he keeps it and does not let it leak away.)

Commentary by Lü

“No Request” did not bow to Wei Wuhou’s power or trim his words to please him; instead he spoke plainly and admonished the ruler’s faults. Wuhou, precisely because he carried no air of “looking down from above,” appeared free and easy and did not treat the visitor with ordinary ceremony.

“No Request” used judging dogs and horses to illustrate his own “seeking nothing.” The lowest grade of dog stops eating when full and does nothing more—like a person who only serves others when hungry; that is what counts as “having a request.” The middle grade follows the moving shadow of the sun with its gaze—like someone whose vision is lofty but who still cannot guard against private desire. The highest grade of dog, if one still spoke of “guarding,” would guard only itself; from this one sees the meaning of “guarding the self.”

The middle grade of horse conforms to compass, square, and line—it is the “state horse,” likened to the state gentleman who moves within ritual and name-and-teaching. Who in the world becomes accomplished without learning? If one clings only to restraint, there is no sharing joy; if one loses the root, there is no matching pace; if one loses the “One” (singleness, root), that is the extreme of losing oneself—not merely “perishing” but leaping beyond dust, so that even “how did it come to this?” need not be weighed. How much more so when state horses trained by hook, line, and square behave thus—how much more the lofty person who wanders outside the state gentleman, beyond measure?

The point is: if even top dogs and horses under heaven are like this, how could I know your power and rank and stoop beneath you? How could you fail to treat me with mutual respect? Wuhou grasped the intent and was greatly pleased. Thus speech meets through the Dao: when words miss the Dao, even poetry, documents, ritual, and music cannot move people; when words hit the Dao, even talk of judging dogs and horses can delight them.

If people lose the disposition of nature and life and sink into human artifice, it is like leaving home, district, and kin to wander far away, or fleeing into empty wilds to herd with weasels and rats. What is called “authentic” is inherent nature, like old acquaintances in one’s native place. Unless one is utterly deluded, who hears the authentic person’s gentle breath and is not pleased?

Commentary by Wu Chou

“No Request” is perhaps a spirit-like person: he rides the time and seizes the situation, leaving no scheming in the heart; when he opens his mouth, meaning still rests in silence. Returning by the Dao, he does not go against its pattern; following what the other favors, he does not clash with his feelings. Therefore even the harsh Wei Wuhou was won over and pleased.

On Wu Zhou’s View

“Wu” (Non-Being) can broadly be taken as someone who has reached the level of a shenren (spiritual person). He adapts to the times and rides the momentum, yet does not force his own fixations into his heart; when he speaks, he lodges true meaning within silence. Moving thus with the destination of the Dao, he does not go against its principle; speaking in line with what the other person favors, he does not clash with their disposition. Hence even before the stern Lord of Wu, he could win assent and a smile—getting the point across has its method.

On the New Commentary’s View

Lord Wu’s endowment was middling talent; one could not hand him the full “supreme Dao” at once, and could only meet him where his interests lay. That is why Wu had to speak by way of “evaluating dogs and horses.” But Wu was not really appraising dogs and horses for people; he was borrowing dogs and horses as metaphors for entering the Dao.

The top-grade dog is “as if missing a part”—the bodily form seems to lack something, yet in fact spirit leads and form follows, so it can preserve itself intact. The “accomplished talent” among “horses under heaven” is one whose virtue is settled and whose root is not depleted. Because it can preserve itself, it can practice wuwei (non-action); because its root is not depleted, it can be “uselessly” free (in the Daoist sense). Wuwei and “uselessness” are precisely the approach by which one can penetrate deeply into the Dao.

On a Personal Reading

In the line “horses under heaven—there is accomplished talent,” that bearing of leaving the dust behind can be imagined. As for “watching the sun” and “guarding the One,” one can still more or less describe them with everyday experience; when it comes to “guarding against loss” and “losing the One,” it is even harder to capture fully in words—unlike the “state horse,” which can still be illustrated with rules and harness.

Here “the One” refers to the moment when a thing has just stirred and is on the verge of arising: as if present, yet as if absent, in the interval between being and non-being, before form is fixed. Only by opening it up in the right way can the speech reach Lord Wu’s heart.