《庄子翼》Vol. 14

The preceding passage discussed raising poultry, pigs, dogs, and other domestic animals; storing grain and goods in granaries and storehouses; and bearing in mind the elderly, the weak, orphans, and widows—all of which reflect concern for those who are old, frail, alone, or without support. What is called “the principle of governing the people” (min zhi li) is the rationale for ordering common life. The stretch from “Heaven and the human” through to “the noble person” (junzi) summarizes the ancient, full-bodied dao (Way). What follows will lament how past and present diverge and will take up the theme of the Dao.

Someone who “discerns in one-sided fashion” sees only a single facet. People under Heaven often cling to a partial view and pride themselves on it. It is like the ear, eyes, nose, and mouth each having their own kind of knowing yet unable to share it with one another; the hundred schools and their crafts each have strengths and sometimes genuine uses, but those who are trapped in one bias are exactly this sort of “one-sided discerner.”

Look at how the ancients stood on the side of wholeness: those who fix on one extreme seldom possessed the beauty of Heaven and Earth or could properly speak of the spirit’s full countenance. In classical usage, “countenance” (rong) and “beauty” (mei) often overlap, both pointing to what is fine and complete. “Each making his own method” (zi wei fang) means each school pushing its own proprietary technique or system.

From “Alas” (bei fu) on, the text is largely lament; later it goes on to describe, one by one, how the doctrines and arts of the various schools differ.

This passage assesses the doctrines and practices of the Mohist school (followers of Mozi) and compares them with one strand of the “ancient way of the sages” (gu zhi daoshu).

Mohist founders and their entry into the tradition

Mozi (Mo Di), Qin Guli, and others heard that among the ancient sages’ arts there was a teaching that did not pursue extravagance after death, did not squander things on the myriad entities, and did not use ritual forms to show off—yet used compass and plumb line to discipline oneself while responding to the world’s urgent crises. They strongly approved of that path but held that Mohism carried it too far, submitting excessively to the program of “Against Music” (fei yue) and “Moderating Expenses” (jie yong).

“Against Music,” “Moderating Expenses,” and departure from the ancient kings

Mohists advocated fei yue (opposition to lavish music and entertainment) and jie yong (frugal living and simple funerals). Their rule was: while alive, no singing; when dead, no mourning garments. They urged broad love for all people and mutual benefit for others, opposed aggressive warfare, and refused to act from anger; they also valued learning and wide mastery—yet their practices differed from what the ancient kings had established, so they rejected the old rites and music as well.

The text lists ancient music: the Yellow Emperor had the “Xianchi”; Yao had the “Dazhang”; Shun the “Dashao”; Yu the “Daxia”; Tang the “Dahu”; King Wen had the “Biyong” music; King Wu and the Duke of Zhou composed the “Wu.” Ancient funeral custom graded coffins by rank: the Son of Heaven seven layers of inner and outer coffin, feudal lords five, grand officers three, common officers two.

Mozi instead prescribed: no singing in life, no mourning dress in death, only a coffin of tong wood three inches thick with no outer coffin (guo)—taking this as the standard and teaching others. By that teaching, one could hardly expect people truly to love others; applied to oneself, one might not love oneself either.

This did not wholly ruin Mohism, yet when one ought to sing and did not, ought to weep and did not, ought to rejoice and could not, the manner became too harsh and thin: life excessively toilsome, death excessively spare. The way was overly severe—grief and sorrow for others—hard to put into practice and unlikely to count as “the way of the sage.” It ran against the heart of the world; the world could not bear it. However much one man like Mozi could carry, how could he turn the world around? He stood far from the way of “ ruling all under Heaven.”

Mozi’s praise of Yu and bodily toil for the realm

Mozi also exalted the past, saying: formerly Yu controlled the floods, dredged rivers, and opened paths to the four quarters and nine provinces—three hundred famous mountains, three thousand great streams, and numberless lesser waters. Yu himself took up farming tools (tuo lü, implements such as the plow), gathered the strength of all under Heaven to manage rivers and marshes, until the hair on his shins was gone; he faced fierce wind and combed driving rain and settled the myriad states. Yu was a great sage, yet he wore his body out in service to the world. Later Mohists often wore coarse hemp and wooden clogs (hemp sandals and wooden shoes), working day and night without rest, treating self-affliction as the utmost, saying: unless one lived thus, one did not deserve the name of Yu’s way or count as a true Mohist.

Among Xiang Li Qin’s disciples were followers of the Five Lords; southern Mohists included Ku Huo, Ji Chi, and Deng Lingzi, all reciting the Mohist canon yet diverging in interpretation and sophistry, each calling themselves “Distinct Mohists” (bie Mo). They disputed with topics such as “hard and white” and “sameness and difference,” answered one another with phrases like “oblique and paired yet not mismatched,” and took the “juzi” (grand master—the Mohist equivalent of a great Confhe scholar) as sage. Each wished to occupy the “corpse” seat (the successor’s representative position), hoping to become the next transmitter—such splits remain unsettled to this day.

The original intent of Mozi and Qin Guli may have lain here (meeting urgent worldly need), but acting so in practice was wrong: it led later Mohists to compete in the self-mortification of “hairless shins,” which above disrupts law and below is the dregs of governance.

Even so, Mozi was among the rare “good” ones under Heaven—ready for the public good and resolute in action—such people are hard to find; he would not give up even if withered and worn—a man of real talent.

(Textual notes: “da xun” may read “da shun”; “Fei Yue” and “Jie Yong” are titles in the Mozi; “tuo lü” may appear as “gao si”; “jiu” may read “jiu” (gather)—meaning to assemble, with mixed tasks hence “miscellaneous”; “fu” is hemp and “jue” shoe—together, dress of hemp sandals and wooden clogs.)

Guo Xiang’s commentary: To be utterly frugal and industrious drains a person dry, so there is nothing genuinely splendid about it—it is something forced and strained. Mozi advocated frugality and diligence so that goods would be surplus and emergencies covered; but when this is pushed too far and one follows one’s own scheme without restraint, one no longer weighs whether ordinary people can bear it.

When supplies fall short, people fight. He wanted the people to be frugal with surplus, so he treated strife as wrong—not by raging at others to suppress them, but by demanding austerity of himself. Once he took himself to be in the right, he wanted all things under Heaven to match him; hence he looked broad in scope yet would not tolerate difference. Where he parted from the ancient kings was this: the ancient kings let diverse forms of life exist and from that diversity achieved a great commonality; each got what suited them without needing to know how it was arranged.

He rejected ancient rites and music as too lavish. He treated every exertion driven by one’s own inclinations as “love.” Taking frugality as law yet overdoing it—even if one intends to enrich the world—is not true love. This does not quite destroy the Mohist core, but it is ultimately not the way of De. Mohism stands as its own school, yet it does not accord with the inherent dispositions of the myriad things; hence the question: can this really accord with the nature of all things?

Something as dry and unyielding as “hulled grain” lacks moisture and cannot walk the sage’s Way. The sage’s Way uses what delights to guide the people—when people obtain what their nature delights in, they are pleased; when the world is pleased, there is no great calamity. A true king should unite the hearts of all under Heaven and advance together with the myriad things. (The commentary repeats: turn away from the world and leave the royal Way, and this cannot be done.)

Mozi saw only Yu the Great’s bodily toil and did not see that his nature was actually at ease. Taking self-affliction as the utmost and self-affliction as the complete method—even when the age is wrong, clinging to that path—is why they are called Mohists. Each clings to a partial view until nothing connects; hence factions within Mohism itself.

A “juzi” (great master) is one who can distinguish right from wrong and carry the teaching into practice; “shi” (corpse) means chief heir—later followers who wished to inherit the juzi’s enterprise. The original aim—not being lavish and preparing for the world’s emergencies—was not mistaken in direction, but it was overdone, hence the criticism. No disorder is greater than going against the myriad things and injuring one’s nature; to go against things and harm nature is disorder at its extreme. Letting everyone suit their own nature is the highest policy of order; Mohism reverses this, so it sits on the lower rungs of order. Because they were sincere in this, sages and worthies did not forcibly oppose them—but it cannot be taken as the constant method for teaching people.

When the Way cannot be attained, they say there are no peers; never abandoning their withered austerity—that is their true preference. They are men of talent, not persons of De.

The gist of Lü’s commentary is as follows.

The ancient kings governed in such a way that reputation, ritual, music, and cultural institutions were fully in place—not so that later ages would look lavish, not to squander things on the myriad beings, and not to show off with elaborate laws and standards; that was not their ordinary way of being. They used compasses, squares, plumb lines, and measuring cords to restrain themselves because they had to meet the urgent crises of their own time. In the teachings of the Way there really is this side of things: the Way must be grasped as the constant Way and also carried through all changes; Mozi, however, seized only the strand of “preparing for the urgent needs of the age” and treated it as an unchanging principle. This is what it means to see clearly from one angle alone and take that for the whole truth, unable to join others in returning to the same Way.

From “Against Music” through advocacy of lavish burial and related positions, Mozi often pushed too far and went to extremes in “great conformity.” The sage-kings’ ritual and music had measure; mourning and sacrifice had proper forms. Mozi, by contrast, would not sing in life nor wear mourning in death—unlike the ancient kings, he belittled ancient rites and music and pared things down to such austerity that it was not merely failing to love others but almost failing to love oneself. Mozi’s original intent was universal love and shared benefit, yet he did not notice that people could not bear that kind of hardship and still insisted they live under such strict restraint. Because few who lost the Way did so through such austerity, the Mohist path had not yet failed for a time.

Joy and grief are what human feelings cannot avoid; the sage-kings used ritual forms to give them proper expression. Mozi sang where one should not sing and wept where one should not weep—is that in accord with human feeling? Hardship in life and meager burial in death keep people in constant worry and sorrow. The teachings of the Way did include the meaning of “preparing for urgency,” but Mozi pushed it too far; that cannot be called the Way of the sage. Even if one or two people could bear it, how could everyone in the world? How far from the kingly Way. In antiquity Yu suffered the great flood and toiled to that extreme; if “preparing for the urgent needs of the age” were taken as the normal state of things, that likewise could not be called the Way of the sage. Though one might manage it, the world could not endure it—again far from the kingly Way. Yu’s labor was for emergency; if tireless preparation for crisis were made the everyday rule, that would not be the correct Way. Push too far and it will not spread under Heaven; then it is not fit to be a model and only makes later students compete in self-imposed hardship. Frugality and diligence are hard enough as it is; Mozi excelled at them, yet those under Heaven who desired this Way could scarcely find it—he was indeed a man of talent.

Following the Root

The Mohists did not look to later ages for lavish display, nor did they set a fashion for extravagance; they did not treat external things as splendor to be lost in, nor did they parade ritual, music, and law as mere ornament. They took the inked cord and plumb line as standards to restrain themselves, met the urgent needs of worldly affairs, and refused empty projects cut off from reality. The ancient arts of the Way had always included such practices; only the line of Mo Di singled them out and prized them, yet pushed them past the mark. The point had been to use the cord and plumb line for self-correction, but they carried self-correction to an extreme; the point had been to go along with “no excess, no waste, no showy glare,” but they went along until it bordered on having no limit at all.

The Mohists advocated “anti-music”; the conduct they approved treated enjoyment as something that ought not to be legitimate. They neither sought novelty nor matched the Way of the ancient kings—not like the common run following custom, and not in line with ancient royal tradition either. Teaching people to live sparely is not necessarily loving others; living sparely themselves did not necessarily mean they truly cherished themselves, so others could hardly say how far one ought to “reject” them… (The remarks on Mohism break off here.)

Zhuangzi’s appraisal of the Mohist school

When it is time to sing, they do not sing; when it is time to weep, they do not weep; when it is time to rejoice, they do not rejoice—where is the human in that? Crude as tanned hide, they stand far from the Way of the True King. With sack-like, rough gear they would take on the heavy task of serving all under Heaven; like a tangled “nine,” they would draw every stream under Heaven to one place.

Men such as Xiang Li Qin and Wu Hou held to “no wrongful action, no violation,” taking non-violation to mean mutual response. The juzi (Grand Master) was like a great lineage head, choosing the tallest in the faction to serve as the “corpse” of the sage—the representative in the seat of honor. They all wanted Mohist learning as their lineage and hoped to become a “Way” honored in later ages. Yet believers and doubters were about half and half; their teaching still cannot settle disorder under Heaven—those above stay chaotic, those below hard to put in order: more chaos than order. That is truly the situation of those under Heaven who are keen to govern.

Not burdened by custom, not adorned by things, not harsh toward people, not contentious with the crowd

They did not let themselves be weighed down by worldly ways, did not use external things to dress themselves up, were not severe with others, and did not compete for dominance with the multitude.

Wishing peace under heaven so the people may live; for one’s own sustenance and that of others, stopping when there is enough—thus clarifying the heart

Their wish was for peace throughout the realm so that the people could survive; as for their own support and that of others, they stopped when it was sufficient, and with that attitude they cleared and settled the inner mind.

Among those who practiced the ancient way of Dao and its arts, there were some who took this path. Song Xing and Yin Wen, hearing this spirit, were delighted by it and made a distinctive cap called the “Hua-shan crown” to declare their stance

Among those in antiquity who cultivated the way of Dao and its practical arts, some followed this line. Song Xing and Yin Wen (Warring States thinkers close to the Mohist and Logician traditions), when they caught wind of this approach, found it congenial and fashioned a special headgear known as the “Hua-shan crown” to mark their identity.

In engaging the myriad things, they began by “separating what is external from inner attachment” (bie you); speaking of the breadth of the heart, they called it the “way the heart moves”; with gentle accord they harmonized all under heaven

In dealing with the ten thousand things, they started from “distinguishing external objects from inner fixation” (bie you). When they spoke of the heart’s openness, they named it the “movement of the heart.” With soft, reconciling joy they sought to harmonize the realm.

They asked that rulers take this as their guiding principle: to be insulted yet not count it as disgrace; to rescue the people from mutual strife; to forbid aggression, halt armies, and still the wars of the age—carrying these aims through the world, persuading those above and teaching those below; even when the world would not accept them, they still pressed on with loud insistence and would not let go

They petitioned those in power to adopt this teaching as the foundation of rule: when wronged, not to treat it as humiliation; to save the people from quarrels among themselves; to prohibit attack, rest the troops, and end the battles that ravaged the age. Bearing these commitments everywhere, they admonished superiors and instructed inferiors; and even when no one under heaven would heed them, they continued to proclaim forcefully and refused to desist.

Hence it is said: those above and below alike found them tiresome, yet they still forced themselves into view

Thus the saying: superiors and inferiors were all weary of them, yet they still insisted on showing themselves and speaking out.

Even so, they planned too much for others and too little for themselves, saying, “Please let us stay settled—a peck and a half of grain (enough for one person’s meals) is plenty.” The master feared he might not eat his fill; the disciples, though hungry, did not forget the world, toiling day and night and saying, “We are sure to keep people alive!”—Was this the arrogance of would-be saviors of the age?

Nevertheless, they schemed far more for others and for the world than for themselves, often saying, “Let us live in quiet stability—five sheng of rice (roughly one person’s ration) is enough.” The teacher worried he might not get enough to eat; the disciples, though they went hungry, still did not put the world out of mind, working without rest by day and night and declaring, “We will surely enable the people to live!” Was this the haughty ambition of self-styled deliverers of the age?

They also said, “The noble person does not engage in nitpicking scrutiny, and does not lend the body to external things for gain.” What does no good for the world, they held, is better left unargued than pursued. Outwardly they took forbidding attack and resting arms as their task; inwardly they took keeping desires and emotions few and shallow as their discipline. Whether in large matters or small, coarse or fine, their practice generally went no further than this

They also said, “The noble person does not indulge in harsh, minute investigation, and does not use the body as collateral for external profit.” They judged that what benefits the world not at all is better abandoned than clarified in debate. Externally they made prohibiting aggression and stilling armies their banner; internally they made thinning desire and emotion their rule. In great things and small, in the broad and the subtle, their conduct in the main stopped right here.

This is Guo Xiang’s commentary on a passage in the Zhuangzi, in substance as follows.

Zhi means perverse, contrary, or going against the grain. “When fully satisfied, stop; dare not hope for more” means being content once one has enough and not grasping for surplus. “Mount Hua level above and below” uses the even terrain on the upper and lower slopes of Mount Hua as a metaphor. “Set apart and delimit the myriad things; do not wish them to err and clash with one another” means dividing and governing things separately so they do not harm or obstruct each other.

“Forcibly using this ‘dao of harmonizing’ to make opposites fit together and blend”—forcing discordant parties into unity by some scheme of “adjustment”; “the two men requested that whoever could do this be established as master of things”—two people asked that one who could achieve this be made wuzhu (lord over things). “Seeing insult without taking it as insult”—being reviled yet not treating it as shame; “taking the preservation of the people as urgent”—making saving the populace the pressing task; “ending quarrels and laying down arms”—stopping fights and silencing weapons—is what is called nirou tiao (forced mediation and patchwork). “Even if the world does not accept it”—even when all under Heaven will not adopt it; “still clamoring forcefully and refusing to desist”—yet continuing to shout and push without letting go—“such is the logic of nirou tiao”—that is how this “forced harmonizing” works.

“Seen as odious, yet insisting on showing oneself”—being despised yet still forcing oneself forward. “Not engaging in harsh scrutiny; striving for leniency”—not nitpicking, but favoring forgiveness. “If one does not follow each person’s self-transformation but forcibly consoles and binds them together, the merit claimed becomes too heavy”—if instead of allowing people to transform on their own one hardens and patches them with comfort, the credit taken is excessive. “Originally setting out five sheng of rice”—only preparing five sheng of grain to begin with; “then clearly one’s own portion is too small”—which shows one’s own supply is insufficient. “Only then can I stay alive”—only thus can I survive; “meaning the people ought likewise to repay oneself”—implying the masses should return the favor to oneself.

“Tu’ao hui chi” depicts an overbearing, domineering air. “Not lending the body to things”—not relying on externals or surrendering oneself to objects; “must personally exert one’s own strength”—one must apply one’s own effort. “What does not benefit the world, stop”—what helps not the realm, leave undone—“this is why one acts as a savior of the world”—such is the manner of those styled deliverers of the age.

“Their conduct goes only as far as this and stops”—their practice reaches this point and no further; “unable yet to traverse emptiness and cross the vast”—still incapable of truly walking the path of emptiness and openness.

Summary of Lü’s Commentary

“White heart” (baixin) means the heart is not dragged down by worldly affairs and does not dress itself up in outer things; extending sincere heart to others, one does not contend even when placed in a low or awkward position; one only hopes others are at ease and does not seek much for oneself. If thoughts arise in the mind that do not accord with this, treat them as filth and wash them away—hence the name “white heart.”

Strife in the world mostly comes from mutual encroachment and excessive demands; only by distinguishing matters clearly and pardoning what falls short can strife be stilled. Likewise, if the heart cannot be at peace, it too must be washed clean like removing dirt, and returned to “white heart.”

From the perspective of the heart of the Dao, the heart ought originally to embrace all things, so one should not contend with people. These two masters (referring to those who uphold the teachings of “Diaoni” and “Hehuan”) describe the appearance of the heart and also use “Diaoni” and “Hehuan” to harmonize the world, calling this “the heart’s conduct and the heart’s function,” intending to set it up as master and promote it as the standard; they claim to be humiliated yet not feel humiliated, to be supremely strong yet never cease clamoring—this is what they call “the way of Diaoni.”

In ancient Daoist teaching there was indeed something close to this; but the two “did too much for others and too little for themselves,” so they still cannot be counted as truly aligned with the Great Dao. They also said: working day and night without rest to save the world, people surely will not come to such-and-such; even if world-saving worthies pay no heed to me, I can still live and do not worry about starving. Their practice stops at this point; beyond it is what the two do not know—commentators hold that this is because they had not yet heard the Dao.

Tracing the Root (Explanation of Terms)

• Baixin (white heart): To lay the inner mind open and wash it clean so it is pure and clear.
• Crown of Mount Hua: Using the image of Mount Hua’s level heights and depths as a metaphor for crown ornament.
• Bieyou (distinguishing and pardoning): Distinguishing good and evil, and showing leniency toward where strength falls short.
• Describing the heart’s appearance: Explaining the form and state of the heart.
• Naming it: To name or call it.
• Heart’s conduct, heart’s function: The heart’s operation and efficacy.
• Ni (cooked meat): Here linked with “Diaoni,” referring to that school’s label built on “harmonizing” and “Hehuan” discourse.
• Not having heard the Dao: Not having attained the fullness of the Great Dao, hence stopping at the level of saving the world and white heart.

Xun ben (following the root): it means to clarify the heart completely and illuminate the original mind.

Bai xin—“white heart”—means to refine the inner mind until it is clear and unstained.

Mount Hua (Hua Shan) is level above and below, shaped like a crown; hence the metaphor “crown of Mount Hua.”

Bie you means to treat good and evil as separate; you here means partiality, leaning one way and neglecting the other.

When the text speaks of xin zhi rong—“the heart’s appearance”—it is describing how the heart looks and how it is disposed.

Ming here is like giving the heart a name: it refers to the heart’s movement and its use.

The term rou (in the received reading) denotes meat boiled until tender. An old edition wrongly wrote a character beside “sun” (ri); the correct form is rou. The point is that the heart’s working is like cooking food for people—sharing joy with them, letting them drink freely—using that alone to harmonize the world.

Qing yu si ren: one hopes for people like this. Li ci xin yi wei zhi zhu: one takes such a heart as the master.

He says for himself that five sheng of rice a day is enough—yet the master (xiansheng) may still not eat his fill, and disciples go hungry yet follow. They travel day and night without rest, saying, “I must win the people’s lives back from danger.” That seems to mock those who pose as world-savers yet do not give their whole heart. Their learning differs in scope and fineness, but in conduct, reaching this point is enough; what they say has no specially grand or abstruse meaning either.

Gong er bu dang: fair-minded and not factional. Yi er yi er wu si: pliant and varied, yet without private ends. Jue ran wu zhu: decisive, yet not clinging to a fixed lord or principle. Qu wu er bu liang: going with things, not stuck in two extremes. Bu gu yu lu, bu mou yu zhi: not leaning on anxious deliberation or scheming with cleverness. Yu wu wu ze, yu zhi ju wang: toward things, no picking and choosing—going along with them all.

In ancient dao shu (the arts of the Way), there was a line that ran this way. Peng Meng, Tian Pian, and Shen Dao—their attainment stops here, and that is enough; their words likewise carry no meaning that is especially vast or recondite.

Note: This passage belongs to the Zhuangzi Yi’s condensed appraisal of the main thrusts of the “ancient arts of the Way” in various schools; its phrasing largely follows the line of the “Tianxia” chapter in the Zhuangzi.

Guo Xiang’s commentary: To be decisively without a master and let each thing take its own course is to let each attain its proper place; hence they unite as “one” without splitting into two. If you cling to one side alone, you cannot be complete—what you call “right” still cannot escape being “wrong.” Peng Meng, Tian Pian, and Shen Dao did not truly know the Dao, yet on the whole they had all heard something of it.

(“People do not gather to watch” is alternatively read as “there is no visible audience.”)

Decisively without a master, each following itself—each thing moves toward what it ought to move toward, so they merge into one without dividing into two. Clinging to one side makes you incomplete; the “rightness” you speak of still cannot avoid “wrongness.” Peng Meng, Tian Pian, and Shen Dao did not know the Dao; even so, they had all broadly heard something.

Lengtai means to yield and be easygoing: their insight was shallow—they did not know how to entrust things to their own nature, so they were slighted; they also came close to harm. Xi’guo (pronounced xì kuò): with no fixed role—speech does not match the role yet takes charge over the crowd. The crowd, each able in its own way, then acts recklessly without wuwei (non-action); they also exalt the worthy, so anyone short of a great sage would want to erase their traces and keep things from “dying for” each other (each staying in its proper place). Though Legalist doctrine is subtle, it still has the “mallet and block” (forcing things into shape with hammer blows), so it never fully merges and cannot distinguish right from wrong or before from after—it only guards the eyes from indulgence and seeks to escape the troubles of the moment. Weiran means to stand alone by following one’s nature; being pushed and dragged before one moves comes from having no choice. Trouble arises from praise; praise arises from “having establishment” (fixing names and standards). Only the sage can remove knowledge and artifice and follow heaven’s principle. Thus fool and wise each stay in their fitting place, noble and base each hold their proper rank, worthy and unworthy each follow their own disposition—yet to say “no use for worthies and sages” is precisely not knowing the Dao. The clod that does not lose the Dao: the wish is to make one discard knowledge like a lump of earth; discard knowledge and follow nature, then spirit and illumination penetrate—that is why one becomes worthy or sage. Yet to say the clod does not lose the Dao, wishing to discard knowledge like a clod—discard knowledge, follow nature, spirit and illumination penetrate, hence worthies and sages—if a person were like a clod, would that be anything but death? That is why heroes laugh. Not yet merged with the ultimate Dao, hence bizarre and odd. De bu jiao: obtaining the way of self-entrustment; mo zhi shi fei: what is called taking “equalizing the ten thousand things” as foremost. Xu’ran: the sound of something stirred by a contrary wind; turning against people, no one watches, not following what the people hope for. Yuan duan: without corners or edges; wei means “that is it.” The Dao is nowhere absent, yet to say the clod does not lose the Dao is not knowing. Gai chang you wen: their teaching does not reach (the Dao).

Lü Huiqing’s commentary: Without faction and without selfishness, the center is empty and without a master; hence one is one with things—without looking back, without scheming, going forward together with things. In the ancient way and its arts, what is still and unmoving is what the three masters delighted in; feeling and then penetrating the reasons of all under heaven is what the three did not know. Heaven is great, earth is great, the Dao is great—yet where there is what it cannot do, one knows the ten thousand things have what is possible and what is not. Cling to one side and you are incomplete; teach and you do not arrive. Only equalize by the Dao and nothing is left out. Therefore Shen Dao discarded knowledge and removed the self, yet was bound by “having no choice.” Leng clears what is turbid; tai removes what disturbs—the ancients entered the Dao thereby; they did not take this as the Dao. The two masters took the Dao as stopping here—they did not know that knowledge and self had never been things from the start. The ten thousand things all arise together—thereby they return; luxuriant growth—thereby they return to the root—enough to stir the heart, but not enough to ruffle my heart. Shen Dao took this as the principle of the Dao: knowing only “not knowing”—and after slighting it, nearly harming it—only ignorance is what makes wholeness. They merely knew that knowing’s “not knowing,” and did not know that not-knowing’s “knowing.” Xi’guo is unsettled, reckless and without conduct—not the worthies and sages of all under heaven—hence discard knowledge and remove the self. The three sentences about mallet-block, soft-shelled break, and what follows belong to yielding to things in lengtai: chain and forge with mallet-block, break and sever with soft-shelled cut, when things turn you go with them—forgetting forethought and afterthought, merely weiran; pushed and dragged before moving, like a feather in wind or a millstone’s groove—the movement is not “me,” only like a thing without knowledge; hence no establishment, no self, using knowledge’s trouble; movement and stillness never leave principle—thus no praise, no fault. Shen Dao took this as the principle of the Dao. As for “only the clod does not lose the Dao”—knowing the doctrine of abandoning sages and discarding knowledge—yet those who abandon are precisely what makes sage and knowledge—how is that different from a dead person? That is why heroes laugh, and why one becomes a marvel under heaven.

Tian Pian studied under Peng Meng and de bu jiao—because to teach is not to arrive: the ancients stopped at “no this and that” alone; that wind is xu’ran—how can it be spoken? It also guards against the view that there was never no right and wrong, and that the knower does not speak. When action turns against people yet one wants “not gathering people to watch,” one cannot escape soft-shelled cut alone. The Dao never began as a thing—hence taking emptiness that does not destroy the ten thousand things as real—why constantly turn against people and take mallet-block and soft-shelled cut as the way? What they call Dao is not Dao; what they affirm still cannot escape wrongness, because they stick in the realm of not-knowing alone. Though the three are not knowers of the Dao, they broadly had heard something; as for Mozi, Gengling, Song Xing, and Yin Wen—not only did they not know the Dao, they had never heard anything either.

The Dao originally arises from the truth of nature and life; in its authenticity it is for ordering the person. Now Mozi and Gengling regulate conduct and stand apart from all under heaven—until people no longer love them—then losing root and falsifying the real is extreme. Hence when discussing the way and its arts as a split under heaven, they are treated first; next Song and Yin are treated as knowing the Dao, Tian and Shen as knowing and close to it—from coarse toward refined.

“Following the root” means returning to what is fundamental—plain and direct. “Decisive yet without a fixed master plan” means acting resolutely when things arise, without settling on a rigid scheme in advance. “Moving with things without doubling” means responding to each situation as it comes, without starting a second thought on the same matter—if, while doing one thing, the mind sprouts another calculation, that is having a fixed mind and making choices; then one cannot be thorough. “To take this as doctrine for teaching others still leaves what cannot be reached; only returning to the Dao is without loss.” Using this attitude as a fixed teaching for others still leaves gaps; only turning toward the Dao leaves nothing out.

“Cool” and “wash” suggest clarity and cleansing. “Cool and wash in the midst of things” means meeting affairs with ease, not being dragged by outer things. “Knowing yet as if not knowing” is knowing while holding it as if one did not know. “Slight and neighbor to”—here “slight” means knowing only a little, shallowly; if one knows only in that way, the mind still suffers from narrow partiality.

Peng Meng, Tian Pian, Shen Dao, Hui Shi, and Deng Xi were figures at the Jixia academy in the time of King Xuan of Qi; their learning stemmed from Huang-Lao thought (see the Yinwenzi and Xunzi). “Xi” means enduring shame; “kua” suggests going one’s own way alone. “Without office to take” means having no task to assume, nothing to be responsible for; “unrestrained and without proper conduct” means letting oneself go, careless about deportment. “Mallet,” “beat,” “gouge,” and “break” refer to striking with a mallet, gouging and breaking—always not contending with outer things. “Block-like, knowing nothing” is like a lump without awareness or feeling, and then one will not lose the Way—yet heroes of the age laughed at Shen Dao for this: this is not the path of the living, it is the logic of the dead; merely strange, that is all. Tian Pian was much the same. Peng Meng was Tian Pian’s teacher; Tian Pian received from Peng Meng the “teaching without words.” Peng Meng’s own teacher had said: in the Way of antiquity, the point was simply that people arrive at neither affirming nor denying. That style was still and quiet—one could not peer in or put it into speech—so Peng Meng too was almost speechless; people only saw Tian Pian often leaving Peng Meng’s house and returning again. After a long while they no longer gathered to watch, yet still two or three at a time would come like a broken line of fish—his words did not shake the world, but in the end some still recognized him.

“Taking the root as refined, taking things as coarse; taking accumulation as insufficiency; dwelling alone in clarity with the spirit.” On this path within ancient Daoist arts, Guan Yin and Laozi heard it and delighted in it: they established teaching with the constant, non-being, and being, taking the Great One as lord; outwardly they appeared soft, weak, and humble, yet in essence they were empty and did not destroy the myriad things. Guan Yin said: “Do not dwell in the self; forms and things show themselves of themselves. In movement like water, in stillness like a mirror, in response like an echo; fleeting as if vanished, silent as if pure.” With those who harmonize, harmonize; with those who gain, share in loss; not always rushing ahead of others, yet often following behind.

Laozi said: “Know the male, keep to the female, be the stream of the world; know the white, keep to the disgrace, be the valley of the world.” All take the lead; I alone take the rear—this is called receiving the world’s filth. All take what is solid; I alone take what is empty—this is called hidden, and therefore having surplus—standing firm with surplus. In conducting the body, slow and without waste; in wuwei, others laugh at cleverness—everyone seeks blessing; I alone bend to be whole, saying thereby one may escape blame. Taking depth as root, restraint as rule—saying: what is hard is destroyed, what is sharp is blunted. Always broad and tolerant toward things, not cutting others down—this may be called reaching the utmost.

Guan Yin and Laozi—truly the great authentic persons of antiquity.

Guo Xiang’s commentary: To hoard is to show insufficiency; to entrust things to all under heaven is to have surplus—what, then, can “nothing” possess? To be ever generous toward the ten thousand things and never contend with others is to reach the utmost—Guan Yin and Laozi were truly those broad and great true persons of antiquity.

“Having accumulation is insufficiency”: only when one deposits things with all under heaven does one seem to have surplus; as for nothing, what could it possess? Taking “the constant,” “nothing,” and “being” as the basis of discourse shows that each thing establishes itself. From heaven and earth down to the multitude of things, each obtains its place without embellishing one another—is this not taking the Grand Unity (Taiyi) as lord?

“Not dwelling within oneself”: not clinging in the heart; when the outer world arrives one responds, and having responded one does not stockpile, so merit follows things and passes on. “Things take form of themselves”: not obstinately holding to one’s own view but entrusting oneself to the ten thousand things, so the countenance of each thing shines forth on its own. “The response is like an echo”: always abiding in a mind without attachment. “Those who obtain lose”: one who constantly preserves wholeness does not feel that one has “gained” anything.

Each thing keeps to its own allotment and is simply still—without rivalry or display. Are not “masculine” and “white” about exalting superiority over others and showing off? To prize victory and self-display is to chase cleverness, overstep bounds, and harm life. Therefore the ancients did not follow boundless cleverness; they kept within their allotted share, and only then was their nature complete. When nature was complete, they were simply still, without rivalry or display.

Only when one’s nature was complete could one reach all under heaven; reaching all under heaven, one was like a valley stream to which all turned. Not contending with the ten thousand things, all under heaven gladly upheld such a one without weariness—this is “putting oneself last.”

“Feminine,” “humiliation,” “last,” and “below” are what the nature of things calls “defilement” (the low, the stained side). Those who grasp the solid know only “being” as profit and do not know “nothing” as use; those who grasp the empty preserve harmonious emptiness and await the multitude of solids.

“No hoarding, yet surplus”: entrusting each thing to keep its own share, so one need not fear scarcity. “Standing firm and alone”: the meaning of self-sufficiency. “Slow yet without waste”: acting along with what benefits the people, completing work with the four seasons, always together with the Way—hence no haste and no waste. The clever act and harm the “spirit-vessel’s” self-transformation; therefore the non-acting follow spontaneous birth and allow spontaneous completion, and each thing obtains its own way—spiders can still spin webs, so every person has some capacity; why must one exalt Gong Chui’s craft above all?

Entrusting oneself to utmost principle brings constant wholeness, so without seeking, blessing is sufficient. Following outer things outward, things likewise cannot blame. The root of principle lies at the extreme of primordial beginning—it cannot be called shallow. Taking restraint as the standard is departing from excess. Utmost compliance makes even metal and stone not hard; going against the grain makes even water and vapor not soft. Compliance is wholeness; opposition is ruin—this is correct principle. Aggressive advance and restless sharpness—if each kept to their allotment they would have room to spare and would not trim others, preserving their nature.

Lu Huqing’s commentary: Taking the Dao as essence makes things coarse; taking things as coarse makes “no-thing” essence. The Dao originally had no things, hence “having accumulation is insufficiency.” Reaching the utmost emptiness must go until there is no accumulation and then stop—serene and alone with the spirit-bright. The ancient Way and its arts had nothing absent, root and branch, essence and coarse—but this saying “taking the root as essence” speaks only from the perspective of the times. The Dao is originally without things yet sometimes has them, like “not yet planted.”

“Establish it with the constant, nothing, and being”: then nothing can uproot it. One plus speech becomes two; where there is a so-called “one,” it is not the Grand Unity; in the Grand Unity even “one” cannot be obtained, so the ten thousand things return to it without knowing there is a lord. The Dao is formless and does not contend, hence it takes moist weakness and humble lowliness as its outward sign; looking at that sign, one can know what it embodies within. Each thing returns to its root; the substance is empty in itself—taking emptiness that does not destroy the ten thousand things as the real.

(This passage) differs from those who take “chopping with a mallet and gouge” as the Dao. Guan Yin’s eleven phrases all explain the efficacy of “not dwelling in oneself, things taking form of themselves.” Laozi said: know the masculine, keep the feminine; know the white, keep the humiliated—the feminine is still and does not lead the song; humiliation withdraws and returns to the root. Like a valley stream that gives without storing, a valley that echoes without hoarding—and the source from which river and sea flow is the meaning of “establish with the constant, nothing, and being; take the Grand Unity as lord.” Standing last and receiving defilement, taking moist weakness and humble lowliness as the outward sign; standing empty with nothing stored, therefore not destroying the ten thousand things while things serve that use—hence surplus, not going before others yet others follow, hence slow without waste—unlike those who toil the body and torment themselves and call it the Dao.

Because things are empty in themselves and one does not destroy them, this differs from “being like a thing that knows nothing.” Being bent one can be whole and avoid blame—what is called “blessing takes depth as root”—hence no business with hardness; “taking restraint as standard,” hence no business with sharpness. Utmost emptiness and utmost greatness, hence always accommodating things and not trimming people. In sum, taking the root as essence, serene and alone with the spirit-bright—what is embodied is the Dao—one can truly be called utmost; hence the sigh: the broad and great true persons of antiquity!

Tracing the root: Here “disgrace” (ru) can be understood as “black” (in contrast to “white”); valleys are empty and therefore hold what is sharp; through utmost emptiness and utmost vastness they can always contain the ten thousand things without cutting into others. Taking the “root” as the essential point—dwelling calmly alone with the spirit and numen—what one realizes is the Dao (the Way): truly one may be said to have reached the utmost, hence the praise: “The ancient immeasurably vast True Person!”

Tracing the root (continued): Valleys are empty and have room to receive, so they are used to liken the so-called “mysterious female” (xuanpin)—in Daoism, the Dao is like a mother, like a valley: empty yet able to generate and to contain. To laugh at “cleverness” is to laugh at human scheming; not cutting into others means not harming or encroaching on others.

Main sense of the passage: Vague and dim, solitary and still, with no fixed trace, following transformation as it shifts; in life and death one stands with Heaven and Earth, and goes with the spirit and numen. Dazed—where is one bound? Suddenly—where again? The ten thousand things are all present, yet not one thing suffices as a final home. In ancient times the Daoist teaching was transmitted here; Zhuang Zhou heard its tone and was delighted. With miao you discourse (seemingly untrue yet deeply meaningful), huang tang speech (boundless, not confined to ordinary rules), and words without limit or edge, he often let himself expand freely without leaning to one side, and did not impose a single fixed view on others. Because the world was sunk in turbidity, one could not speak “Zhuang” upright doctrine to it; therefore he used zhi yan (cup-words, to be turned over and tasted again), spread zhong yan (words repeated for emphasis) as what is genuine, and widely deployed yu yan (words through stories) to carry meaning. Alone he communed with the spirit of Heaven and Earth, yet did not look down on the ten thousand things; he did not hold others to right and wrong, and moved among the world. Though his book is strange and splendid, turning and linking without harm; though his phrasing is uneven and scattered, it is oddly and wonderfully worth seeing. Its inner fullness cannot be exhausted: above, he roams with the maker of things; below, he befriends those who escape life and death and have neither end nor beginning. In root, he is broad and penetrating; in aim, one may call it harmonizing and fitting, ascending to the Dao. Even so, in responding to transformation and resolving things, principle does not run dry, what comes does not peel away; dim and obscure, something still remains unsaid—(it is also said) befriending those without end or beginning; in root, broad and opening; deep and vast and free; in orientation, one may call it thickly harmonizing and ascending; though responding to transformation and resolving things, principle is inexhaustible and what comes does not slough off, vast and dim—what is not yet fully expressed.

Bracketed notes: Miao you: seeming forgetful of real attachment yet in fact having a place to lodge meaning. Huang tang: without cliff-edge, not bound by form. Zhuang: has the sense of upright, proper standard. Gui wei: strange and splendid. Lian pan: the appearance of turning and linking in succession. Yu wu xiang cong: keeping company with things without going against them; walking with things without opposing or violating them.

Guo Xiang’s commentary: Because it has no fixed form, it cannot be seen; because it has no fixed constancy, it cannot be measured. One should accord with the affairs of the world—hence the style is uneven and full, impossible to exhaust, and the scope is very broad. Zhuangzi speaks throughout in an even tone, treating himself and others alike. Read his writing: the reasoning is clear and penetrating, the spirit vast and open. Even Yu the Great bowed to good counsel—what is there to reject?

Lü Huizong’s commentary (the first part aligns with Guo): Formless, hence invisible; changeable, hence immeasurable. Responding to worldly affairs, the text is uneven yet full and says much. Zhuangzi speaks with an even mind toward self and other without difference; his language is bright and expansive—why should one reject words worthy of Yu’s bow?

Lü’s continuation: If you oppose death to life, there has never been pure “life” alone; if you oppose life to death, there has never been pure “death” alone. If you rank yourself with Heaven and Earth, there has never been a fixed past and present; if you converse with spirit and brightness, there has never been a split between “that” and “this.” Thus one is dim and inactive, still and quiet—that is all; the myriad things are complete, and nothing cannot be entrusted to the course of things. Nowhere is there a true “final home”; perhaps only miraculous transformation is at work. With language deep, remote, seemingly absurd, and hard to exhaust, he always releases himself and never settles—for everything has its counterpart; if you do not cling to one side, though there is no solid trace and it seems unorthodox, that does not stop it from being trustworthy speech. What is called “Zhuang speech” is talk that drops fixation; “goblet words” (zhiyan) liken the Way’s inexhaustible functioning in daily life; “repeated words” (zhongyan) and “allegorical words” (yuyan) are for fitting the times. People would not believe him, so he invoked the ancients as weight; when repeated words still could not fully convey meaning, allegorical words appeared.

What Zhuangzi embodied was communing alone with the spirit of Heaven and Earth, yet without arrogance and without cutting himself off from the myriad things—so his discourse is the same. “Not condemning right and wrong” is for getting along with the world; “ao ni” means haughty distance and closeness or estrangement. Though his book is magnificent and “lian pai” (continuous and firm in tone), nothing is harmed; continuous means without gap, pai means a settled form that cannot be forced—not what the world prizes. “Zhuo gui” is strangeness of expression, not what the world despises. Precisely because the great Way within filled him and could not be stilled, above he wandered with the Maker of things, below he befriended those who transcend externals, birth and death, and beginninglessness and endlessness—thus he entered the realm of spirit. The root is vast and takes Heaven as ancestor: one may say it adjusts upward and never leaves the source; hence responsive transformation is endless and principle never runs dry; resolving things in myriad ways, what comes does not “shed”—meaning the form need not wait to slough skin before it is released; dimness without end—this is why the miraculous cannot be known.

Guo Xiang (closing section): Those “mired and turbid” are burdened by form and names; they take Zhuangzi’s words as mad talk and do not believe—so he sometimes chose silence. Goblet words, repeated words, and allegorical words all penetrate utmost principle and are exactly suited to settling the nature and life of the myriad things. Not blaming right and wrong is because one no longer has right and wrong oneself, and thus lets things be. He clusters with things, hence lives with the world; he also merges with things, hence without harm. He does not bear the age’s tasks alone, hence uneven fullness that cannot stop—what he touches is much. Zhuangzi speaks throughout with an even mind, treating self and other alike; see his language—clear and expansive; even Yu’s bow to good words—what to reject? Form clusters with things, hence living with the vulgar; he also merges with things, hence no injury. Not only responding to worldly affairs—hence uneven fullness that cannot cease. He has much to say: Zhuangzi speaks of himself and others with the same even mind; examine his words—they are bright and vast; Yu’s bow to good counsel—what to reject?

Huizi’s learning was vast—enough to fill five cartloads of books—but his approach was mixed and impure, and his talk often missed the point. The gist of his project of “analyzing the myriad things” ran roughly as follows: what is so large that it has no outer boundary is called the “Great One”; what is so small that it has no inner space is called the “Small One.” Something has no thickness yet cannot be piled up, yet its volume extends a thousand li. Heaven and earth are equally low; mountains and marshes are equally level. When the sun is directly overhead, the myriad things are simultaneously born and simultaneously die. Great sameness and small sameness differ—that is “lesser sameness and difference.” The myriad things are wholly the same and wholly different—that is “greater sameness and difference.” The south has no limit yet also has a limit; one goes to Yue today yet arrived yesterday; linked rings can be taken apart. I know that the center of all under heaven lies north of Yan and south of Yue. Universal love embraces the myriad things; heaven and earth are originally one body—Huizi used such claims as a “grand view” for surveying the world, so that skilled debaters were glad to tag along.

(The text repeats entries such as lesser and greater sameness and difference; the sense is the same as above.)

Debates under heaven also delighted in odd theses like these: eggs have hair; chickens have three legs; the capital of Chu, Ying, is identical with all under heaven; dogs can be called sheep; horses lay eggs; the shadow of a T-shaped character has a tail; fire is not hot; mountains have mouths (or debates linking mountains and mouths); a wheel touches the ground yet does not touch it; the eye does not see; the finger cannot reach (yet they speak of endless “reaching”); a coil of rope is longer than a snake; the carpenter’s square is not square and the compass is not round; chisel and mortise do not fit; the shadow of a flying bird never moves; an arrow is both fast and “neither moves nor stops”; a yellow horse and a dark horse are “three whites”; a lone colt never had a mother horse; a stick one chi long—take half each day, and after ten thousand generations it is still not exhausted. Debaters wielded these against Huizi and could argue forever without resolution. Sophists in the line of Huan Tan and Gongsun Long could polish people’s minds and shift their intentions—winning mouths but not hearts. That is exactly the trap of the debater.

Huizi daily relied on cleverness to argue with others and specialized in odd theses against debaters under heaven; that was his foundation. Yet he trusted his eloquence, took himself for the worthiest, and said, “Are not heaven and earth magnificent—and I, Huizi, have my place among them?” He had rhetoric but no method of the Way. In the south there was an unconventional man named Huang Liao who asked why heaven and earth do not fall or collapse, and why wind, rain, thunder, and lightning behave as they do. Huizi did not decline to answer; he replied without reflection, discoursed on the myriad things without pause, felt he had already said too much yet still was not satisfied, and piled on more paradoxes. He took violation of the ordinary as truth and beating others as fame, so he could not get along with the crowd. Weak in virtue, strong in theories about things, he walked a path that grew ever narrower.

From the perspective of the Way of heaven and earth, Huizi’s kind of ability is no more useful than a mosquito laboring at pest control—what use is it for awakening to the great Dao? If it serves only as one school’s opinion, one might barely tolerate it; but the more one claims to exalt the Dao with it, the more one blocks the Dao. Huizi could not settle himself with this; he dissipated himself among things and never knew contentment, and in the end became famous for debate. Pity that Huizi’s talent was expansive yet found no home: he chased the myriad things and never turned back, like an echo chasing a sound or a shadow racing a form—a lamentable end. (The closing lines repeat that his skill over things was useless, that one pities Huizi’s soaring talent that never attained rest—still the same criticism that his brilliance could not return to the Dao or stop at clarifying names.)

Laozi said that when words multiply, they can block the Way; he also said that sparing speech aligns with nature. Thus those who truly speak usually do so only when they have no choice. “Shi,” however, relies on the tongue to boast of talent, unaware that heaven and earth are originally vast and empty yet taking himself too seriously—unable to “hold to the feminine” and gladly stay soft and low, he instead treats heaven and earth as a stage for showing strength, always storing up rigidity and acting from the hard, without the inner cultivation to match.

The sage takes “not using stock formulas” as real speech; that is what counts as having De. “Shi” depends on eloquence, treating “outdoing others” as skill and fame, not understanding that “wordlessness is true speech”—dragged along by language, unable to restrain himself, he is weak in De; taking “pressing others down” as a goal, he is strong in things. That path is narrow and skewed—not the broad, unobstructed Way that reaches everywhere without getting stuck.

Heaven and earth are great because they practice wuwei (non-action). Seen from the Way of heaven and earth, however eloquent “Shi” is, he cannot escape “having a self.” Even with wide learning and sharp debate, in the eyes of heaven and earth it is only the faint buzz of a mosquito or the tiny stir of a small insect—what great use does that have for the ten thousand things?

“One” and “many” are both Dao: one is root, many is branch. Holding only to “one” is not enough to cover root and branch together, but compared with forgetting the root and chasing the branch, it is still somewhat closer to Dao—yet even that is only a provisional guard. “Shi” does not know how to turn back to the root and rest in peace; scattered among the ten thousand things and never satisfied, he finally becomes famous for clever speech, chasing only the branch and never turning back.

Without sound, echo stops; where the body stands in light, the shadow appears; without “me,” nothing under heaven contends with you. “Shi” has talent but misses this layer, wrestling with outer things only at the level of words and fine points—like using shouts to chase an echo that has already died, or using the body to race its own shadow—his true nature is badly lost, so the author deeply regrets and mourns him.

This passage evaluates the argumentative style of dialecticians such as Hui Shi of the School of Names. People often single out the debating arts of Hui Shi and his kind for discussion. They could reverse ordinary lines of thought; they delighted in crossing swords with everyone under heaven and chose outlandish topics—for instance, treating a chicken as having three feet (counting the bird and its two feet separately to make “three”), insisting that a dog is not a hound (splitting hairs over whether “dog” and “hound” are the same name), claiming that a carpenter’s square is not square (saying “square” is only a name and that such a tool can also be called non-square), arguing that a white dog is black (tangling the attribution and reference of “white” and “black”), that the sky is lower than the earth (confusing height and depth by standpoint and perspective), or that a thousand-li horse is longer than a snake (measuring “length” along one dimension so as to equalize all things).

Their overall drift was that originally the ten thousand things have no distinction of high and low or long and short, no difference of form and name or square and round, and no fixed division of blue, yellow, black, or white; they put equalizing all things first, held that after the Great Dao spreads out there come form and name, and that form and name are distinctions people carve out from private motives.

With this kit they went out to debate the world and in the end won renown for “matching wits in disputation.” That, however, is not the path the ancients honored, so the commentator does not call it the Dao-and-technique of antiquity (the true Great Dao and learning of high antiquity). Pity that they were richly gifted yet spent their lives chasing external things and name-disputation, forfeiting the authentic heart-mind of the Great Dao.

The preceding sections discuss the Dao (the Way); this section alone treats “many directions”—what people call the fangshu, the technical and disputational arts. Disputers’ talk often fails to cohere with reason; they merely feel out each thing’s meaning piece by piece. However thin the words, they cannot be piled into thickness. They say “as large as a thousand li”—there is no thickness that cannot be stacked; one guards against layer upon layer until it can accumulate to a thousand li. “Fang ni”—when the sun is west of the meridian one can glance sidelong at it; heaven and earth, mountains and marshes, noon and the slanting sun, the birth and death of things—all can be spoken of together as “the same.” If the large are the same and the small different, that is small sameness-difference; if wholly the same or wholly different, that is great sameness-difference. Someone who lives in the north does not know the geography of the south and thinks there is no situation where one can glance at the slanting sun; heaven and earth, mountains and marshes, noon and slanting sun, the birth and death of things can also be lumped together as “the same”—the large same and the small different is small sameness-difference; wholly same and wholly different is great sameness-difference. Northerners think the south is endless, yet in the end it still has a limit; though one only goes to Yue today, upon arriving one knows Yue—one can also say “yesterday one had already come.” Where is the center of the world? People of Yan and Yue each take where they stand as “center,” so north of Yan and south of Yue can also be called center. If one extends love to all things, heaven and earth and oneself are one body—what follows are several stock themes disputers of that time commonly used.

“Feathers are born inside the egg”—meaning there is already hair in the egg; a chicken naturally has two feet, while “the walker of the feet” is intention, hence “three feet.” Ying was originally a marquisate yet is called king—possessing the title of having the realm; the names “dog” and “goat” are all imposed by people—if one first named the dog “goat,” people would call it goat. Horses are naturally born from the womb; at birth they have hair—how is that different from being born from eggs? Are only birds and beasts born with tails? Look at how characters are formed: the shapes of “ding” and “zi” already show a tail. Xunzi also says “the hook has a beard, the egg has hair”—this doctrine is hard to maintain, yet Deng Xi and Huizi could maintain it. Commentators say “the hook has a beard” means “ding-zi has a tail”: the curved part of the character ding is the hook; beard and tail are originally different… (repeated lines before and after mean much the same—they still point to disputers’ forced arguments). Fire is naturally hot, yet in winter it is not hot; mountains are naturally still, yet in an empty valley echo can go out of the mouth. If a wheel is extremely round it does not crush the ground—The Record of Examination of Crafts, “Wheelwright,” says look at the wheel from the front and you want it barely to touch, taking nothing from it, taking roundness from the circle. Where the eye is blocked it does not see; where the finger falls short it does not reach; even at the utmost there is still what cannot be fully exhausted. The snake is long and the millipede short; the tortoise can know fortune and misfortune, thus it excels the snake. The carpenter’s square is a tool for squares, yet the square itself is not square; the compass is a tool for circles, yet the compass body cannot be made circular. The mortise is not round, yet the tenon enters by itself. Though the shadow of a flying bird moves, the shadow only clings to the form and does not part from the form—so the shadow never moves. Though the arrowhead flies fast, without release it does not go; once released it cannot be stopped—the speed is in the person, not in arrowhead and shaft. Dog and quan are originally one; with “suspended hoof” one calls it quan, without suspended hoof one can only call it gou and cannot call it quan. Horse is also one; there are also so-called “yellow” ones—eye-yellow and ear-yellow refer to people, are they not three? The black horse is likewise. A black dog cannot be turned white, yet a white one can be turned black—then a white dog can be named “black colt”; a lone colt means never having had a mother, which is also allowed. A one-foot mallet is not long; use half today, half again tomorrow—in endless halving, use never exhausts. Disputers of that time used this to answer Huizi in turn, and to the end did not know where to stop.

“Heaven and earth—is that not grand?”—meaning my strength is like heaven and earth; how can people overcome heaven and earth? Their wild fabrication goes this far. Huizi kept a mind set on heroic victory but had no art for overcoming people: at first he spoke of many directions, at the end he spoke of having no art—then even fangshu was gone. Weak in De (Virtue/Power), insufficient in De, strong in things, adorned in disputation. It is a road; ao (a winding bend) means circuitous—meaning the path Huizi took was crooked and not straight; he could not settle himself thereby, scattering himself among the ten thousand things without satiety. Huizi could not rest in one partial standpoint yet wanted to cage the ten thousand things as his capacity. Zhuangzi thoroughly reviles Huizi; from this one can see his weariness with Warring States coalition diplomacy.

At the end the narrative ranks Dao arts: first celestial persons, spirit persons, and perfected persons, then sages and junzi; only after Dao arts split in later ages did the various schools differ, and last come Huizi and fangshu—the level already descends. Zhuangzi places himself after Laozi; he never dared use himself to overshadow the Six Classics. Having read this far, could there still be further sections?

I. Hong Mai’s citation (more detailed version)

Hong Mai said: Zhuangzi records Huizi’s words—take a rod one chi long and each day cut off half of it; keep cutting in this way and even after ten thousand generations it would never be exhausted. Though it is a parable, the principle is already there: what is called “taking only half”—if you really keep taking, that half can be cut into extremely fine dust, yet the remaining half is still there; it does not vanish entirely because you keep halving. Hong Mai also uses this to argue: when reading and interpreting the classics, one should not use one school’s doctrine to suppress or hide the true meaning of the Six Classics. When he read Zhuangzi up to this point, he felt that forcing further chapters afterward was unnecessary.

II. Hong Mai’s citation (another formulation)

The same Huizi parable: a rod one chi long, each day take half, never exhausted in ten thousand generations; though a parable, the principle is inside—each time the half taken away can be ground to fine dust, the half that remains always exists; in theory one can always “take half again,” on to infinity.

III. Commentary in Bicheng (literary notebook)

From the passage in Zhuangzi on Huishi’s “many methods” (many arts, much disputation) downward, the wording is very much like Gongsun Long’s words deceiving the King of Wei as recorded in Liezi; commentators through the ages have mostly guessed.

Fan Wuyin and his disciples once discussed this and said: those vast, strange, uncanny arguments can be left as “the Way connects as one” without deep exegesis—because this was never what Zhuang Zhou himself meant as the orthodox message of the Southern Florescence, but material Zhuangzi used to refute perverse, off-target talk; since it is not the root of Zhuangzi’s own teaching, why labor line by line?

That said, what Zhuang Zhou narrates is not only Mo Di and Qin Guli (Warring States disputers) who were “close to the Way”; some of Huishi’s words also resemble the “Way.” Liu Chenweng (Song) once said: loving Zhuangzi too much actually skews understanding; those who do not understand think Zhuangzi “is ill.” Preserving oneself by belittling others—that is not Zhuangzi’s way.

Lu Deming held that Guo Xiang’s commentary on the grand meaning of the Zhuangzi truly grasped Master Zhuang’s original intent. Guo Xiang himself, in his lifetime, lamented the shallow “pure conversation” (xuanxue) in wealthy households; I too have often seen empty talk among itinerant officials and the nobility—“different times, the same fashion”—and need not say more.

Someone also asked: Master Zhuang and Master Hui formed the tacit understanding of “knowing the fish’s happiness” at Haoliang, and also invoked the exemplar of the craftsman of Ying—yet some say their Way was mixed and their words missed the mark; how is this? Could a tacit understanding like that between craftsman and employer—sharing bed and pillow, sharing axe and adze—yet criticizing each other to such a degree?

Answer: To push teaching to the utmost and make words penetrate the spirit, how can one fail to polish the writing and exhaust the metaphors? In the seven Inner Chapters, Master Zhuang raised the subtle tone and established this document for posterity; repeated exposition, all following Master Zhuang’s path, with practitioners again unfolding narrative in words. Though speaking of the Way does not prize clever disputation, and teaching does not consist in empty song—the text is easy to read while the purport is hard to fathom. One fears that those whose understanding has not yet opened may incur the fault of “overstepping principle.” To remove the defects of this document, he greatly deployed Master Hui’s grand disputation to contrast and elucidate.

Liu Kai’s General Remarks

The substance of the Dao is vast, embracing all things without omission. Form and number begin from “one,” and odd and even generate each other; from there downward, even the most refined calendrical reckoning cannot exhaust the count. The ancients followed the order of the Great Dao and the principles of the numinous, and thus arose the way of “inner sagehood and outer kingship.” What falls under reckoning, degrees, and names and things is miscellaneous and hard to cover entirely; yet whether in root or branch, before or after, from “one” dispersing into “ten thousand,” nothing fails to connect.

Therefore sages whether they emerge or withdraw, act or rest, are brief or prolonged, use these to correct the world’s bias and partiality, exhaust every change without uniformity. Fuxi was not without standards, yet fulfillment came with Yao; Yao and Shun were not without teaching and transformation, yet completion came with Zhou. They did not rush ahead of the age to chase novelty, nor lag behind it to play at antiquity—sages in high position also had times when they could not prepare everything. Yi Yin took responsibility as his charge; Boyi corrected with purity, yet “purity” often verges on narrowness; Liuxia Hui harmonized and aided, neither going against the age to keep integrity nor pandering to custom to seek fame—sages in low position also had times when they could not do everything completely.

When the Dao reached Confucius, it was “gathered into one great synthesis,” roughly once in a thousand years. Before Confucius, sages adapted to the times and also had what they could not avoid; after Confucius, the various masters each established a school, each taking themselves as right. Zhuangzi’s age was already far from the sages; Dao, virtue, benevolence, and righteousness split between Yang [Zhu] and Mo [Di], and Wuwei (non-action) and pure quietness fell to figures like Tian Pian and Peng Meng; then Song Xing, Yin Wen, and their kind rose on the wind. Zhuangzi wished to restore the way of Zhongni (Confucius), but it was not the age of Zhongni; so he spoke loftily of the utmost Dao to correct the world’s baseness, Wuwei and return to simplicity to cut off the world’s ornament, pure emptiness and solitude to rescue the world’s turbidity. He thought condensed speech could not undo harm, so he spread wide without a fixed home; Zhuang-style speech could not instruct the vulgar, so he was extravagant without boundary. In speech he favored honoring Laozi while lowering Zhongni; when discussing the learning of the hundred schools, Zhongni was not among them. This is because he held that when the Dao was not the time of gathering into one great synthesis, even a vast and true person still remained in one partial corner; Laozi’s book grasped the root, so it adjusted and rose upward; Huizi’s book grasped the branch, and could not avoid one partial corner. Alas, how could the books of the various masters fail to honor Zhongni? To know why they honor him, none surpasses Zhuangzi. Students should seek understanding beyond the words.

Zhuangzi Yi, Volume 8 · Zhuangzi Quewu (Plain-Language Note)

At the end of this fascicle is appended one fascicle of Zhuangzi Quewu (Omissions and Errors in Zhuangzi), as recorded in Chen Bixu’s Nanhua Zhangju (Sectional Commentary on the Nanhua [Classic]). It is devoted to recording word-level differences among Zhuangzi editions ancient and modern, placed at the very end of the whole book—much as Confucius, when ordering the classics, paid attention to missing passages and mistaken characters.

Xiaoyaoyou (Thirteen variant readings recorded)

• “Yi ru shi er yi yi” (“That is all there is to it”): In the old Wen Ruhai edition, the character read ze (“then/thus”) instead of the received shi (“this/is”).
• “Qiang yu fang er zhi” (“It alights on an elm or sandalwood and stops”): Missing from the main text and from the old Jiangnan canon edition.
• “Fu you ke ran” (“The belly still bulges round”): The old main text reads guo (“fruit”) instead of ke (“grain/lump”).
• “Bi zhi er chong you he zhi ye” (“What do those two little creatures know?”): Missing from the old main text.
• “Ba qian sui wei qiu, ci da nian ye” (“Eight thousand years count as autumn—that is a great span of years”): Missing from the old Cheng Yuanying commentary edition.
• “Qi wei xing hai you long gu zai” (“Is it only the body that can be deaf and blind?”): In the old Tiantai Fangying Guan ancient canon, mang (“blind”) appears instead of the received form.
• “Qing mai qi fang yi bai jin” (“Please buy that recipe for a hundred gold”): Missing from the old Jiangnan ancient canon.
• “An suo kun ku zai” (“Where would distress come from?”): In one edition the main text reads “An suo kun jiong zai” (“Where would hardship and distress come from?”).

Qiwulun (Twelve variant readings recorded)

• “Lao xie”: In the Jiangnan ancient canon, yi (“overflow”) instead of xie (“stagnant pool”).
• “Sui wo yi cheng ye” (“Though I too have become [something]”): In the Jiangnan ancient canon, “Sui wo wu cheng, yi ke wei cheng yi” (“Though I have not become [something], it can still be said that I have become”)—extra wording.
• “Ren chang er bu zhou” (“Benevolence is constant but not comprehensive”): In the old Jiangnan ancient canon, cheng (“complete/success”) instead of chang (“constant”).
• “Piao feng zhen hai” (“The gale shakes the sea”): Missing from the old Jiangnan Li family edition.
• “Sheng ren yu mao” (“The sage is foolishly muddled”): In the old Liu Deyi edition, chan instead of mao.
• The long passage “Ze shi zhi yi hu bu shi ye, qi wu bian yi; ran ruo guo ran ye, ze ran zhi yi hu bu ran ye, yi wu bian yi” (“Then ‘this’ differs from ‘not this,’ and there is no distinction; yet if ‘so’ is really so, then ‘so’ differs from ‘not so,’ and again there is no distinction”): The whole block appears in the Jiangnan ancient canon; presence or absence differs from other editions.

Yangshengzhu (Seven variant readings recorded)

• “Niu bu zhi qi si ye, ru tu wei di” (“The ox does not know it is dead, as if earth were cast on the ground”): Missing from the old Wen Ruhai and Liu Deyi editions.
• “Shi ye wu yi wei zhi ren ye” (“At first I thought he was a perfect man”): The old main text reads qi (“his/its”) instead of the received form.

Renjian shi (Twenty variant readings recorded)

(No individual entries are listed under this heading—only the total of twenty for the chapter. The point is that Renjian shi has twenty recorded line-level differences among editions in this fascicle’s Quewu register.)

Note: This is not Zhuangzi’s main text but a catalog of textual collation—it tells the reader which line is missing in which old book, or which character appears as another in a different copy, so readers can compare as they read.

Collation Notes for Zhuangzi Yi (Plain-Language Summary)

The following comes from Zhuangzi Yi’s side-by-side comparison of different recensions of the Zhuangzi. It records how the Li family edition, Zhang Junfang’s edition, the Jiangnan ancient library copy, and other older bases differ in wording from earlier texts.

Renjian shi (The Human World)

For passages such as “si qi suo xing ze shu ji” (“reflect on how one acts, and one may come close [to the Way]”): the Li family edition has this line; another recension reads “ye ru tu wei di” (like a clod of earth falling to the ground—letting go naturally). The Wen Ruhai edition and Liu De’s old library copy are missing material here. In “shi ye, wu yi wei zhi ren ye” (“At first I took him for a perfected person”), an older base once wrote “qi” where the standard text has “ye”.

This chapter’s collation covers twenty character-level variants.

“Si qi suo xing ze shu ji”: missing in the Li family old library copy. “Yue: xi, ruo wang er dai xing er” (“He said: Alas, if you go, you will likely be punished”): Zhang Junfang’s old base reads “ruo dai wang er xing er” (different order of wang and dai). “Bao ren zhi qian zhe” (one who stands before a violent ruler): the Jiangnan ancient library old text has variant graphs such as “shu” in place of expected wording. “You xin er wei zhi, qi yi xie” (“If you do it with deliberate intent, is it not easy?”): Zhang’s base is missing this line. “gua bu dao yi huan cheng”: the Jiangnan ancient library copy reads “gua you bu dao yi cheng huan” (slightly different word order). “qi da bi shu qian niu” (“its shade shelters thousands of oxen”): Wen Cheng, Li, and Zhang agree; the old base lacks it. “jiang yin bi qi suo lai” (“about to hide and shelter what it relies on”): Zhang reads “yin jiang” (jiang and yin reversed). “que qu que qu” (twice “walking a crooked path”): Zhang has “wu xing que qu” (“I walk a crooked path”).

De chong fu (Sign of Complete Virtue)

This chapter’s collation covers fourteen character-level variants.

“Shou qi zong zhe ye” (“one who guards his root”): missing in the Jiangnan ancient library old holdings. The block “shou ming yu di, wei song bai du ye; zheng zai dong xia, qing qing. Shou ming yu tian, wei yao shun du ye; zheng zai wan wu zhi shou” (receiving mandate from earth, only pine and cypress alone; upright through winter and summer, ever green. Receiving mandate from heaven, only Yao and Shun alone; foremost among the ten thousand things): Zhang Junfang’s old base lacks the whole passage. “Ji zi zhi de, zu yi zi fan xie” (“I reckon your virtue enough to reflect on yourself, no?”): Wen Cheng, Li, and Zhang agree; the old base reads “bu zu yi zi fan xie” (with an extra bu, “not”—opposite sense). “Bu zhi xiansheng zhi xi wo yi shan xie? Wu zhi zi wu xie” (“Did I not know the master washed me with goodness? Or did I wake myself?”): missing in Zhang’s old library copy. “Kong Qiu zhi yu zhi ren, wei xie” (“Was Confucius not yet a perfected person?”): Zhang has “qi wei xie”.

Da zong shi (The Great Ancestral Teacher)

This chapter’s collation covers seven character-level variants (two entries are duplicated in the source list).

“Bing bing hu qi si xi hu, Cui cui hu qi bu de yi hu, Li hu qi si shi” (“Bright and pleased as if rejoicing, towering as if unwilling, stern as if a ruler”): Wen Cheng and Zhang read “…si xi ye, …bu de yi ye, …si shi ye” (sentence-final ye instead of hu). “Shan shao” (“good at youth” or similar): Zhang has “Tian shao” (Tian for Shan). “Gu sheng sha zhe bu si” (“Therefore what kills life does not die”): missing in the Jiangnan ancient library old holdings. “Wang shi shi yan” (“went to wait on and serve”): Zhang reads “wang dai shi yan” (dai for shi, “wait” vs. “attend/serve”).

Ying di wang (Fit for Emperors and Kings)

This chapter’s collation covers five character-level variants.

Note: The original is mostly a record of textual variants, not a continuous narrative. In plain terms: across Renjian shi, De chong fu, Da zong shi, and Ying di wang, some editions omit lines, others differ in word order or by a single graph (e.g. zu yi vs. bu zu yi, shi vs. dai), which can materially affect how one reads Zhuangzi’s meaning. Zhuangzi Yi therefore marks each item with which base text and which older reading it follows.

This passage is mainly a collation note from Zhuang Yi, mixed with chapter titles and notes on variant readings. Below, the readable portions are rendered in plain English; bracketed collation details are only briefly indicated.

(Fragments related to Laozi or associated chapters)

Who among the common people would dare not obey or fail to be transformed? (In Zhang’s edition, the old text reads du ren [“transforming people”] instead.)

Between you and me, there is no need for much literary ornament. (In the Jiangnan ancient collection, the old text reads ji [“already”] here.)

Neither shaken nor stilled. (In the Jiangnan ancient collection, the old text reads zheng [“correct/upright”] here.)

Do they grandly seal themselves off in confusion? (At this point Zhang’s edition lacks text in the old version.)

“Pian Mu” (Joined Toes) chapter (two characters counted in the collation)

Yet they multiply cleverness and cunning in their use of wit and clarity. (Zhang’s text reads er duo yu sai ming zhi yong ye [“and more than cheek/sai, bright use”].)

There are branchings that do not become side shoots. (In the Jiangnan ancient collection, the old text has a variant character here.)

“Ma Ti” (Horse’s Hoofs) chapter (one character counted)

Put a halter on the horse and tie it fast. (In the Jiangnan ancient collection, the old text reads luo [“net/trap”] here.)

“Qu Qie” (Opening Trunks) chapter (eleven characters counted)

Have they ever failed to take “sages” and “the wise” as their model? If good people cannot obtain the Way of sages and the wise, the norms of good people cannot stand; if Robber Zhi cannot obtain it, Robber Zhi’s conduct cannot be carried out either—this is the “benefit” that sages and the wise bring to the world. (Zhang’s old text at this spot has variant readings.)

“Qu Qie” chapter (continued, as in Zhang’s edition)

When sages and the wise are few, great robbers rise; overthrow and discard sages and the wise—if sages and the wise do not die, even if sages and the wise are honored again and again, it is still the “fault” of sages and the wise. Sages and the wise are the most powerful tools in the world. (Zhang’s old text reads ren [“person”] here.)

“Ke Yi” (Constrained Will) chapter (one character counted)

Therefore it is said: the sage rests. When he rests, things are level and easy. (Zhang’s old text reads sheng ren xiu xiu yan ze ping yi yi [“the sage rests, rests, then level and easy”].)

“Shan Xing” (Repairing Nature) chapter (nine characters counted)

(Here the collation covers nine characters of variant text; the exact wording depends on the base edition used.)

Note: The original is mostly cross-version comparison (Zhang’s edition, Jiangnan ancient collection, etc.), not continuous scripture. Above, corresponding Zhuangzi meanings and fragments are put into plain English; where notes say “old reading” or “old lacuna,” those are differences among ancient manuscripts—when they do not change the sense, they are not spelled out line by line.

Plain-Language Reading of Passages Related to Zhuangzi Yi

Cultivation and Learning

People cultivate their inborn nature amid worldly life and use study to recover their original authenticity. They move through the tangle of desires and rely on reflection to gain a measure of clarity.

How the Ancients Cultivated the Way

Those who cultivated the Way in antiquity used tranquility (tian—quietness and detachment) to nourish wisdom (zhi—clear discernment). Once wisdom arose, they did not lean on cleverness to fabricate and act; this is called using wisdom in turn to sustain that tranquility.

Righteousness, Rites, and Music

When the meaning of righteousness is understood, the ten thousand things are kin to it—this is loyalty (zhong—giving one’s full heart). When rites and music spread through the world, the four seasons each answer their proper season. Given that, what more needs to be done?

Official Regalia (xuanmian)

Robes and caps of office are not what life and nature originally possess—humans are not born to be bound by rank and title.

Chapter Titles and Textual Variants (collation notes, not main interpretive content)

• Shuo Jian (Sayings on Swords) (one character counted): Some editions read “How would Kui dare speak”; the old Zhang edition has “still.”
• Yu Fu (The Fisherman) (three characters counted): “Bright white” (jiaobai) appears as “interchange” (jiao) in an old text; “attend at the leeward side” (shi yu xiafeng) as “wait” (dai); “thereby ruin the person of virtue” (yi bai deren)—old main text has “evil” (e) (pronounced wu-lu fan).
• Rang Wang (Yielding the Throne) (fifty-five characters counted): Here this is only a word-count note for the chapter; there is no separate main passage.

Material in parentheses marks character differences among various canonical editions and the Zhang recension; when reading Zhuangzi Yi, compare accordingly. The plain-language reading above mainly follows philosophical lines not marked “see such-and-such edition.”

Plain-language reading of passages related to Zhuangzi Yi

(On pine and cypress, hardship, and finding one’s purpose)

The only thing to guard against is hearing wrongly and being led astray by empty songs—and do not let envy or greed for profit weigh you down. The spirit has no fixed “evil intent” in itself; from this I understand why people say pine and cypress stay lush in the depths of winter.

Duke Huan of Qi was in Ju; Duke Wen of Jin was in Cao (where the people of Cao had once looked at the duke’s fused ribs); King Goujian of Yue was at Kuaiji (after Yue’s defeat by Wu, Goujian withdrew with the remnant of his army to Mount Kuaiji)—each was at the edge of ruin. When the states of Chen and Cai were in a narrow pass like “Qiu,” was that not also a kind of “good fortune”? (Commentaries differ here in length, punctuation, and detail.)

So Xu You was content dwelling at Ying; Gongbo realized his aim at Qiushou. But when the virtue of the Yin dynasty waned (some old texts read “Zhou” instead), the times were another matter entirely.

The “Robber Zhi” chapter (many lacunae and variant readings)

The chapter title is “Robber Zhi.” The main text and notes touch on: breaking into houses and prying doors; driving followers on the sunny slope of Mount Tai; discussion of what the world calls the “three virtues”; the “seven sages” (or “six”) that the age honors—no different in essence from a dog torn apart or a pig adrift; those who carry a gourd and beg often die lightly for fame and gain; if one acts like Jie or Zhou, the face shows anger and the heart refuses to submit; disputes with “Wuyue” (some texts read “Ri”); also images of lingering illness at night, long obstruction, or climbing a slope with a heavy load; grasping wealth and bringing shame on oneself. Zhang’s edition, Jiangnan old treasury copies, Liu De’s edition, and others omit characters or read differently; the textual notes are omitted here.

The “Letting Be, Exercising Governance” chapter

Only the two characters of the title “Letting Be, Exercising Governance” appear; the main text does not continue in this passage.

Mount Kongtong (fragment)

Material concerning the Mount Kongtong region describes someone borrowing another state’s power and gambling on a moment’s luck (variant readings in the Zhang edition render certain graphs differently). The gist is this: instead of rooting oneself in cultivating De and keeping within one’s proper place, one tries to succeed through external connections and dangerous ground—a move often treated in Zhuangzi-related texts as the opportunism of “riding on another’s realm.”

Passages related to “Heaven and Earth” (Tiandi)

What can communicate with Heaven is the Dao; what can follow the earth is De; what can act appropriately among the myriad things is Yi (propriety/right conduct)—in one ancient version “Yi” appears as “Dao,” but the idea is close: all are ways of aligning with heaven’s pattern and the nature of things.

Sinking a pearl into the deep abyss (some Zhang editions read “store/hide” instead) means hiding one’s brilliance and not displaying it lightly. “Retreating the self” (some texts read “already”) means reining in the ego and not contending with things.

Here there is the shaduf—the counterbalanced lever used to draw water from a well: it saves effort in use, yet it depends on external cleverness in devices. The sage takes this as shame—not shame at using tools, but shame at making the center of life calculative craft, straying too far from the natural Dao.

Nor do they mutually convict and sit facing each other in attack (this line is sometimes missing in the Zhang edition)—meaning less penal naming and mutual entrapment, less weaving each other in with moral-legal arguments.

Passages related to “Heaven’s Way” (Tiandao)

(Heaven’s Way) is originally just thus by nature—that is the utmost of Dao and De (this phrase is sometimes missing in the Zhang edition).

“Where there is solid reality, roles and order stand firm” (one edition reads “where there is solid reality, all is complete”): with genuine virtue, names and hierarchical order hold. “Penal names compared in detail”—names and laws checked one against another—is the fine grain of statecraft, not the substance of Heaven’s Way.

Heaven and earth are already utterly numinous (sometimes omitted in the Zhang edition); toward what else would one “fetch” a separate Dao? (the line “how could one go fetch the Dao?” is sometimes missing)—meaning the Dao is not to be sought outside; it lies in following heaven and earth as they naturally are.

(Speaking of those who outwardly chase names and laws) they do not truly understand “the way to govern all under heaven” (sometimes omitted in the Jiangnan ancient hidden edition).

(Heaven’s Way) is deep upon deep, beyond measure (the Jiangnan edition sometimes lacks “profound, beyond all fathoming”).

Passages related to “Heaven’s Revolutions” (Tianyun)

Who, on high, spreads and tightens this whole cycle of heaven’s turning? (“Who loftily spreads this?”—one reading has “relax” instead of “spread”). Whoever is on top wavers without settling (the Zhang edition sometimes has “exists/has” instead).

Name is the common vessel of all under heaven—it cannot be privately monopolized; why must one stand out conspicuously, vaunting one’s own excellence? (sometimes missing in the Zhang edition).

(If one goes against the natural) the mouth opens but cannot close, the tongue lifts but cannot shut (sometimes missing in the Jiangnan ancient hidden edition)—a picture of how, when principle is violated, even the most basic coordination of speech and body falls out of tune.

Then does the movement of the True Person (Perfect Person) (sometimes missing in the Jiangnan edition) really match heaven and earth in their stirring and in their transforming work? (the Zhang edition sometimes ends with an interrogative particle.)

The Three August Ones and Five Emperors governed all under heaven; in antiquity the Yellow Emperor governed all under heaven (sometimes missing in the Jiangnan edition): eyes need not turn to feel the wind of instruction; hens on the leeward side respond and feel that wind of instruction—hence it is called feng hua, “transformation through edifying influence (wind-and-teaching).” The point is moral transformation circulating everywhere without relying on brute force, so upper and lower naturally resonate (also seen with omissions in the Zhang edition).

Fragments Related to Qiushui (Autumn Floods)

Qiushui (editor’s estimate: about fourteen characters)

The eras and teachings associated with the Five Emperors: wind blows from below and things respond in the downwind direction—hence the expression fenghua (“wind transformation”; in Zhang’s edition and other old versions this line is missing or reads differently).

(Variant note: in an old Jiangnan manuscript, yun is written as lian.)

So it is only that expedient means differ (this sentence is missing in the old Zhang text).

Therefore, the conduct of great persons does not follow a path that harms others (missing in the old Zhang text).

Some call a certain kind of action that of a “usurper” (missing in the old Zhang text).

One must understand human character and also whether one meets a suitable time (in the Jiangnan manuscript zhi appears as yao, and yu shi as de, with similar meaning).

To live in the age of Yao and Shun is one thing; to live in the age of Jie and Zhou is another (missing in the old Zhang text).

(Things) leap up onto the well curb (in the Jiangnan manuscript chu tiao appears as tiaoliang).

And you once said… (missing in the old Zhang text; what follows does not connect.)

Fragments Related to Zhile (Perfect Joy)

Zhile (editor’s estimate: about thirty-eight characters)

I cannot say clearly what joy is, nor what is not joy; is there joy at all or not? I take Wuwei (non-action) with sincerity as joy (this passage is missing in the old Jiangnan manuscript).

The ten thousand things are all born from transformation (missing in the old Jiangnan manuscript).

Now (life) changes again and moves toward death (some Jiangnan manuscripts read “now again changing into death”).

The skull speaks in a dream: “What you just said—is that the sort of talk zi (Zhuangzi or the ‘master’ in the dialogue) would use?”

(To hold that one) treats heaven and earth as one long spring and autumn, and must then return to endure the toil of the living—is that so? (Some Zhang editions read “the toil of the human world.”)

They must like and dislike differently; because likes and dislikes differ, there is this kind of “doctrine” (missing in the old Zhang text).

(Same idea, repeated in variant wording.)

They must take each other as differing in likes and dislikes; since likes and dislikes differ, the ancient sages did not demand one single kind of talent from everyone (some Jiangnan manuscripts read “therefore they differ”).

How many kinds of transformation are there? For example, a frog becomes a quail (Liu De’s edition is missing here).

Simi is born from shixie (fermented vinegar-like substance); shixie from yilu; yilu from huangli; huangli from jiuyou; jiuyou from maorui; maorui from fuzao (a worm name); fuzao from yangxi; yangxi lies near buxun jiuzhu; from the long bamboo comes qingning (this long chain is missing in the old Zhang text).

Reader’s note (not scripture):

“Five Emperors” and fenghua belong to common talk about ancient rulers and cultural influence; daren (great person) in Zhuangzi usually means someone whose virtue is complete and aligned with the Dao; wuwei er cheng stresses that not forcing and keeping authenticity is itself joy. The passage “how many kinds of transformation” is Zhuangzi’s famous chain of morphological change, using a series of insect and microbe-like names to show that forms of life keep shifting—it need not be mapped one-to-one onto modern biological taxonomy. Bracketed material marks variant readings and lacunae in various editions; the plain-language explanation above follows only the text at hand and does not restore full book context.

Dasheng (Attaining Life) — chapter title: how to live life fully and nourish it until it flows freely.

“Only form and color” — the text is speaking of nothing more than outward appearance and surface show.

“How can things be forced upright by some standard?” — nothing can be made to fit an artificial measure of right and wrong (the point is not to cling to human judgments).

“Do not block the person in people” — do not seal the heart with worldly rules about “how to be human,” and do not live as others dictate.

“With tile spurs, hooked spurs, and golden spurs” — training fighting cocks with spurs of clay, with hooks, and of gold (from the cockfighting parable: you train the bird from outer stimulus until the inner mind is unmoved).

A man named Zhang Yi appears in a fragment about a clerk in a powerful household’s register office; the line “what people fear most” — what humans dread above all; “I will feed and tend you for three months” — I will nourish and temper you for three months (as in cockfighting or nurturing life: slow cultivation, not a quick fix).

“If you scheme only for yourself yet go after what differs from a pig, what is the point?” — satire on self-seeking that copies base animal habits.

“That extraordinary cock — none dared answer it; those who saw it turned and fled.”

“Forget right and wrong, and you are at ease, as on level ground.” (Another reading: “knowing how to forget right and wrong,” much the same: release the tangle of dispute.)

Shanmu (Mountain Tree) — chapter title: often about standing between mountain solitude and human gain and loss.

“The outpouring of transformation” — the overflow and display of heaven-and-earth transformation and creation (some texts read “things” for “outpouring,” meaning the unfolding of the ten thousand things).

“Holding up the skirt, striding fast” — lifting the lower robe and walking with long steps.

“Zhuangzi returned to the palace and for three months did not enter the court” — he withdrew and would not appear in audience (avoiding the world, refusing flattery).

“Following its orders” — obeying its commands and arrangements (or “the vulgar,” going along with worldly dictates).

“The forester took me for a poacher” — the official who guarded the hills and marshes treated me as a hunter or killer.

“The innkeeper had two concubines” — the start of Zhuangzi’s famous parable on the relativity of beauty and ugliness.

Tian Zifang — personal name; friend of King Wen of Wei.

“He guided me as a father would” — he led and taught me with a father’s care. (Variant readings “dao me” keep the same sense of guiding by the Way or by fatherly instruction.)

Zhibeiyou (Knowledge Travels North) — chapter title; Zhi here is usually read zhī as “knowing, cognition, seeking to know” (some old notes give the sound “zhi” but avoid equating it with “wisdom,” lest it blur with shen / sagely knowing).

“Hence it is said: it is nothing but threading the one qi between heaven and earth” — Dao is the single primordial qi, the root of life shared by all (other versions have “threading the Dao of heaven and earth,” nearly the same: connecting with the fundamental way of cosmos and earth).

Gengsang Chu (excerpt)

What is called knowing (here zhi is often read as zhi “wisdom”: clarity and penetration) means nothing other than being in tune with the single Qi that Heaven and Earth share in common—aligned with that spirit at its utmost refinement.

Your descendants are not truly “yours”; you measure and hold the ten thousand things without leaving anything out. You need only not cling stubbornly to the idea of “nothing,” as if the ten thousand things could all be escaped or disowned by you—mountains, marshes, and lowlands are neither specially close nor specially distant to me, yet they fill me with quiet joy.

When words reach this point, they are exhausted. A rushing bee cannot turn into a huo zhuo (a kind of small insect); only after ten days does one find rest and ease from care.

People see only “people,” things see only “things”; to swap and confuse them at random is error. Coming and going, one never catches sight of one’s own form—who can grasp that being and non-being, death and life, are of one lineage? Beyond that, it is simply going along with lying down when it is time to lie down and relieving oneself when it is time to relieve oneself. To stir up right and wrong—that is the habit of people today.

Xu Wugui (excerpt)

With li huo for pillars and rafters, and paths trodden by songs and weasels (small game)—the scrutinizing knight feels no satisfaction unless there is insult and censure to chew on; let the craftsman strike and carve: eyes shut, hands free—the plaster all falls away and the nose is unharmed (from the tale of the man of Ying wielding the adze: skill so pure that master and partner are seamless). Can one not speak plainly? After all, one is wandering in Heaven and Earth.

Picking through matted manes and long fur, taking that for a vast palace and park (a image for overrating oneself while one’s scope stays small). The True Person of old treated others by “Heaven”—by nature and the Way of heaven—not by forcing private will upon affairs.

Zeyang

In various editions only the title “Zeyang” survives; the main text is missing or defective, so there is no continuous passage here to interpret in vernacular.

Note: Material in square brackets in the source marks variant readings across editions (Jiangnan canon, Zhang’s edition, Liu Deyi’s copy, and the like). The vernacular above follows the generally readable received sense; where the same line repeats in the original, it is merged once in this interpretation rather than repeated at length.

Collation Notes to Zhuangzi Yi (Plain-Language Summary)

What follows is a record of textual differences and missing passages among various old editions for each chapter (“Zhang ben” denotes the Zhang family’s held text; “Jiangnan gu cang ben,” “Liu Deyi ben,” and similar labels name other transmitted copies). Material in parentheses is alternate wording or notes that the collator supplied from other versions.

Matters related to the “Ze Yang” chapter

• “Tong kan er yu” (bathed in the same tub): In the old Zhang text this read “yu tiandi ye” (toward Heaven and Earth); the Jiangnan gu cang ben lacks this place.
• “Ze shu lie chang mao, zi yi wei guang gong da you” (pick out the sparse-maned long-haired ones, taking them for a vast palace and great park): The Zhang text lacks this sentence.
• “Gu zhi zhenren yi tian dai ren” (the ancient perfected person treats Heaven as the other person): The old Zhang text has “zhi” here instead of the wording in the received version.

Chapter title “Ze Yang”: The collation note marks two characters counted (for the chapter title length or entry tally).

• Another “tong kan er yu”: The old Zhang text reads “lan” (near-graph confusion between kan and lan).
• “Qi zhi guang zhe ye” (breadth of qi): Liu Deyi’s old text has “da” (great) here.

“Wai Wu” chapter (collation note marks five characters counted)

• “Wo qie nan you shuo Wu Yue zhi wang” (I will go south and persuade the kings of Wu and Yue): The Zhang text lacks this.
• “Chu shi xin” (go out to gather firewood): The Zhang text lacks this.
• “Zhong min zhi xing yi jin yan er” (the conduct of the middling people is easy to advance): The Zhang text matches the received version but the old text lacks it.
• “Da lin qiu shan zhi shan” (the goodness of great forest hills and mountains): The Zhang main text reads “Da lin” (shortening or omitting “qiu shan zhi shan” and similar characters).
• “Mu lao” (bathe the elder): The old Zhang text has “xiu” (rest) instead.

“Yuyan” chapter (collation note marks four characters counted)

• “Ru guan niao que wen fang,” “Quan gong yi qi si si ye,” “Xiang ye kuosuo er jin ye bei fa,” and “Er kuang hu yi wu you dai zhe hu” (as if watching birds, sparrows, and mosquitoes; urging the lord to die for private ends; formerly bound up, now with hair loose; how much more one who waits on nothing): All appear as missing in the Zhang text.

“Lie Yuke” chapter (collation note marks twelve characters counted; the four lines shared with “Yuyan” are also missing in the Zhang text)

• “Wu duo yu zhi ying” (no surplus profit): Jiangnan Li shi ben and Zhang ben agree; the old text lacks this.
• “Ru chu yi” (you dwell in yourself): Yi is read jì; Jiangnan Li shi ben’s old text has a different yi character (homograph variant).
• “He, chang shi qi liang” (He, once inspected his good horse): Wencheng and Li shi ben agree; the old text reads “He hu chang shi qi liang” (extra hu).
• “Gu zhi zhi ren, tian er bu ren” (the utmost person of old: Heaven, not human): The Zhang main text lacks this.
• “You shen lin er da” (cautious and apprehensive yet penetrating): Jiangnan gu cang ben’s old text has “shun” ( compliant) instead.
• “Renyi duo ze, liu zhe suoyi xiang xing ye; da sheng zhi qing zhe kui” (benevolence and duty multiply reproach; the six are what mutually punish; one who knows penetrating life is a puppet): Liu Deyi ben lacks the second half.

“Tianxia” chapter (collation note marks three characters counted)

• “Er jiu di tianxia zhi chuan” (and nine times washed the rivers of the world): Jiangnan Li shi ben’s old text has “za” (mixed) instead.
• “Sui wei zhi ji” (though not yet reaching the ultimate): Jiangnan Li shi ben and main text agree; the old text reads “ke wei zhi ji” (can be called reaching the ultimate)—opposite sense, an important variant.

General summary

The above records lacunae and variant characters for all thirty-three chapters; the “Tianxia” chapter note marks three characters counted (matching the in-chapter entry tally).

Note: The source is mostly short version-comparison entries, not a continuous narrative. The plain-language section restates “such-and-such copy lacks such-and-such line, such-and-such copy reads such-and-such character” without added interpretation; names such as Zhuangzi Yi and chapter titles “Ze Yang,” “Wai Wu,” and the rest are kept as in the original.

This passage comes from an appendix to Zhuangzi Yi (Wings of Zhuangzi). It concerns variant readings and textual errors in successive manuscript and print traditions of the Zhuangzi, plus a register of commentarial editions—not Zhuangzi’s philosophical doctrines as such.

On a variant at one line

At the line rendered in some sources as “nine streams cleansing the rivers under heaven” (in the Jiangnan Li family old collection the graph for “mixed/various” also appears), different editions use different characters. Some copies may not count as the “most complete” text, yet the old collection treats certain readings as belonging to an “ultimate” or authoritative class of wording. The point is to record that the same scriptural line can differ in wording across woodblock prints and handwritten copies, so collation must compare witnesses and choose readings deliberately.

Missing and erroneous graphs in the thirty-three chapters

Across all thirty-three chapters, places with lacunae, mistakes, or two defensible readings total three hundred forty-nine. That is: compared with a received or fixed edition, each of these spots either lacks a character, has a wrong one, or admits two reasonable interpretations—matters to be checked against other copies and commentaries.

Lan guo Nanhua jing ming shi (Names of those who have examined the Nanhua jing)—the nine bases used

What follows lists nine sources used at the time for collating and correcting the Nanhua jing (i.e., the Zhuangzi):

1. Jingde fourth-year Guozijian edition—a Song Guozijian (Imperial Academy) print.

2. Jiangnan ancient collection—an old Jiangnan holding.

3. Edition collated by Xu Xian and Ge Tuan—from the Fangying Palace collection on Tiantai Mountain, corrected by the two of them.

4. Edition collated by Xu Lingfu—the copy used in Cheng Xuanying’s Zhuangzi shu (Commentary on the Zhuangzi), passed through Xu Lingfu’s collation.

5. Cheng Xuanying Jie shu edition—the Tang Daoist Cheng Xuanying’s Zhuangzi yi shu (Subcommentary on the Zhuangzi).

6. Taiyi Palace edition, Zhang Junfang’s collated text—Zhang Junfang’s version in the line of Cheng Xuanying’s subcommentary and Guo Xiang’s commentary.

7. Guo Xiang commentary edition—Jin Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi zhu (*Commentary on the Zhuangzi), also in the Taiyi Palace / Zhang Junfang system.

8. Commentary by the Recluse Liu Deyi—Liu Deyi, active in the Dazhong Xiangfu era, styled himself “Sanren” (Recluse).

9. Jiangnan Li family library edition, with Zhang Qianfu’s supplementary notes—the Li family copy, with supplemental annotation by Zhang Qianfu.

Note: Among these nine traditions, lacunae, errors, and agreements or disagreements are not the same; collation must treat each line separately and must not lump them together.

Zhuangzi lie zhuan (Biographical account of Zhuangzi) (Sima Biao)

Zhuangzi was a native of Meng (roughly present-day Mengcheng area in Anhui), personal name Zhou. He once served as a petty officer of Qi Garden (a clerk managing lacquer-garden affairs) and became famous in the world through the book Zhuangzi.

In sum: The first part of the appendix records a variant at one line and three hundred forty-nine problematic characters across the book; the middle gives a checklist of nine Zhuangzi texts and related commentarial editions, so readers know which sources Zhuangzi Yi drew on; the last part is a short biography of Zhuangzi, close to the Zhuangzi section of Shiji, Laozi Han Fei lie zhuan (Records of the Grand Historian, biographies of Laozi and Han Fei).

Zhuangzi was a native of Meng in the state of Song; his given name was Zhou. He once served as a minor official at the Lacquer Garden in Meng and lived in the same era as King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi. His learning was broad—there was scarcely a field he did not touch—yet its core still came back to the thought of Laozi. The writings attributed to him run to more than a hundred thousand words; for the most part they tell stories through allegory. Pieces such as “The Old Fisherman,” “Robber Zhi,” and “Opening Trunks” aim to criticize the teachings associated with Confucius and thereby clarify Laozi’s position; works like “Fears and Burdens” and “Master Gengsang” are largely imaginary discussions and do not treat concrete historical events. He was skilled at composition—his language is free and far-ranging, and he uses events to make his point—so as to attack the Confucian and Mohist schools; even celebrated scholars of the day could not fully hold their own against him in debate. His prose is vast and unrestrained, following wherever inclination leads, in keeping with his ideal of carefree self-sufficiency; for that reason kings and great lords found it hard to employ him in office.

When King Wei of Chu heard that Zhuang Zhou was worthy, he sent an envoy with rich gifts, intending to offer him the post of chief minister. Zhuangzi smiled at the envoy and said: “A thousand in gold is great profit, and a minister’s rank is high honor—but have you not seen the ox prepared for the suburban sacrifice? It is fed for years, draped in embroidered silks, and at last led into the ancestral temple. By then, even if it wished to become a little pig rolling in filthy water, how could it? Go away quickly—do not defile me. I would rather play contentedly in muddy ditches than be bound by those who rule the state; I will not hold office all my life, but only follow my own inclinations.”

Zhuangzi Yi — Vernacular Interpretation

Main Theme of the Text

In the year Yidan'e, in the season Zhixu—when the myriad things stir to life—on a deep autumn night, the Master (Zhuangzi or a Daoist figure speaking in his name) wandered in the wind: first to the north bank of the Red Water, then up Yinben hill, along Quyuan road, gazing at Yangmang isle, then suddenly stopping and abruptly resting. He no longer remembered why he had set out or why he now halted; joyless and desolate, he wished to return. In plain white dress he passed the day at leisure, leaning on a low table and plucking the zither.

Men of rank who loved the Dao heard of this, met to compose words, and sought to clear their daily doubts. They straightened robes and caps, clenched teeth to rouse the spirit, yielded by age, heel to heel, and came forward together: steps measured, eyes cautious, mounting the steps in swift approach, sitting shoulder to shoulder, sleeves folded in decorum, glancing at one another—none dared speak first.

Among them was one, a champion of the group, who glared and cried aloud: I was born after Tang and Yu, raised among descendants of Wen and Wu, roamed the glory of Cheng and Kang, flourished in this age—reciting the Six Classics, trained in Ru learning, wearing ceremonial robes and caps, sash hanging, double shoes on my feet—for no short time—yet I have never heard the gist of the “ultimate Dao” or how it fundamentally differs from Confucian teaching. Moreover, the great honor Heaven’s Way; the small receive Earth’s Way; sages cultivate them to establish names. Fortune and misfortune have their allotments; right and wrong have their measures; one seeks profit and follows momentum, hates death and loves life—then the realm is at peace and great deeds are achieved. Now Zhuang Zhou aligns fortune with misfortune, makes death and life one, treats heaven and earth as a single thing and the ten thousand fingers as one finger—is this not to confuse and lose “constancy” with extremity, yet call it sincerity? Then the Master touched the zither, sighed at ease, bowed his head and smiled, lifted his face and looked afar, drew breath to gather spirit, and spoke what he had seen:

Someone on the frontier wished to view the sights of Lang Peak. He prepared full ritual dress and mounted Huaruo, reached the foot of Kunlun and lost his way, never to return—ceremonial dress was merely ordinary clothes, Huaruo merely an ordinary horse; they were never meant for scaling high walls or roaming the Dark Garden. Moreover, the light of Zhulong cannot fill one hall; talk of Zhong Mountain does not enter a bent chamber. If I fall on towering heights or block myself with wild rumor, the path you walk may perhaps wake you to turn back?

Heaven and earth arise from ziran (naturalness); the myriad things arise from heaven and earth. Naturalness has no “outside,” hence they are named heaven and earth; heaven and earth have an “inside,” hence the myriad things are born. When there is no outside, who speaks of difference? When there is an inside, who speaks of otherness? Earth releases its dryness; heaven resists its damp; the moon rises in the east, the sun sets in the west—following one another in parting and joining; ascending is Yang, descending is Yin; on earth it is pattern, in heaven it is pattern-text; steaming becomes rain, scattering becomes wind; blazing is fire, congealing is ice; formed is stone, imaged is star; new moon is morning, dark moon is night; flowing is river, turning back is abyss; level is earth, heaped is mountain. Male and female share their stations; mountain and marsh interpenetrate in qi; thunder and wind do not strike each other; water and fire do not wear each other down—heaven and earth unite in De, sun and moon follow their light, naturalness is one body, the myriad things follow constancy; entering is hidden, emerging is manifest; one qi waxes and wanes in change without harm. Thus heavy yin and thunder and lightning are not produced elsewhere; heaven and earth, sun and moon are not alien things. Therefore it is said: seen as “different,” liver and gall are like Chu and Yue; seen as “same,” the myriad things are one body. Humans stand within heaven and earth, embodying the form of naturalness; the body is the refined qi of Yin-Yang, nature is the correct nature of the Five Phases, emotion is the desire of the wandering soul, spirit is what heaven and earth use to govern. Regarding life, nothing among things fails to reach its span; pushed to death, nothing fails its term; from the small view, nothing is not small; from the great view, nothing is not large—an infant who dies may be “long-lived,” Peng Zu may be “short-lived”; an autumn hair may be “large,” Mount Tai may be “small.” Thus death and life are one thread, right and wrong one line; split into words, then conjoined toes have different names; gathered together, they are only one hair on the body.

The words of the Six Classics are teachings divided by place; Zhuang Zhou’s sayings are words that convey intent. Spoken broadly and faced, they reach the utmost without outside; spoken narrowly and ordered, each thing has its rule. Guarding the “fifteen” numbers and examining names of left and right is only a partial doctrine; following naturalness and aligning with heaven and earth is the vast discourse. Eyes and ears are offices, names and roles are assignments—holding office without changing duty, sustaining the body without cutting off hands or feet—is not to tear limbs and sever the body. Later ages’ lovers of strangeness ignore the root, each clinging to a private view—why need their talk? Harming life and injuring nature, they yet make enemies of one another, severing limbs without feeling pain; eyes see color without regard for ears, ears hear sound without waiting for mind, mind races after desire without passing through nature—where nature would be at ease, sickness sprouts and life is not exhausted; when calamity and disorder arise, the myriad things are maimed.

The Perfect Person is tranquil in life, still in death: tranquil in life, emotion is not confused; still in death, spirit is not lost—thus he can transform with Yin-Yang without following slavishly, change with heaven and earth without shifting. Life exhausts its span, death follows its fitting; heart-qi is level and ordered, waxing and waning without loss. Therefore Guangchengzi dwelt on Kongtong mountain and entered the gate of the infinite; Xuanyuan ascended the heights of Kunlun and left behind the root of the Dark Pearl—those who hide the body easily live; those who leave the root hardly survive. Feng Yi, not meeting Hai Ruo, would not take himself as small; Yun Jiang, not failing to question Hong Meng, would have no way to know his own smallness. From this it is said: the self-assertive do not shine, the self-establishing do not stand; those who hold “having” have footing, those who hold “non-having” have no grasp. The moon wanes then fills, the sun at dawn then follows in succession; Xianchi does not linger above Yanggu; after the suspended chariot, one will enter. Thus those who fix on gain lose; those who contend for clarity lose; the without-desire are self-sufficient, the empty receive the real.

Mountains quiet, valleys deep—this is the way of naturalness; obtaining the Dao and being upright—this is the substance of the junzi. Therefore those who craft cleverness harm things; those who clearly display right and wrong endanger the self; those who adorn and show purity are confused about life; those who fear death and glorify life disturb their constancy—natural principle is not obtained, heaven and earth are not at peace, sun and moon contend in following, morning and evening miss their seasons, day and night have no division; racing for profit, crooked and reckless, father and son do not harmonize, lord and minister part. Thus to speak again to seek trust is the sincerity of one below the gate; to restrain the self to benefit others is benevolence that extends outward. Those who steal the pheasant cord are sons who ruin the family; those who gouge belly and cut flesh are ministers who disorder the state; those who display fine greens and wear hanglu dew are knights of a dark age; those who tread frost and dew, covered in dust, are greedy folk; those who purify themselves to blame the age and cultivate the body to expose filth belong to the class of slanderers; those who multiply words of right and wrong, turning from substance to chase ornament, are a tribe of delusion. Truly it is not flattery to win trust—thus those adorned with pearls and jade who walk into water and fire meet the end of Jie and Zhou; those who ate beans and picked ferns, dying together in hunger, are the poverty of Yan (Yuan) and Yi (Boyi). When the paths of fame and profit open, the sincerity of loyalty and faith grows thin; when words of right and wrong stand forth, simple honest feeling is burned away.

Thus at the utmost of the ultimate Dao, mixed into one without division, same as one body, gain and loss unheard. Fuxi knotted cords (for defense), Shennong taught tillage—those who opposed them died, those who followed lived—how then know that greed is punishment and pure whiteness is fame? Let the essential of ultimate De be nothing but without-outside; the great equalizer, pure and solid, does not duplicate its order; pure quiet and solitude, empty openness to await—good and evil not divided, right and wrong with nothing to contend; thus the myriad things return to their places and obtain their qing.

After Ru and Mo, “hard and white” arose together; fortune and misfortune chained to things, gain and loss in the heart; they knotted factions and clustered parties, debate invading debate. Once the heroes of great Qi and the knights of the Three Jin openly and clearly distinguished this principle—all thought a hundred years of life hard to attain, sun and moon fleeting without constancy—so they lavish servants and horses, trim robes, beautify pearls and jade, adorn curtains, outwardly pleasing lords, inwardly deceiving fathers and elder brothers, sharpening wit and talent, racing in vertical and horizontal schemes; families ruined by clever sons, states destroyed by talented ministers—thus not completing heaven’s years yet greatly self-mutilating; toward the mundane world, excessive. Therefore trees in the mountains, roots large yet unharmed; the ten thousand openings harmonize together, suddenly of themselves. When the goose’s (or “re-blown”) breath does not remain, without its substance the text is muddied; death and life unchanged yet the tortoise is treasure—knowing fortune and misfortune. Thus the Perfect Person clarifies his substance and muddies his ornament, death and life unchanged yet never beginning to speak.

Discriminating speech is talk that breaks the Dao; split debate is the edge that destroys De; qi divided is sickness of one body; two hearts are the affliction of the myriad things. Thus those who dress and lean on the carriage rail travel by leaving the branch; those whose concern is success and failure sit seeking enemies; those who cross barriers and attack passes are men of Zhao; those who lift mountains and fill seas are men of Yan and Chu. Zhuang Zhou saw it thus and set forth the subtlety of Dao and De, narrated the root of wuwei (non-action), used allegory to broaden it, borrowed things to extend it—merely to delight the heart of non-action and roam free for one lifetime—how could it be to hope at the gates of Xianyang and argue with those below the Ji?

One who skillfully receives people only guides—nothing is resisted. Thus Gong Meng and Jizi, in embroidered dress, visited Mozi and were not attacked; Zhongshan Zimou, heart in the passes of Wei, yet Zhanzi did not reject him—according with why they came, using how they arrived, following and easing them to settle themselves, issuing and opening so they might expand themselves. And what are Zhuang Zhou’s books worth? Have you still not heard discourse on Great Beginning or subtle words of profound antiquity? Simply able not to harm things yet form is thereby born, nothing destroyed yet spirit thereby clarified; form and spirit remain in me and Dao-De are accomplished, loyalty and faith not parted and high and low are level.

This guest today speaks in accord with antiquity yet meaning differs—heart able to guard its root while mouth utters what does not match. Then the two or three, wind-shaken and wave-tossed, looked at one another guarding pulse, withdrew in disorder, stumbled losing track, following and gazing after. Later they also somewhat knew from this that there was no substance, spirits dampened and ashamed before decline and remoteness.

Note: The original has lacunae, variant characters, and readings such as “frontier person,” “goose,” and “pheasant cord” that differ by edition; this interpretation follows common emendations for coherence. Names such as Guangchengzi, Feng Yi, Hai Ruo, Hong Meng, Dark Garden, and Kongtong are mythic figures, place-names, or metaphors in Daoist and Zhuangzi contexts and are not glossed one by one to avoid prolixity.

People disagree about Zhuangzi. Confucian scholars say his book is devoted to slandering Confucius so readers will trust heterodox teaching, and that his books ought to be burned and his followers suppressed—disputes of this kind need not be pursued in depth; Confucians mostly talk that way. Those who love Zhuangzi’s way say his virtue is not thrown into turmoil by external things, and so he can trust the way he trusts. It is not that he did not understand benevolence and righteousness; he thought their scope too small to settle himself in. It is not that he did not understand ritual and music; he thought them too shallow to transform the world. Laozi said, “When the Dao is lost, then De; when De is lost, then benevolence; when benevolence is lost, then righteousness; when righteousness is lost, then ritual.” From this we can see Zhuangzi was not ignorant of what benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music were meant to be—he only treated them as the outermost branches of the Dao and therefore held them lightly.

What Confucians say has some force, yet they do not necessarily probe Zhuangzi’s real intent. Those who favor Zhuangzi certainly read the Zhuangzi, but they too need not seek his original meaning. By Zhuangzi’s time the legacy of the former kings had waned, deceitful customs flourished, plain simplicity was lost, and even among scholar-officials few still understood the principle of “valuing oneself and treating things lightly.” Ritual and righteousness were cut off, people fought over benefit and harm, chasing profit without shame and risking life without resentment, sinking deeper until recovery seemed nearly impossible. Zhuangzi took this as a grave ill and wanted to use his teaching to correct the world’s disorder and return it to the right path. He thought too hard and concluded that benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music alone could not set the world straight, so he equalized right and wrong, identified “this” and “that,” unified benefit and harm, and took “sufficiency of mind” as attainment—that was his aim in correcting the age.

Having spoken to remedy disorder, he still feared later readers would treat his words as the Dao in full and miss “the purity of Heaven and Earth and the great frame of the ancients.” So in the final chapters he voiced his worry again to explain himself: poetry expresses intent, the Documents record affairs, ritual acts and music harmonizes, the Changes clarifies yin and yang, the Spring and Autumn rectifies names—from this perspective, how could Zhuangzi not know the way of the sages? He also said ear, eye, nose, and mouth each have their clarity yet cannot substitute for one another; the hundred schools and many crafts each have their strength and their season of use—so the sage’s complete way lies there, not here. He placed himself among Song Xing, Shen Dao, Mozi, and Laozi as “one-sided specialists” who “do not cover everything”—showing that his words were spoken with a purpose, not the Dao entire. Was Zhuangzi not concerned with the world’s ills and trying to preserve the sages’ way?

Boyi’s purity and Liuxia Hui’s harmony both corrected something in the world; Zhuangzi’s intent belongs in the same company as those two sages. Yet Zhuangzi’s speech had to be classed among “heterodox teachings,” because overcorrection bends the straight back into crooked: wanting to straighten what is warped, he warped it again by pushing too far. Zhuangzi also said of Mozi that “his heart was right, his conduct wrong.” Apply Zhuangzi’s heart to his conduct—how is he alone unlike Mozi? Later readers who cherish the spirit in which he wrote rather than clinging to the doctrine he wrote have read him well—and that is what Zhuangzi hoped from posterity. Today’s readers wield Zhuangzi to mock Confucians, praise his way as too vast for Confucianism to match, yet never seek his meaning and only prize what differs from the Ru—a lamentable state.

In Zhuangzi Yi, the section “Discourse on Zhuangzi, Part Two” (plain-language reading)

Some scholars criticize Zhuangzi for belittling Yao, Shun, and Confucius. When I read his book, most of that tone comes from having something else in mind and writing by way of allegory—you cannot take every line at face value. Mencius said: when reading poetry, do not let a single word or phrase harm the sense of the whole line, and do not let one or two lines harm the thrust of the entire poem; use your own grasp of the overall intent to infer what the author really meant—only then have you read it properly. People who read Zhuangzi’s words but do not use this “infer the author’s intent from the reader’s understanding of the whole” method are often the same ones who attack Zhuangzi on literal grounds.

Zhuangzi said: those above should practice wuwei (non-action) and employ the realm; those below should act with purpose (youwei) and serve the realm on its behalf. He also placed himself in an age of muddled rulers on high and treacherous ministers in power, so he was poor, frustrated, and unable to deploy his talent. Can every sentence of Zhuangzi be copied unchanged onto the relationships of ruler and subject, father and son? In such times, he ultimately could not get people to act with purpose as his ideal demanded. As for his use of the story of the sacrificial beast in the Grand Ancestral Temple to decline Chu’s invitation to office, that was probably startling language meant to shake ordinary people in a declining age. With Zhuangzi’s learning, how could he fail to see when to advance, retreat, or hold back—and only fear becoming a sacrificial victim?

Confucius’s “when the Dao (the Way) does not prevail, withdraw; step back, write books, and speak boldly from afar”—Zhuangzi very likely belongs in that company.

Still, Zhuangzi’s teaching on the orientation of the Dao also parted from the orthodox Confucian path, so it won no favor among the sage’s disciples. For people of middling capacity, the scope they can understand—the sage explains in detail and demands strict practice; explain too finely without strict practice, and the realm rots. For heights middling people cannot reach, the sage hides the true intent in the heart and speaks briefly; what should stay brief is spelled out in detail, what should stay hidden is laid bare in long talk—and the realm grows confused. Someone who only understands after repeated admonition and only submits after nagging—how can they count as “someone with whom one may discuss higher teaching”? Pity that Zhuangzi was eloquent in debate yet never penetrated this layer.

Brief notes on concepts in the text

• Wuwei / youwei: In Zhuangzi’s political language, those above should curb private will and let the realm function; those below should act actively and carry responsibility—not the everyday “do nothing at all.”
• Infer intent from the reader’s grasp of the whole (yiyi nizhi): Use the reader’s hold on the overall aim to recover the author’s meaning (Mencius on reading the Odes, borrowed here for reading Zhuangzi).
• Grand Temple sacrificial beast (taimiao xi): The ox fattened for sacrifice in the ancestral temple, pampered then slaughtered—Zhuangzi uses it for life fed by power yet ending badly, and to refuse office.

This passage is a commemorative essay for establishing a shrine to Zhuangzi, together with an account of how the author reads the Zhuangzi.

Who Zhuangzi was and how the shrine came about

Zhuangzi was a native of Meng in the state of Song and once served as a minor official in Meng’s “Lacquer Garden.” More than a thousand years after his death, Meng still had no place dedicated to his worship. Only when Magistrate and Secretariat Assistant Wang Jing took office was a hall built, and someone was invited to compose a commemorative inscription. The author follows the Records of the Grand Historian: Zhuangzi lived in the same era as King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi; his learning was vast, but its root aim still returns to Laozi’s line, so his writings run to more than a hundred thousand characters, and for the most part they are fables—stories that carry meaning, not to be read as literal historical record.

A common view: Zhuangzi attacks Confucius and elevates Laozi

Some cite chapters such as “Robber Zhi,” “The Old Fisherman,” and “Opening Trunks” to argue that Zhuangzi slanders the Confucian school and promotes Laozi’s teaching. The author holds that this is simply reading Zhuangzi too crudely.

The author’s view: Zhuangzi seems to mock Confucius on the surface but helps him at the core

The author believes Zhuangzi is in fact aiding Confucius, only his manner of writing must not be taken as a direct model to imitate. He cites the story of a prince of Chu who travels incognito: a gatekeeper blocks him, and a servant beats the gatekeeper with a staff, cursing him for being blind and useless. The affair runs contrary to normal order—to say the servant did not care for the prince is wrong; to say that was the proper way to serve a prince is also wrong. Hence the author says: Zhuangzi’s words essentially benefit (Confucius), yet in wording he does not plainly say he is giving; openly he pushes away, in secret he assists; truly straightforward, orthodox statements are in fact few. Even where he denounces or criticizes Confucius, his real intent often shows through indirectly.

The “Under Heaven” chapter and chapters that “do not seem like Zhuangzi”

The “Under Heaven” chapter surveys the “methods of the Way” of various schools—from Mozi, Qin Xuli, Peng Meng, Shen Dao, Tian Pian, Guan Yin, and Old Dan on to Zhuangzi himself—treating each school as one lineage, without exalting Confucius as supreme—on the face of it Zhuangzi greatly magnifies his own line. Yet the author still doubts: if “Robber Zhi” and “The Old Fisherman” truly aim to revile Confucius, then “The Abdication of Kings” and “Persuasion with Swords” are shallow and off the mark of the Way; read in reverse, one can grasp how the fables close. For example, Yang Zhu (Yangzi Ju) travels west to Qin and meets Laozi, who admonishes him to be humble (“great whiteness seems like disgrace; abundant virtue seems insufficient”); Yang Zhu changes his demeanor. When he visits again the host receives him like a guest, but on his return he vies for mat placement with other guests—this matches the insight in “Lie Yukou” where Liezi turns back halfway to Qi and “eats at ten inns while five serve him first”: the same kind of fable, about moving from being honored to sitting as equals and contending for a seat, not about throwing weight around.

Splitting and merging chapters: later confusion, not Zhuangzi’s intent

The author argues: set aside the four chapters “The Abdication of Kings,” “Persuasion with Swords,” “The Old Fisherman,” and “Robber Zhi,” and read them together with “Lie Yukou”—because Zhuangzi’s point was not finished, and confused readers mixed in later patchwork with his book, which the author cannot leave unexamined. Dividing into sections and giving chapter titles are mostly worldly habits, not what Zhuangzi intended.

Date of the inscription

This record was composed on the nineteenth day of the eleventh month of the first year of Yuanfeng (1078).

Zhuangzi said that to obtain is to meet the season, to lose is to yield to what must be; when one rests in the season and stands in smooth circumstances, grief and joy cannot enter the heart. Pan You has long trusted this deeply.

What is called “gain” is like a person from birth to a hundred years, from youth to age—as the years arrive, nothing can block them. Is that not “gain”? It comes when it should come. What is called “loss” is likewise from small to strong, from strong to old—as time passes, nothing can keep it. Is that not “loss”? One yields when one should yield. Most things under heaven are like this: what comes cannot be avoided, what goes cannot be kept. So for one who can rest in the season and yield to circumstances, the joy and sorrow of outer things can hardly tug at the inner mind.

The person who understands sees that I can do nothing against things, and things can do nothing against me; neither side binds the other, and the breast opens wide and stays at ease. This again is what is natural—not asking “why is it so,” but simply following what is so of itself. They look on worldly affairs as a chariot wheel racing over an ant hill: to hit is not truly to “gain,” to pass is not truly to “lose”—how could one there sort gain and loss and tie oneself to joy and sorrow? From one year, two years, up to a hundred, gain, loss, joy, and sorrow are mixed in between; at the time, sorrow is hard to untie, joy hard to shake off; only afterward, on reflection, does one feel that “awakening too is a dream.” Those earlier joys and sorrows—how empty they were! Those who come after look on people today as people today look on the past. What is lost today—what is there to brood over?

Between south of Yan and north of Yue, where sun and moon shine is called the Middle Kingdom; sun and moon rising east and setting west is day and night. Among these are teeth and hair, grain-eaters and silk-wearers—people. The movement of one nature is called “Great Change”—meaning nature shifts without fixed form; whether one becomes human or another kind of being depends entirely on what nature prefers. Endless kinds such as hard and soft, moving and rooted are “things”; calling to one another by sound is “name”; doubling things to meet is “profit”; gathering heads to discuss is “affair.” When affairs pass and are recorded in the heart, whether joy, sorrow, or resentment, the labels are many, but all are transformations of one mind. At first there was no thing—at the end, what remains? Then one divides self and other: the other says I am the other, I say the other is the other; the other calls itself the other, I also call myself I—so that each side curses the other, yet all curses point at the other; self-reference points only at me—in the end one still does not know who is other and who is self. Even a sage cannot fix this; one can only provisionally set up names to govern, hence names like Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han. Treating bamboo skin and cutting it into slips, binding hairs and dyeing ink into vertical and horizontal writing, gathering crowds and recording affairs into classics—later people call this “examining antiquity,” generation after generation imitating without end; some reach the Way, some drown in the mind—this is called “learning.” Some say that from ancient times to now those who toil within it merely share this one stroke—between one stroke one runs the business of ten thousand generations, no different from worrying awake in a dream or worrying in sleep while awake. Sun, moon, stars, hills, marshes, mountains remain as before; teeth and hair, hard and soft, moving and rooted are still the same. The Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han of old—some fought to gain, some fought to lose—where are they now? When I look at them today, it is truly like viewing a dream while awake. Better to embody the Way and settle nature, taking clarity and emptiness as one’s charge. Affairs under heaven before they arrive have no shape; the present has no fixed abode, the past has no thing. What am I toiling for now? Yet those who tie the heart to profit through gain and loss are cramped like a colt under a chariot shaft—how can they be released like Liezi? One who can speak like Zhuang Zhou—words like thunder, ears like wind—would burn the shafts under heaven and free the colts under heaven, vast and returning to no-thing, reaching the point of no words.

What I said in the past is like this. On your journey this time, I record this as a parting gift. You are very tightly constrained; the heart is already ill. Hearing these words, you may recover a little.

This miscellaneous remark says that sages emphasize discourse and commentary, yet do not wrangle with others; the various masters of the hundred schools love disputation, though they may not truly be engaged in discoursing or commenting.

What is meant by discourse and commentary? Discourse (lun) means explaining the principle clearly and then stopping. Commentary (yi) means weighing right and wrong, gain and loss, and then stopping. Disputation (bian), by contrast, is merely contending over whether a given matter is right or wrong.

Regarding matters outside heaven and earth and the four directions, the sage keeps them in mind but does not casually issue pronouncements; regarding matters within heaven and earth and the four directions, the sage may discourse yet does not contend in commentary with others. As for the Spring and Autumn Annals, the sage likewise commented without disputing—traces of ordering the age and governing disorder are conveyed through commentary; that is enough without needing to win arguments. When the sage must comment, it is often because there is no alternative—not like ordinary people who rely on disputation to show themselves off.

In the Zhuangzi, the figure Wangliang (the shadow of a shadow, a presence that seems to be and yet is not) twice questions the shadow: the shadow seems to follow the body in order to “be there,” yet in truth it need not truly “wait upon” the body. Those who do not understand think that only when a person rises and sits, bows and lifts the head does the shadow count as “being on” the body; they do not realize that the shadow’s being there need not be tightly bound to the body at all.

If one insists that shadow must depend on form and form must depend on a Creator, one has still not grasped what Zhuangzi calls duhua—“independent transformation,” each thing generating itself naturally without seeking a separate maker. Once one grasps duhua, one knows that shadow need not wait for form, form need not wait for a creator, and the reasoning can be pushed all the way to the realm of non-being (wu). That is why Zhuangzi also says: who can truly fathom what is called “the reason it is so” and “the reason it is not so”?

When Zhuangzi writes of finding joy in oneself, he speaks of dreaming one is a butterfly; when he writes of finding life in oneself, he speaks of the joy of fish. The butterfly is small, yet can flutter everywhere; fish in deep, broad water can instead preserve life. He lodges the meaning of “self-suiting” and “self-living” in these two creatures; the point lies in qiwu—viewing all things as equal, not clinging to one side.

Goblet words (zhi yan) are speech that does not fix on one standpoint. When words are not fixed, they keep multiplying day by day—hence the image of “daily sunrise,” with fresh sayings constantly welling up. Yet however many the words, they always have a root; that is why one must “harmonize them with Heaven’s Equalizing (Tianni).” Tianni is the subtle principle of how things naturally are. When speech has a root, one can respond to change without end—hence “following circumstances to spread and unfold” (yin yi manyan). Change is inexhaustible, and the years of past and present eventually run out, yet the Way that Zhuangzi discusses never reaches an end. Therefore “one can talk one’s whole life long” (suoyi qiong nian) and still not finish.

Zhuangzi’s book reads freely and refuses a single mold, yet it never strays from the root of the Dao. Guo Xiang said Zhuangzi “knows the root”—he truly understood Zhuangzi’s depth.

What the myriad things follow is the Dao. The Dao is the principle each thing follows in its own way, yet it need not cling to any one place: in the large it never loses the whole, in the small it never drops the part. Thus within native endowment and allotted role, each kind takes what suits it. When Zhuangzi writes of the kun and peng, the cicada, the dove, the quail, the wren, ants, sheep, fish, butterflies, horses, oxen, and mountain trees, his point lies here.

The root of the Dao: it exists before the Supreme Ultimate (Taiji), yet does not pride itself on being lofty; it lies below the six extremes, yet does not belittle itself as shallow; it was there before Heaven and Earth arose, yet does not boast of antiquity; it has stood thus from old, yet does not show off long life. Myriad kinds differ yet each attains its fullness—this is called “richness”; myriad kinds differ yet all return to the Dao—this is called “greatness”; each kind finds its place and fully exerts its function—this is called “achievement” (ye). Whoever reaches this level is the sage.

First there is form, then there is naming; with naming come roles; with roles come what must be upheld. Zhuangzi said: once form and name are clear, holding to one’s allotment should follow.

Zhuangzi’s “do not break Moye” (the famous sword) and “do not resent the floating tile” share one intent with “do not rage at the empty boat”: whoever takes the great work of Heaven and Earth as his own task is the sage.

What Zhuangzi means by “not breaking the sword in anger, not blaming the flying tile” is the same as “not venting rage at an empty boat”: Heaven and Earth hold great beauty yet do not boast; the four seasons follow constant patterns yet do not argue; the ten thousand things each have their own completion yet do not parade themselves. Hence Confucius said he wished to “speak not,” and sighed, “What does Heaven say? The four seasons turn, the hundred things are born”—not that he truly said nothing, but that like Heaven he did not cling to words while the ten thousand things transformed of themselves. Only one who truly embodies the Dao can align with this.

“Following one’s nature” (xingshuai) is going along with what is so of itself; “cultivating the Way” in the artificial sense is human contrivance. What is so of itself belongs to Heaven; contrivance belongs to the human. Within the natural there is “something attained”; outside contrivance there was “nothing from the start.” How can people forcibly strip away what they already have, then pile on what was never there? What one already has is xing (inherent nature); what one lacks is what Zhuangzi calls chi—adding branches beyond one’s share of nature. De (Virtue/Power) is likewise one’s own; heaping it up before others and showing off on top of the De one already has is “chi.” Hence “joined toes and extra fingers come from xing yet are excesses over De; wens and hanging growths come from form yet are excesses over xing”—the extra digit or tumor is surplus outside one’s allotment of nature, yet people treat it as something to display as virtue.

The noble person’s path has advance and setback, smooth passage and blockage; the sage’s Way itself is neither dull nor sharp. What ordinary people see is only the traces of advance and setback. Traces may be blocked or open, yet the heart need not be bound by blockage or openness—hence “in want one is still joyful, in ease one is still joyful”: treating want and ease only as the natural order of cold, heat, wind, and rain, not as glory or shame.

Zhuangzi also says: “Do not let gu (fixed reasons and conventions) extinguish ming (what Heaven has allotted).” Gu is human sentiment, prejudice, and the source of artificial action; ming is what one receives by nature, what the Way of Heaven grants. Using human gu to crush innate ming is called extinguishing ming; the Way of the human tends to cling to gu, while the Way of Heaven follows ming.

The Dao is like a full year’s cycle; the sage is like the season that responds when the time is ripe. Zhuang Zhou in “Autumn Floods” speaks of “when the time arrives”—when the moment that should be has come, one only does what should be done. Shallow observers point at this and object; no wonder—for one cannot speak of ice to the summer insect or of the sea to the frog in the well; not standing in that place, one cannot speak with them on equal terms.

Zhuangzi also discusses Yan Hui “forgetting Ren and Yi”: if one says “he had not yet forgotten Li and Yue,” the point is that Ren and Yi (inner partiality) are harder to release first than Li and Yue (outer forms). One reading is: forget the inner first, then the outer—Ren and Yi within, Li and Yue without; when inner and outer are both forgotten, one can “sit in forgetfulness” (zuowang). Schools differ in the order they cite, but the aim is the same: from outer to inner, from name to reality, layer by layer shedding—not a single slogan of “forget Ren and Yi” alone.

First section

The sage speaks of “not having to” as what aligns with rightness; ordinary people cannot manage this. In the sequence of “forgetting”: before one has forgotten rites and music, one has already forgotten benevolence and righteousness—so in Zhuangzi’s framework, benevolence and righteousness are set aside before rites and music, as if “benevolence and righteousness” were less central than “rites and music.” In fact Zhuangzi first treats forgetting the “inner” (fixation in the heart-and-mind), then forgetting the “outer” (norms in outward form); benevolence and righteousness belong to the “inner,” rites and music to the “outer.” Only when inner and outer are both thoroughly forgotten can one speak of “sitting in forgetfulness” (zuowang). Schools differ in wording largely because they fix on different angles.

Second section

The sage takes what is “necessary” as not necessary; the crowd takes what is “not necessary” as necessary—how is that to be understood? The so-called “great person” does not need every word to count as a pledge, nor every act to yield a fixed outcome; truly achieving “necessity within non-necessity” is also letting go of the stubbornness behind “words must be kept, deeds must be decisive.” Conversely, if one treats “words must be kept, deeds must be decisive” as iron law, that is forcing what is “not necessary” to count as “necessary.” Some of Zhuangzi’s remarks sit close to the sages’; they cannot be rejected wholesale, yet need not be equated line for line.

Third section

The sage does not deliberately erect a notion of “self,” yet genuine intent is always present; does not purposely possess “self,” yet “self” is real. He moves only when circumstances press, acts only when there is no alternative—not because a prior thought to move arose, nor because a prior “self” sought prominence, but simply in response to affairs. Zhuangzi’s “one who treats things as things is not treated as a thing by things” can connect with Xunzi’s discussion of the adept in the Way who “treats things as things”: stillness is root, movement is branch. Still and constantly at peace with things, moving and constantly responding to things—that is the sage; still yet estranged from things, moving yet entangled with things—that is the ordinary person. The sage can “treat things as things” (employ things without being employed by them); the ordinary person is “treated as a thing by things” (ruled by things). The difference lies here.

Fourth section

Confucius said the noble person reaches the Dao through learning; Zhuangzi said the Dao cannot reliably be “brought about” by human effort. Confucius said the virtue of the “Mean” (zhongyong) reaches the utmost height; Zhuangzi said De cannot be “arrived at.” Why do they seem opposed? Because Confucius stresses cultivation in the person, what can be studied and attained; Zhuangzi stresses heaven and nature, what is complete in itself. If one only affirmed “what is in heaven,” why would the Way of nature need to be “brought about” to be obtained? Why would self-sufficient De need to be “arrived at”? If one only affirmed “what is in the person,” how could deeply pursued Dao be gained without “bringing it about”? How could daily-renewed De be reached without “arriving”? Only after one can “bring about” does one know one need not bring about; only after one can “arrive” does one know one need not arrive—the two families each speak one side; they do not necessarily clash.

(The closing line matches the end of the previous section in intent: Confucius leans toward the human, Zhuangzi toward heaven; the sage “treats things as things,” the ordinary person is “treated by things”—that is all.)

On the Book Zhuangzi

The book Zhuangzi probes the hidden depths of nature and life (xingming), threading how “Dao and De” scatter through language. Its aim is to strip away the mind’s obscurity and restore clarity. This belongs to the line of teaching about “returning to the root and restoring life” (gui gen fu ming), and also to the sort of discourse that “breaks measures and overturns scales”—shattering ordinary standards—so that such a book could arise. Though the Dao is grasped in the heart beyond words, and questioning may meet no reply, one need not rely on speech; the wordless realm can exhaust the Dao’s subtlety, yet if one never speaks at all, others cannot understand—hence speech is used only when unavoidable, moved by feeling and answering when circumstances demand, carrying what was said before into what follows, so that learners forget images once they grasp the meaning, and forget words once they grasp the images—this too is Zhuangzi’s hope for the world.

Zhuangzi says: a wild pheasant in the marsh, once caged, loses its true nature. The ancient “perfect person” (zhiren) can forget scheming and quiet outer cares, align the heart with the Great Void, and meet the Dao with yin and yang, taking heaven and earth as a single morning and vast ages as one hall; with no divide between self and other, things cannot draw one close nor push one away. This is a way of stepping outside the usual frame, yet it is not the same as a marsh pheasant trapped in a cage.

Zhuangzi also says of the ancient true person: “passing by without regret, present without grasping”—the sage is not without fault; to have fault yet not dwell in self-reproach is to be at one with Heaven. If one shares the human condition, one does not begrudge correcting error, and all look up to such a one. Warmth in winter and cold in summer are faults of heaven and earth; if even heaven and earth err, how much more the sage? Great fear he calls “dread,” small fear “trembling.” Zhuangzi says: great dread is vast and diffuse; small dread is anxious and tight.

The book Zhuangzi can penetrate the divisions of nature and life, not letting death, life, fortune, or misfortune stir the heart—close to the sage. Without clear wisdom one cannot reach this; reading the sage’s words is enough to aspire toward it; yet if one cannot aspire that far and instead drowns in Zhuangzi’s doctrines, the harm is great.

When the breath of night remains, myriad cares subside; if one cannot stabilize the mind to preserve it, that is called inability to achieve “dawn clarity” (zhao che); with dawn clarity, one restores the root of De.

Section 1 (On Zhuangzi’s “honoring spirit, slighting the sage”)

Spirit (shen) is closer than “sage” (sheng) to that power which stirs and sets the ten thousand things in motion; the sage is the level of sharing worry and joy with all things. If spirit does not reach the level of “spirit,” it cannot push affairs forward; if the sage does not act, he cannot remain hidden or established. Zhuangzi’s line elevates spirit and lowers the sage—mostly overcorrecting: pressing down the Confucian standard of “sage” so the dimension of “spirit” can be made clear.

Section 2 (Root and foundation: fate and nature)

Zhuangzi’s “self-rooted, self-founded”—foundation (ben) is above, root (gen) is below. A tree’s foundation is in the branches and crown; the root is planted in the Gen (Stillness) position. The foundation grows from the root, and the root in turn attaches to the foundation—neither can be dispensed with. So: foundation is fate (ming); root is nature (xing). When Laozi says “returning to the root is called stillness,” he is speaking of nature; when he says “stillness is called returning to fate,” he is speaking of the foundation. In Zhuangzi, True Person (zhenren) and Ultimate Person (zhiren): the word true (zhen) keys to nature; the word ultimate (zhi) keys to the utmost that the human way can reach.

Section 3 (Clarity and spirit)

Clarity (ming) is spirit spread out and shining forth; spirit (shen) is the root where clarity gathers and is stored. Thus clarity comes from spirit—clarity cannot surpass spirit.

Section 4 (The Gate of Heaven opening and closing)

Laozi has “the Gate of Heaven (tianmen) opens and closes.” Zhuangzi says: the Gate of Heaven can be spoken of as non-being and also as being—the ten thousand things are born and flow out from there, called opening; the ten thousand things return and are stored there, called closing. Hence this pass is described with “being and non-being.”

Section 5 (Xingming and “not seeing its ultimate”)

Zhuangzi’s xingming refers to a realm without end, yet with layer upon layer of ending—again without end. The ten thousand things stir and bustle, all generated within it; hence not seeing its ultimate (bu jian qi ji)—the furthest boundary cannot be seen.

Section 6 (Heaven, Earth, and the ten thousand things)

The ten thousand things are all complete within Heaven and Earth, yet Heaven and Earth do not deliberately “want” to create the ten thousand things—there is no such subjective planning. The earlier ideas of “xingming” and “not seeing its ultimate” mean: generation happens naturally within this structure of endlessness and no ultimate limit, not as if Heaven and Earth had a human-like “design.”