《庄子翼》Vol. 4

A person in the state of menran wangyan—serenely forgetting words—is not someone who deliberately “knows nothing,” but one in whom the spontaneous workings of Heaven’s mechanism operate on their own, so that speech is no longer needed.

“Punishment” (xing) is the root of governing the realm, yet it is not something “I” personally devise; “ritual” (li) is what the world carries out of itself, not what “I” forcibly impose; “knowledge” (zhi) is a timely expedient, not something “I” alone promote; “virtue” (de) is what others follow—it is not something “I” manufacture.

Taking punishment as the governing body means entrusting rule to the operation of penal sanction itself—even when there is killing, the overall tendency remains lenient and relaxed. Taking ritual as auxiliary means acting in accord with what the times allow, so nothing fails to go through.

High and low receive one another in succession—that is an irreversible flow; large and small gather in groups—that is an unavoidable situation. “Vastly without partial affection” is the treasury where collective intelligence converges. One who receives the confluence of a hundred streams and stands at the utmost of being a teacher—what can he still do? Only entrust the intelligence of the age to its course and hand over what must happen to all under Heaven.

What “Qiu” (Confucius) established was the root; speaking from nature (xing), it is the root of nature. Each thing rests in its own sufficiency; sufficiency lies in the root. Returning the cluster of virtues to their self-operation is like feet each returning to their root. When the root is reached, principle is exhausted.

All of this is accomplished from the other side; accomplishment is not in the “self.” Therefore even at the extreme of myriad affairs, one remains constantly at leisure and at ease—suddenly unaware that events pass through one’s person, menran unaware that words are in the mouth—while the world is greatly deluded and truly believes the perfected person is one who toils and cultivates with bitter effort!

This passage explains what the Dao and the True Person (Zhenren) are like, and how people commonly misunderstand them.

The Dao is roughly like this: it accords with principle yet does not take partisan sides; you cannot draw it near through intimacy, nor push it away through distance—so closeness and distance cannot fix its high or low standing. It is like a gu (a type of wine vessel): outwardly it is not stiff or rigid; in action it is not perfectly round yet is not stubbornly fixed; on the surface it seems empty yet is not mere ornament; its words do not fill things out yet do not harm the root.

The bearing of the True Person is like this: easy and broad, as if joy were always present, at ease and self-sufficient; yet at times seeming pressed, as if responding only when there is no choice, answering when compelled. Inwardly essence is gathered and refined, outwardly spirit shines forth; De (Virtue/Power) is settled, its use extended to things, while the inner mind does not churn with outer circumstances. Strictness, loftiness, and continuity—these three describe reaching the utmost of Wuwei (non-action); speech that is blurred and seems almost absent describes reaching the utmost of wordlessness.

When the text speaks of the True Person’s way as Wuwei and wordlessness, it does not mean abandoning everything; it means taking law and standards, ritual propriety, knowledge, and De as the foundation. The classics also often compare the Dao to mountains and De to mounds, as with Mount Miaogushe, the Mound of Yinbi, Mount Juci, the Mound of Kunlun, and similar images—all figures of this kind.

Yet people often mistake this: the True Person’s use of the Dao does not depend on toil, while others think the more strenuously one acts, the more like a True Person one becomes. It is like seeing how many things exist and then doubting whether heaven and earth were carved and cut by a craftsman’s labor—treating the Dao as something that must be achieved only through frantic effort. That is precisely the point of the criticism.

The true person treats what is liked and what is disliked alike; being at one with the Dao and not being at one with it are the same for them too. When they accord with the Dao, they keep company with Heaven; when they are caught up in human affairs, they keep company with people. Heaven and humanity do not overpower each other—this is what is meant by “the true person.”

Life and death are only the bounds of fate, like having day because there is night—a constant of Heaven. What people cannot do or cannot change is the plain truth of how things are. Since people revere and cherish themselves while taking Heaven as father, how much more should they revere that independently transforming excellence called the Real? People think it better to have a lord than to be their own master, yet they will die for their ruler—how much more should they follow the Real that accords with nature?

When the spring dries up, fish stranded on land use moisture and spittle to keep each other alive—a poor substitute for each going back to the rivers and lakes and forgetting one another. Rather than praising Yao and denouncing Jie, it is better to drop all dispute over right and wrong and return together to the Dao.

Guo Xiang’s note, in essence: The true person is ordinarily without a fixed intent and follows things as they come, so likes, dislikes, and what they approve or reject are not at odds with things. To speak of “oneness” is to be of one kind with Heaven; to speak of “not-oneness” is to be of one kind with people. The true person lets Heaven and humanity each have their place and does not use oneness to reject not-oneness. What has no not-oneness is Heaven; what has self and other is humanity. The true person is one with Heaven and also equalizes the myriad things, so things do not negate one another and Heaven and humanity do not conquer each other. Then they are at ease with nothing that does not fit and release everything without forcing it.

The turn of day and night is Heaven’s constant, so to know that life and death are the limit of fate is not reckless disorder—it is like day and night and need not bind you. In the day the true person rests in the day; in the night they rest in the night. Treating life and death as day and night, what could be “unacceptable”? The worries people cannot lay down are mostly the pull of things, not the order of Heaven.

“Excellence” (zhuó) means independent transformation—each thing completing itself on its own. Mutual reliance is not as good as each thing independently transforming to the utmost. What people rely on is Heaven; what Heaven completes is independent transformation. People take Heaven as father, so they are calm before cold, heat, day, and night—how much more when independent transformation is pushed to the limit and they wander with the Dao? The Real is being so of itself, without borrowing from anything outside. What is natural cannot be violated—is that less binding than a lord’s command? Hence the image of the dried fish: when there is too little and they barely keep each other alive, that is worse than having enough and forgetting one another in the rivers and lakes. Praise and blame come from insufficiency; when there is full sufficiency, good and evil are both forgotten, life and death are the same as transformation, and one is open with nothing ill-suited—who still cares whether Yao or Jie is right or wrong?

Commentary (Lü)

If people only see what is the same in things, they will not see how they differ. Those who like something call it beautiful and good—beauty and goodness arise from this single “one”; those who dislike it call it ugly and bad—evil and bad arise from the same habit of making distinctions. Thus good and bad are, at bottom, one and the same. “One” is like water in a clear, still state; “not one” is like ripples and currents—and ripples and currents are still water. Who understands this knows that stillness is not achieved only by forcing oneself to stop moving.

Yet there is a difference between “one” and “not one”: what is “one” is of a kind with Heaven and withdraws into what is deep and hidden; what is “not one” is of a kind with people and shares fortune and misfortune with the crowd. What human effort cannot demand yet comes of itself is called fate (ming); what cannot be deliberately engineered yet is accomplished naturally is called Heaven (tian). What people ultimately cannot do is the plain truth of things. Why then should I be glad or sad over life and death, fortune or disaster?

When Heaven is taken as the root of life, the body is still to be cherished—how much more what is more fundamental than the life the body carries? As “father”—the source of birth—it is utterly supreme; how could one fail to treasure it? If one knows that supreme source and treasures it, then in living there is no need for excessive joy. People oddly think that having a ruler makes one nobler than oneself—yet the self still dies; how much more the more genuine True (zhen)? If one knows that True and accords with it, then in dying there is no need for excessive fear.

The spring of nature and life (xingming) was there from the start, yet it dries up on the ground of artificial striving; moistening it with a little benevolence and righteousness is not as good as forgetting one another in the great “rivers and lakes” of Daoist practice—forgetting one another amid the comings and goings of life and death. Delighting in life and loathing death is ordinary human feeling; where there is neither death nor birth, there is Dao. Praising Yao and condemning Jie is likewise ordinary feeling. To know how to forget both and no longer split praise from blame is to dissolve into Dao. Thus the means used to forget life and death were never really different to begin with.

New Transmission

The true person (zhenren) has no fixed heart-and-mind, so likes and dislikes can return to “one.” The true person holds fast to “two”—Yin-Yang, right and wrong, and other paired oppositions—yet does not cling to a single fixed standard, and so can be “the same” with the ten thousand things.

Without deliberate mind yet unified, following what is natural—hence it is said one is a companion of Heaven (tian). Embracing oneness yet sharing sameness, one is sometimes still moved by outer circumstances—hence it is said one is a companion of people (ren). Slander and praise are shifts in worldly sentiment; the sage may respond outwardly, but inwardly is unobstructed. If one casts off worldly sentiment and treats “forgetting both sides entirely” as the sole absolute right, how can one still be called a companion of people? That is the position Zhuangzi criticizes—yet muddled Confucian scholars turn it around to condemn Zhuangzi.

This passage explains why people come to “dislike living and hate dying,” and what it really means to understand the Way.

Ordinary people rejoice when things seem “good” and loathe what seems “bad,” so they draw a sharp line between life and death. Someone who is not especially glad to live or especially averse to dying does so because they understand the “One”—the One that is Heaven and the inherent pattern of all things. With that understanding, they do not use human cleverness to “help Heaven along,” and they do not use private motives to turn away from the Dao. The saying that there must first be a “true person” (zhenren) before there can be “true knowing” points to this kind of insight: seeing things as they are—life and death have their allotted course, as ordinary as day and night turning in Heaven, not something human effort can capriciously rewrite. That is the real situation of things, what is meant by “excellence” and “authenticity.”

Humans cannot leave this Way, any more than fish can leave water. Once they leave it, the originally unified One is no longer unified, and right and wrong, praise and blame, swarm up in disorder. Better to forget both sides of every pair and dissolve into the Dao—only then does one truly grasp the One. It is not only right/wrong and praise/blame that must be forgotten on both sides; even the great change of life and death must be forgotten on both sides, with no reliance on human striving to fight or resist. For life and death may look “not one” on the surface, yet on the level of the One they have never truly split.

The text then borrows Zhuang Zhou’s image of the “Great Clump”: Heaven-and-earth gave me a body, uses life to wear me out, uses old age to give me rest, uses death to give me peace. So whoever is good at arranging how I live is also good at arranging how I die. Stashing a boat in a valley or a mountain in a marsh, thinking it is secure—yet in the middle of the night a strong man can carry the whole thing off, and the muddled person still does not know. Small things and large each have a fitting hiding place, yet something can still be lost. Hide the world within “the world” itself, and there is nowhere left to flee—that is the great constant truth of the ten thousand things.

People only temporarily receive a human form and are already so delighted; that form will go through ten thousand transformations without end—how could the joy in that be counted? Therefore the sage roams where the ten thousand things “have nowhere to escape,” calmly accepting short life, long life, decline, beginning, and end. Ordinary people can take this as a model; how much more so the One that sustains the ten thousand things and what all transformations depend on?

The point of this supplementary commentary is to clarify “knowing Heaven’s oneness, doubly forgetting, and not helping Heaven with human artifice”: true person and true knowing mean accepting life and death and the myriad changes as they are, and no longer pitting likes and dislikes against Heaven’s principle.

This passage is Guo Xiang’s commentary on the Zhuangzi. Its core idea is that form, life, aging, and death all belong to “me”; one should become one with transformation and need not cling to preserving an old self.

The aging and death of the body are still part of “me”: form is what I bear, life is what I toil through, aging is what I rest in, and death is what I settle into. These four keep changing, yet they never leave “me”—so why should I be stingy about them? Life and death are both fate; it is not only the “good” that lives. If living is taken as good, then dying is equally good. Here he first speaks of the limit where change cannot be escaped, then uses the “proof of inevitable change” to show that one should follow transformation without being bound.

The greatest “power” is nothing other than transformation itself. Hence heaven and earth constantly tend toward the new; mountains and hills abandon their old shapes and renew themselves without pause—suddenly one has already entered a new state—so nothing in heaven and earth is ever free from migration for a single moment. The world is always new, yet people think they are still the old selves; Zhoushan changes daily, yet the eye seems still to see what was before; in the blink of an arm’s turn, what was lost has already departed in change.

Therefore the former “me” is no longer the present “me”; I pass away together with “now”—how could I forever hold to what was? Most people do not notice this; they think what they meet before their eyes can be tied down and made to stay—is that not foolish? Not knowing how to be one whole with transformation, yet trying to hide it and stop it from changing—even if hidden ever so deep and firm, each in its place—still cannot prevent daily change. Whatever hides and clings cannot halt change’s slipping away; one who hides nothing and yields to transformation cannot be altered by change. With nothing hidden and complete yielding to transformation, one is in silent union with all things and one with all transformation; then there is no inside or outside, no birth or death—body merged with heaven and earth, responding to change—and if one wished to escape, there would be nowhere to go. This is the great truth of the myriad things, not a narrow partial view.

Human form is but one meeting in myriad transformation, one encounter among the boundless and inexhaustible—and each such encounter is like this human form. Is human form alone worth rejoicing in, while the rest of the myriad things have no joy? What was not human form became human form; becoming human form means losing the “old constant”; losing the old and rejoicing means rejoicing in the form one has met. Transformation is inexhaustible—where could one not meet something? To rejoice in what one meets—where could joy end? The sage wanders the path of transformation, lets himself drift in the stream of daily renewal; the myriad things and myriad changes change together with him; where transformation is inexhaustible, he too is inexhaustible with it—who could escape?

What is death for life is existence for death; if death counts as existence, then when is it not existence? Seeking balance within a hundred years—though one may not yet embody transformation and equalize life and death like a sage—the refined evenness is still enough to serve as a teacher for others; how much more one like Nanrong Chu, who is mysteriously one with the myriad things and one whole with transformation, and is honored by the world—is that not only natural?

Master Lü’s Commentary in Plain Language

Heaven and earth, as the great mass of things, have never shown me partial favor. If I devote myself to goodness, I do good while alive and the same when I die—why should I then be glad or bitter about life and death, or about whatever befalls me?

Things great and small alike live in a realm where “when the mind is present they endure, when the mind is gone they vanish.” Turn away from the Great Dao and nothing can long remain without slipping away. So one may hide a boat in a valley and a mountain in a marsh and call that secure; yet once my mind lets go, in the middle of the night everything can suddenly be gone—then, if something is still here, one hides it away as best one can. In depths beyond fathoming, who but one who is “strong” could manage that?

However well one hides the small and the great, there will still be times of “escape and loss.” To use a finite life to hide the infinite things of heaven and earth, and still expect them never to scatter—how is that the way ordinary affairs work? The world is where the myriad things return to oneness; obtain this one and hide within this one—then even if someone strong tried to carry it off and run, where could they run? Without the realm of genuine knowing, one cannot align with this.

Doctrinal Point Cited from the Zhao Lun

When Zhuangzi speaks of “hiding the boat” and Confucius of the “flowing river,” both are lamenting that what is past cannot be held. People think youth and old age are one body and a hundred years one substance—they notice only that years pass, not that form and countenance have long since changed with them. Hence the foreign ascetic left home and returned with white hair; a neighbor asked, “Is the person of old still here?” He replied, “I am still that person, yet no longer the person of those days.” The neighbors were astonished and could not understand.

What is meant by “the strong one carries it off and hurries away,” which the foolish never notice—does it not describe exactly this?

This passage from Jiang Yu explains that human beings and all things alike take part in hua (transformation), and bodily form shifts along with that process. Across a lifetime of a hundred years, the great transformations can be divided into stages; within them, years turn and days and months drift on—and even between one breath and the next, what came before is no longer the same as what follows.

It is like wind striking the water: the wave in front is not the wave behind; or a lamp in a jar, where the flame of one moment is not the flame of the last. In a single bow or lift of the head, the visible form has already changed countless times. The obtuse person drifts with creation and transformation without noticing, seeing only the old traces that have already taken shape and remain before the eyes, while failing to sense that creation and transformation are secretly advancing without pause.

When things take form and reach fullness, people rejoice only in what has been achieved, unaware that the logic of loss and decline was already latent within; when things fail and decay, people lament only the loss, unaware that new completion and new advance are already underway. Yang Zhu’s Dayin yan (Great Hidden Words) says, “When the moon wanes in the east, one does not know it is brightening in the west”—meaning that the great transformation migrates in secret, loss and completion pushing each other forward, while people often see only one side.

Applied to oneself: over a hundred years, complexion, spirit, skin, nails, and hair are not the same for a single day—this could not be more obvious—so why still fail to awaken? That is what Zhuangzi’s discussion of “cang zhou” (the hidden boat—change concealed from view) and Confucius’s lament for the passing stream (time flowing away like water) are meant to convey.

Commentary

This uses Zhuangzi’s image of “stowing a boat in a valley and a mountain in a marsh” to show that people live within the creative work of Heaven and Earth, and cannot escape the changes that work brings.

All things under heaven: where there is storing, there is “dun” (vanishing, slipping away); once something has vanished, it no longer exists in the sense it had before. Precisely because nothing is privately hoarded, things cannot truly flee, and within the Great Transformation they always “are.” Whoever can rest in this state dwells in the “Land of Never-Was” and the “Broad Wasteland”; roaming there, following chance encounters without contrivance, open and far-sighted, they are nowhere absent—this is what “hiding the world within the world” means. Even when mechanisms of emergence and entry churn and myriad forms arise and change, one sees only daily renewal—so where could things run?

Ordinary people, clinging to private opinions, treat things as their own possessions; they take boat and mountain to be unmoving things, ravine and marsh to be places of concealment, and bodily form to have a region that does not transform. They do not know that the dark pivot turns silently, that not a moment stands still, and that thing, place, and form all change without their noticing. Is there then a way to rise above vanishing and change? The answer: no hoarding, no grasping; let the heart wander with Heaven. If even “seeing what is present” cannot be obtained, how could one know what is called vanishing and change?

Scripture

The Dao is real and trustworthy, wuwei (non-action) and formless. It can be transmitted but not received as a possession; it can be attained but not seen. From itself, rooted in itself, before Heaven and Earth existed, it has been firmly there from antiquity: it is the lord of ghosts and spirits, the begetter of Heaven and Earth. It is before the Taiji (Supreme Ultimate) yet is not “high”; below the six extremes yet is not “deep”; it arises with Heaven and Earth yet is not “long-lived”; it extends back before high antiquity yet is not “old.”

Xiwei received it and could uphold Heaven and Earth; Fuxi received it and could inherit the mother of Qi (vital energy); the Dipper received it and to the end of time does not err; sun and moon received it and to the end of time do not cease; Kanpi received it and could inherit Kunlun; Pingyi received it and could roam the great rivers; Jianwu received it and could dwell on great mountains; the Yellow Emperor received it and could ascend the cloud-heaven; Zhuanxu received it and could dwell in the dark palace; Yuqiang received it and stands at the north pole; the Queen Mother of the West received it and sits in Shaoguang—no one knows her beginning or end; Peng Zu received it and lived from the time of Shun down through the Five Hegemons; Fu Yue received it, served as minister to King Wuding, held all under heaven, rode the eastern ridge, took his place at the Tail and Winnowing Basket of the Dipper, and was ranked among the stars.

“Emotionless emotion” is therefore Wuwei (non-action); “the trust of the constant in nothingness” is therefore formlessness. From ancient times to the present all dwell within it; none can truly “possess” it, yet each finds room for themselves, while its form remains unseen. Before heaven and earth arose, it was already there—discerning all without relying on “being,” so that even “non-being” does not apply. How could it “give birth” to spirit? It is not spirit commanding ghosts and gods; ghosts and gods are numinous of themselves—this is divinity without divinity. It is not that it gives birth to heaven and earth; heaven and earth transform of themselves—this is birth without birth.

Therefore, taking a person as the outcome is not enough to make one divine; one who does not falsely claim divinity aligns with the divine. What is there to rely on in fame and merit? What is there to depend on in achievement and enterprise?

The Dao does not show height where it is high, depth where it is deep, duration where it is long, or age where it is old—it is nowhere absent, yet wherever it is, that place is empty. Above and below it pervades without gap; height and low cannot be paired to name it. Inside and outside it reaches without limit; inside and outside cannot be named as such. It shifts with transformation, so it cannot be called “long-lasting”; from beginning to end it is constantly without being, so it cannot be called “old.”

From Zhuanxu (or from the Wei clan, legendary ancient rulers) obtaining this Dao, down to standing among the array of stars—the phrase “obtaining it from the Dao” is meant to show each attaining for themselves. The Dao cannot “grant” attainment to anyone; if I have not attained, the Dao cannot attain for me. Thus whoever attains the Dao does not borrow it from outside nor is driven from within; suddenly and openly they attain for themselves and transform independently.

The difficulty of being born is like independent transformation and self-attainment. Once life is already had, why worry about not being born and act on purpose? Therefore taking “birth” as an outcome is not enough to preserve life—for birth was never from oneself; if one forces it, one harms true life.

Ears and eyes hear and see, hands and feet walk and move—do they not all come alive because of the Dao? The alternation of cold and heat, the growth of the ten thousand things—do they not all become steady and trustworthy because of the Dao? Yet if one asks who is acting, no concrete agent can be found—for the Dao is originally without form. Sometimes it lets people understand without words; sometimes a single sight imprints it on the heart—so one may say it is “transmittable.” Yet it cannot be grasped and owned like a thing, nor received as something brought from outside. Only when the mind joins with it, as lip meets lip naturally, is one said truly to “obtain” it; while its traces and first signs cannot be pinned down, so it is also called “not visible.” The ten thousand things, when they are born, always have some root; the Dao, however, is “rooted in itself,” not established by borrowing from anything else. The ten thousand things depend on Heaven and Earth to be; the Dao was already there before Heaven and Earth arose, thus from of old. If ghosts and spirits treat the Dao as “spirit,” the Dao itself is not the limited wonder of ghosts and spirits, so ghosts and spirits are not truly “spirit” in the full sense. If Heaven and Earth treat the Dao as the source of “birth,” the Dao itself is not born—so even now one may still speak of it as the state before Taiji (Supreme Ultimate) was undivided. Calling it “profound” describes its depth; calling it “long-lived and old” describes its duration. The Dao has no fixed appearance and no fixed temporal order, hence “the Dao hides and has no name.” Sages of antiquity, whether in hiding or in plain view, differed in many ways, yet none became a sage without attaining the Dao—not only the legendary ancient rulers from Suwei down to Getian. The Dao is “the mother of all under Heaven”; from Heaven downward, whatever can stand firm does so only by the Dao—not only the plain models such as the Northern Dipper, the sun, and the moon. For these reasons the Dao rightly deserves the title “great teacher and master.”

This chapter of Da Zong Shi (The Great Ancestral Teacher) is about the Dao: only here does it become clear that the Dao itself is formless and wuwei (non-action). When the text speaks of it as having “qing” (inner responsiveness) and “xin” (trust/faithfulness), that is from the perspective of those who can discern its first traces. “Qing” is movement within stillness; “xin” is the confirmation within that movement—the same “xin” Laozi meant in “within it there is xin” (you qi zhong you xin).

Taiyi is the stage before qi has yet appeared; Taichu is when qi first begins to emerge. Before qi appears is “father”; qi is “mother.” The Northern Dipper (Beidou) is the pivot of heaven, hence “wei dou” (pivot of the Dipper). Kanpi is a spirit name, human-faced and beast-bodied. Feng Yi is He Bo (River Lord); legend makes him a man of Dishou, Tong Township, Huayin, who became a water immortal after taking eight shi of elixir; another tale says he drowned in the river on the gengzi day of the eighth month while bathing. Jian Wu is a mountain spirit who does not die; by the time of Confucius, the Yellow Emperor had attained the Dao and ascended—referring to the ascent at Ding Lake. Zhuanxu dwells in the palace of the north (the Yueling says: its emperor is Zhuanxu, its spirit is Zhuanxu/Ming); Yuqiang is a sea god—the Shanhai jing describes a god on the islet of the Northern Sea, human-faced and bird-bodied, with two green snakes in the ears and two red snakes under the feet, named Yuqiang. Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu) in the Shanhai jing is human in form, with a dog’s tail, unkempt hair, a sheng headdress, and a piercing cry, dwelling on the banks of the Xun River; in the Han Wudi neizhuan she and the Lady of Upper Primordium descend before the emperor with the countenance of immortals. Shaoguang is a mountain name; some say it is the name of the empty realm of the west. The passage “riding the eastern pivot, passing through Ji and Wei” means traveling along the eastern pivot of the Celestial River (Tianhan) and passing between Ji and Dou; Ji and Dou are the eastern pivot of the Tianhan.

Nanbo Zikui asked Nüyu (note: some texts read Yu): You are old in years, yet your complexion is like a child’s—why?

She said: I have heard the Dao.

Nanbo Zikui asked: Can the Dao be learned?

She answered: No—how could it be! You are not the right person. Bulian Yi had a sage’s talent but not a sage’s Dao; I had a sage’s Dao but not a sage’s talent. I wanted to teach him the Dao, hoping he might truly become a sage—or else, to tell the Dao to one who has a sage’s talent would in itself be easy. I still held to teaching him: after three days he could “externalize the world”; having externalized the world, I still held to it—after seven days he could “externalize things”; having externalized things, I still held to it—after nine days he could “externalize life”; having externalized life, he could then reach “morning clarity” (zhao che); after morning clarity he could “see the solitary” (jian du); after seeing the solitary he could be “without past and present”; without past and present he could enter “neither death nor birth.”

“As for what it does, there is nothing it does not send off, nothing it does not welcome, nothing it does not destroy, nothing it does not complete”—this is called yingning (responsive stillness). “Yingning” means that after disturbance and conflict one can still settle and bring things to completion.

Nanbo Zikui asked: You alone—how did you hear the Dao?

She answered: I heard it from Fumo’s son; Fumo’s son heard it from Luosong’s grandson; Luosong’s grandson heard it from Zhanming; Zhanming heard it from Nie Xu; Nie Xu heard it from Xuyi; Xuyi heard it from Yu’ou; Yu’ou heard it from Ming; Ming heard it from Canliao; Canliao heard it from Yishi (Doubt’s Beginning).

(Note: “The one who slays life does not die”—some explain this as forgetting life and ceasing to nurture the body, hence not dying; “the one who gives life to life does not live”—some explain this as clinging to life and always tending one’s survival, hence not truly living.)

After one has heard the Way, one lets the ten thousand things arise and perish on their own without forcing or meddling—then form and spirit are full and the complexion is vibrant. What is called “outer” still means setting outer things down: the things daily life requires are hard to part with; if one can also release attachment to outward living, one no longer clings to life; not clinging to life, one does not hate death; not hating death, one can meet whatever comes with ease.

When the heart is broad and unobstructed, seeing the subtle and acting with the trend is what Zhuangzi called “morning clarity” (zhao che). Meeting each situation and resting there, no longer stringing past and future into one thread, is “seeing the Alone” (jian du). Roaming with the Alone, there is no divide of ancient and modern. Ordinary people cling to life, so they have thoughts of death; they loathe death, so they crave life. Neither clinging nor loathing, there is no opposition of life and death.

Let it deploy itself and there is nothing “later to connect”; let it come of itself and nothing is not met; let it perish of itself and nothing is not destroyed; let it complete of itself and nothing fails to succeed. One who merges with things in darkness—when things tangle, they tangle with things yet never lose peace. When things tangle but the Alone in the heart does not tangle along, there is injury and ruin; therefore in tangle one still lets it be natural, and nothing fails to come full circle.

“Darkness” (ming) is a name for “nothing” (wu), but wu is not taken as empty void. Climbing through names and forms step by step until one reaches wu requires genuinely realizing wu beyond names and forms. Thus even at ming one has not reached the ultimate; one must further entrust oneself to “canliao”—darkness upon darkness.

The pattern of nature often forms through accumulated habit by degrees: from the near step one penetrates, from the coarse one enters the fine. Hence it is said that only after seven layers is it called “without name,” and only after nine layers does one doubt whether wu is the starting point.

When a person has truly encountered the Dao, worry no longer enters the heart, so though the years advance, one’s bearing still resembles youth. Someone who has the sage’s Way can hold fast to the root and the great source; someone who has the sage’s capacity can extend that Way through all under heaven and the realm. Bu Liangyi had capacity but not the Way, so he could only hold on and receive instruction, moving step by step from the coarse toward the subtle.

First one “treats all under heaven as external,” then “treats things as external,” then “treats life as external”—only then does one reach “dawn-like clarity.” This means sinking body and mind into embodied existence and turning inward until the insight is thorough and bright, like night giving way to morning. “Seeing the Alone” means this and that each find their proper pairing, with no fixed “ancient” or “present,” joining with myriad ages yet becoming one pure whole. “Not dying, not being born”: what is called death is what “I” destroy, yet “I” have never died; what is called birth is what “I” generate, yet “I” have never been born. Meeting and parting, completion and ruin—though all of it stirs and presses upon one, “I” am never endangered; hence the name yingning (tranquility after stirring): yingning is what is fully formed only after the stirring. To take the Dao as one’s substance is what is primary; what ink and commentary discuss is secondary. Luosong means threading cotton through silk and reciting in that way; “descendants” points to the place where what the Dao begets is found.

From Fumo through Zhanming is learning with partial insight; from Shexu through Ou is practice that reaches joy—yet even these do not suffice as the whole of the Dao. In Aoming there is no seeing and no knowing; in Canliao even “nothing” is not established. To doubt it as a beginning yet not know it as a beginning—that very unknowing is where its being a beginning lies.

Following the original intent

Zhaoche (morning illumination) means becoming suddenly and fully clear in a single morning—not waiting for the gradual stages of practice described as “seven days” or “nine days.” (Commentators use this to explain what Zhuangzi means by zhaoche.)

Withered in body and dead at heart: the body is dried up and the mind seems dead, hence it is called “killing life”—yet that is not literally destroying life. Indulging passion and desire without restraint: one gives free rein to emotion and desire, hence it is called “giving life to life”—yet that is not truly sustaining life. The text uses these paired phrases to point to Zhuangzi’s cultivation stance: neither quite death nor quite life, neither quite killing nor quite nurturing.

Jiang, song, ying, and chu: in the commentary these characters are treated as terms with fixed meanings and are explained one by one (roughly along lines of welcoming and seeing off, stirring, touching, and contact—unpacking the wording in the scripture).

Fumo and Luosong are fictitious names, standing for matters tied to writing, ink, and recitation. Zhanming and Niexu are likewise false names, standing for the eyes and ears and other senses. Xuyi yu ou is a fictitious figure who serves song and chant, standing for meanings connected to music, vocal art, and being put to use in that way.

Canliao means joining and merging with the vast and far-off (in the same vein as emptiness, distance, and non-clinging).

As for the beginning of kuangmi (sometimes written mingmi, obscure vastness), one is already at mystery heaped upon mystery—at a starting point so broad and dim that it cannot be named, layer upon layer of depth remains, and it cannot all be said at once.

Note: This passage comes from commentary on fictitious names and terms in the Zhuangzi. The transmitted text may have missing or corrupt characters; the above follows common readings in plain language while keeping the sense of “false names” and specialized terms.

This passage continues from the earlier discussion of “obtaining the Dao.” It explains that the Dao is not easily heard with one’s own ears, nor easily passed on to others.

“Treating all under heaven as external” is not the same as “treating things as external.” Though the realm under heaven is vast, people easily keep it at a distance as something “outside”; concrete things right before the eyes are harder to let go of completely. So it is relatively easier to treat the world as external than to release thing after thing in front of you. The chapter on “treating things as external” stresses that the hardest step is to treat what arises outside the self as external—and only after forgetting the self can one go further.

After the self is forgotten, the heart can become “zhao che”—clear as dawn. When the heart is transparent, one can “jian du”—see the One that is unlike any thing yet runs through all things. Having seen the One, there is no split between past and present or coming and going; only then can one truly speak of the Dao.

The author asks again: how does one enter the state of “neither birth nor death”? Zhuangzi says “the one who slays life does not die; the one who gives life to life lives.” This is not about killing living beings. It means: whoever can “slay” the heart of reckless action and clinging keeps the true Shen (spirit) alive; whoever is dragged by arising and ceasing, grasping and rejecting, may seem busy in heart but has a dead spirit. Ordinary people welcome success and fear ruin, tangled with gain and loss—the heart shuttles among them: one thought to please, one to fear destruction, one to bring things about—thoughts of birth and death rise and fall without rest. If one then loathes this and tries to push it away, one fails to see that the wish to remove the mind of birth-and-death is itself birth-and-death—how could one enter the homeland of “neither death nor birth”?

“Nothing is not received, nothing is not welcomed, nothing is not destroyed, nothing is not completed”—not deliberately welcoming, rejecting, destroying, or completing; letting what comes come, without adding extra calculation—this is “ying ning”: being stirred and jostled in the hubbub, yet settling within it. Ying ning is great stillness achieved amid worldly disorder; it is not the same as seeking reality by wiping out every worldly appearance, annihilating everything into void—that path is not this one.

The closing mentions fu mo (secondary writing), luo song (recitation tied to the Luo document), and designations such as Zhanming (seeing), Nie Xu (hearing), Xu Yi (acting), Yu Ou (singing), Shen Fang (depth), Can Liao (emptiness), and Yi Shi (doubting the beginning before any beginning)—to say that if discourse on the Dao stops at words, one must still receive it in the heart and meet it in spirit; only then does it resemble the layer seen alone after “zhao che,” rather than labels hung on the lips.

Zishi, Ziyu, Zili, and Zilai were talking together. They said: “Who can take ‘nonbeing’ as the head, life as the spine, and death as the rump? Whoever understands that death, life, existence, and perishing are one whole—we will befriend him.” The four looked at one another and laughed; their minds were fully in accord, and they became friends.

Before long Ziyu fell ill. Zishi went to see him and said: “The Maker is going to make you into this cramped, twisted shape—your spine bent, hair hanging loose, the five viscera turned upward, your chin tucked into your navel, shoulders higher than your crown, a lump on your neck like a wen pointing at the sky. Yin and Yang are out of balance, yet in his heart it is as if nothing were wrong. Dragging his feet, he hobbled to the well, looked at his reflection in the water, and said: ‘Alas! The Maker is going to make me into this cramped, twisted shape again.’”

Zishi asked: “Do you resent it?”

Ziyu said: “No—what is there to resent? If bit by bit my left arm turned into a rooster, I would use it to crow at dawn; if bit by bit my right arm turned into a pellet, I would use it to shoot owls and roast them for food; if bit by bit my buttocks turned into a wheel and my spirit into a horse, I would ride them—why would I need another carriage? Besides, ‘gaining’ is a matter of timing, ‘losing’ is a matter of yielding. When one rests in the time and follows what fits, joy and grief cannot enter the heart. The ancients called this ‘suspended release’—as if tied to the stake of life and death, yet able to untie oneself. Those who cannot release themselves are bound by outer things. Things have never been able to overcome Heaven; that has been so for long ages—so again, what is there for me to resent?”

For reading the original, a few glosses help. Juju describes the body severely contracted and unable to straighten. Gouzhui is a knob or wen-like protrusion on the neck (the commentary also links it with the nape, suggesting an abnormal neck). Pianshen is a foot ailment—unsteady steps, a limp. Xuanjie (suspended release) means not being tied fast to life and death, but following change until the heart frees itself; Guo Xiang’s note stresses that if one accepts natural change and rests in the timely, there is no lament; where there is release, nothing remains unreleased—failure to release means things have knotted one. Li is disordered, conflicting qi (Guo: disorderly). Jianjia means gradually, little by little (Guo: by degrees).

Lu’s Commentary

Zhuangzi uses images such as a hunched back, a curved spine, and a neck stretched toward the sky to describe a body twisted and deformed by illness—something people find hard to look at. For the most part this is merely disorder of yin and yang qi (li: discord or perversity in the breath), not some separate, fundamental “guilt” or “punishment.”

Where the mind can release, nothing need remain bound—if one truly lets go of clinging to the physical form, every kind of constriction can be “released” in meaning; if the mind does not release, no amount of external fixing will ever finish the job. Heaven itself alternates day and night—how could humans avoid birth and death, and why obsessively hate that cycle?

When the heart is idle and stirs up no needless affairs, even a halting, shuffling gait does not prevent “mirroring the well”—using well water as a mirror to see one’s original nature: turning inward to reflect on xing (nature) rather than being dragged about by the carcass.

“Gradually transforming” unfolds in three stages, yet what is realized remains one: this is “myriad transformations without ever reaching a fixed limit”—change is inexhaustible, yet there is no true end point or fixed pole.

Taking “non-being” as the head, “life” as the spine, and “death” as the rump (posterior): existence is grasped as the whole passage from nothing → life → death. Shen (spirit, the ruling presence) is what turns all of this; hence taking the rump as wheel and shen as horse, one rides that “horse” along and need not seek another cart or team to drive.

Coming into life, one does not know from where one comes; gaining life is “timeliness.” Departing, one cannot resist; losing life is “compliance.” Resting in timeliness and complying with the flow, joy and grief cannot enter the heart—then there is no obstruction: this is “release” (jie). To grasp for what is not timely, or to resist when one should comply, is “things knot one so one cannot release oneself”—bound by outer things and fixations, unable to free oneself.

Once one knows that arrival cannot be refused and departure cannot be warded off, one sees that things (body, circumstances) cannot overcome tian (heaven, the natural order)—why should I hate them?

General Meaning

Head, spine, and rump are only figures for beginning, middle, and end. All things begin in non-being and end in non-being; birth and death are no more than a flicker of thought and a turn of qi. If one enters the state where there is neither death nor birth, the constant truth one preserves—how could it rest on a seven-foot frame?

Before long, Zilai fell gravely ill, his breath faint, clearly near death. His wife and children gathered around him weeping. Zili came to visit and said, “Step back! Do not weep—do not obstruct transformation.” He leaned in the doorway and spoke to Zilai: “How great the Creator is! What will it do with you next? What will it turn you into? Rat’s liver? A bug’s arm?”

Zilai said, “When parents tell their children to go east or west, the children can only obey. Yin-Yang (Nature) in its dealings with a person is closer than parents. If it wants me to die and I refuse, that is rebellion—whose fault would that be? Great Nature gives me a body to carry me, life to wear me out, old age to let me rest, and death to give me peace. So what is good at arranging how I live is also good at arranging how I die. Suppose a great forge is casting metal, and the metal jumps up and says, ‘I must become a famous blade like Moye!’ The smith would surely take it for inauspicious metal. Once a person gets a human form and keeps saying ‘Be human, be human!’ the Creator would surely take that for an inauspicious person. Now, taking heaven and earth as the great furnace and the Creator as the great smith—where could you go and not be accepted?”

When he had finished, Zilai lay down peacefully and slept, as if waking from an ordinary nap—that was his calm departure from life.

Guo Xiang’s commentary

Life and death are like falling asleep and waking up. When it is time to sleep by nature’s order, one does not wish to be startled awake; when transformation is near and someone scolds or disturbs you, there is no need to be anxious about that either. From antiquity perhaps someone has defied a parent’s command, but no one has defied the transformations of Yin and Yang or resisted the alternation of day and night. Life and death are like day and night—they are not really “going against” anything. When the time to die comes, no one can forbid it; if you stubbornly resist and refuse to listen, you only brazenly violate principle and hasten death. Death comes quickly because of one’s own obstinacy—it is not the fault of “death” itself. They (Zilai and Zili) were discussing death while still alive, so they spoke of death as “that other”; saying “that other” treats my life well and my death well—principle is one whole. It is only “being human,” only wanting to be human—like the gold that leaps from the smelting furnace. Everyone knows such gold is “inauspicious,” yet they cannot let transformation run its course. The way of transformation reaches everywhere; to be born now in human form by chance—was that done on purpose? Being born is not intentional; the times bring it forth of themselves. To pride oneself and cling to what one has—is that not empty? People all know that clinging to bodily form is inauspicious, so they see they are no different from that gold, and the attachment that binds them can be released; once released, nothing is impossible. Sleep peacefully, wake suddenly, wake at ease—do not burden the heart because of life and death.

Lü Huiqing’s commentary

Rats and insects are what people despise most, yet when qi and form scatter and transform into rat liver and insect arms, that is what people loathe. At such a moment (when Zilai asks “why take you as …”), he uses what is most despised and loathed to pose the question, to test where Zilai’s mind is at rest. Knowing that Yin and Yang are even less to be defied than parents and therefore obeying them; knowing that Zili takes death as good and is putting me at ease—then there is no need to ask again “what shall I take you as” or “where shall I take you.” Gold that leaps from the smelter—people must deem it inauspicious; wanting only to be human is the same. If heaven and earth’s creation and transformation are taken as the furnace, then rat liver and insect arms are nowhere impossible. To sleep as if settled, to wake as if startled—this means that at the threshold of life and death one is as easy as in sleep and dreams, unchanged by it.

Among all that lives in the world, a human being is only one kind of thing; those called “people” under heaven are beyond counting—myriads upon myriads. Given that, why trap your mind in what is narrow and cramped? You should set down obstructive fixations and let the heart-mind open wide.

The image of “casting gold” is probably meant for ordinary people who fear death yet cannot escape it, so they plan ahead for a “next life.” A single thought turned wrong can bind you through myriad kalpas. It is like the “metal that leaps into the smelter” in the Zhuangzi—the ore throws itself into the furnace because it takes itself for “exceptional stuff,” yet it may never be forged into the famed sword Moye. Therefore the perfected person (zhiren) treats heaven and earth as a great furnace and transformation (zaohua) as the artisan; the myriad transformations are inexhaustible, and I am inexhaustible together with them—why keep repeating “this person, this person,” and grieve over what you fail to obtain?

See how the ancients thus settled themselves: how could birth and death bind them? They took living as a spell of sleep and dying as a waking. If dying is waking, then when are you not awake?

(The chapter also cites Zisang Hu, Mengzi Fan, and Ziqin Zhang as three friends who discuss “who can be formless with one another and act together in formless acting,” and “who can ascend to heaven and wander in mist”—connected to the meaning above: only by not clinging to the label “human being” can one roam with the Dao.)

Zisanhu, Meng Zifan, and Ziqin Zhang became friends and said: Who can be together without deliberately “being together,” and help each other without deliberately “helping”? Who can ascend to the sky and wander in mist, sport in the boundless, forget one another, and keep each other company until the end? The three looked at one another and smiled, their hearts in accord, and so became close friends. Before long Zisanhu died, and the burial had not yet taken place. Confucius heard of it and sent Zigong to help with the funeral. When Zigong arrived, some were composing a tune and others were playing zithers, singing as they went: “Ah, Zisanhu! Ah, Zisanhu! You have returned to the root; we are still among the living!” Zigong stepped forward and asked: “Is it proper by ritual to sing facing the corpse?” The two looked at each other and smiled: “You do not understand what ritual is really about.” Zigong went back and told Confucius. Confucius said: “They are wanderers in the outer realm; I am a wanderer within the inner realm. Inner and outer do not communicate—I was shallow to send you to offer condolences. They are at play with the Maker in the single breath of heaven and earth. They treat life as a hanging tag or wart and death as the bursting of an abscess or boil. For such people, why would the order of life and death matter? Borrowing form from different things, lodging the body in the same body, forgetting liver and gall, abandoning ears and eyes, cycling through life and death without knowing where it begins, drifting in confusion outside the dust of the world, at ease in Wuwei (non-action). How could they trouble themselves with worldly rites put on for others to see?”

Zigong asked: “Then which side does the Master follow?” Confucius said: “I am one whom Heaven has penalized—I must enter the world. Even so, I will go along with you.” Zigong asked: “May I ask what ‘the exceptional person’ means?” Confucius said: “The exceptional person is one who differs from the common run yet accords with the Way of Heaven. Hence it is said: Heaven’s gentleman is the human world’s petty man; the human world’s gentleman is Heaven’s petty man.”

Notes:

• Inner realm / outer realm (fang nei / fang wai): The inner realm is within rites, human relations, and worldly norms; the outer realm is beyond rites and law, wandering with the Dao.
• Attached tag, hanging wart; bursting abscess, ruptured boil: Metaphors—life as superfluous burden, death as release from festering.
• Exceptional person (jiren): One who does not follow the crowd yet aligns with the Way of Heaven.
• Mutual shaping (xiang zao): Mutual dependence and mutual completion (as in water or on the path).
• Sporting in the boundless (nao tiao wuji): Playing and roaming in the limitless (nao tiao means to tease, sport, and roam).

Guo Xiang’s commentary explains: those who embody the Way of Heaven and Earth and follow change look “strange” to ordinary people, yet they accord with the Way of Heaven—hence they are called “Heaven’s petty person and humanity’s noble person,” or equally “humanity’s noble person and Heaven’s petty person.” “Nao tiao xun ben” means to play along with the root like sport, not fussing over small formalities.

Those who embody Heaven and Earth and follow change have hands and feet with different roles and the five viscera each managing its task—they do not directly “help” one another, yet the hundred joints still coordinate naturally: this is true mutual support within “non-mutual-support.” They never deliberately substitute for one another, yet inner and outer are accomplished together: this is true mutual action within “non-mutual-action.” Turn it around—using thought to watch over hands and feet, using hands and feet to run the five viscera—and the more you manage, the tighter things bind, inner and outer more trapped. So those who see all under Heaven as one body do not set up a separate “preference” between themselves and others. “Nao tiao wu ji” is bearing responsibility everywhere with nothing excluded; “forgetting one’s life” even drops the “not forgetting,” so one can follow change and trust transformation without end.

Laughing face to face with understanding in accord is entrusting the closest kin to clarity, not clinging to love in ordinary feeling. Crying because others cry is the worldly way; equating life and death, forgetting joy and grief, and singing before a corpse is the aspiration of those “outside the square.” Those who understand ritual and righteousness must settle “guarding within” by “roaming without,” preserving the mother to keep the child, following feeling straight through. If one only prides oneself on names and is bound to outward form, filial piety no longer carries sincerity, kindness no longer carries real feeling, and father, son, and brothers deceive one another inwardly—how is that still the point of ritual? Ritual has an utmost limit: inner and outer merge in obscurity; there is no roaming outside to the extreme without merging within, and no merging within without roaming outside. Hence the sage constantly roams outside to merge within, mindless yet following what is, toiling in the body all day without change in spirit, myriad affairs rising and falling yet calm and self-possessed. Seeing only form and not spirit is the common burden of the world.

Therefore, if you look only at how they walk alongside all things, you cannot say they “leave things behind and abandon people”; if you look at how they embody transformation and respond to things, you cannot say they “sit in forgetting and rest in self-satisfaction.” Could one really say the sage is not like this, yet insist that ultimate principle has none of it? So Zhuangzi marks the lineage the Way honors, to unlock what the world can awaken to; if he said outright that Confucius was just like this, some might reject it with what they have seen. Hence he goes beyond the sage’s inner traces and places the “outside the square” on several disciples. One should forget the persons he uses as vehicles and seek the work’s main intent: the way of roaming outside and merging within then stands clear on its own—Zhuangzi’s book is discourse that rises above the vulgar and covers the age.

Condolence is a near affair within the square; used outside the square it looks shallow. Roaming in the single qi of Heaven and Earth, all merged with no duality: taking life as an attached lump or hanging wart is qi momentarily gathered—not what one delights in; taking death as draining a abscess or bursting a wart is qi naturally dispersing—not what one regrets. The alternation of life and death has no end; going with it, there is nowhere one cannot go—so one does not know where victory or defeat fall: all is provisional. Gathering and scattering of life and death shift without fixed pattern—all are “foreign things”; without difference there would be no provisionality; though different, they still form one body. Hence forgetting liver and gall, leaving ears and eyes, trusting principle and merging in going—even the five viscera can be forgotten; what is left to cling to? There was never “knowing,” so one can throw oneself into the path of change, flow with the waves of reversal, not knowing where beginning and end reach.

So-called “the work of non-action (wuwei)” is not folded hands and silence; so-called “beyond dust and filth” is not hiding in mountains and forests. What is shown to the crowd is always the dusty side—not the whole of merging with things outside the square. Zigong had not heard of nature and the Way of Heaven; he saw only what is relied on, not what makes reliance possible. What is relied on is originally non-reliance—how could the world awaken? “Shackled people (lu min)” take the inside of the square as fetters; what they value is outside the square. Those who roam outside rely on the inner; those who leave people join the vulgar—hence those who have the world do not take the world as a burden; only after leaving things behind can they enter the crowd; only after sitting in forgetting can they respond to affairs—the more they leave behind, the more they gain. At that level, wanting to put it down you cannot; principle comes of itself—this is what Heaven and humanity cannot pardon. You and I speak these words together; though they are the world’s shackles, it is only speaking with you—showing that one always dwells outside the square.

Human and fish differ in structure, yet both get affairs from non-affair and share inside from outside, then nourish and settle into stability—none is not so, each sufficient and forgetting the other. To roam outside and merge within, trust the natural in all things, let each nature be full and the way of the sage-king is complete—that is to be odd among people yet equal to Heaven (tian). From nature’s view, people are not large or small; from human reason’s view, those equal to Heaven may be called noble persons.

(The remainder repeats the themes of “what is relied on is non-reliance,” “roaming outside and merging within,” “the more one leaves behind the more one gains,” “shared speech as shackles yet clarity that one is outside,” and “nature has no large or small person, equal to Heaven is noble”—the sense is as above and is not repeated in full.)

Those who associate with one another as if not associating, who help one another as if not deliberately helping—this describes a state of returning to the root and recovering what is originally so. Ascending to Heaven, they walk in the great brightness above; wandering in mist, they enter the gate of the hidden and dark; roaming at will, they are inexhaustible. They take “returning to the true” as joy, so singing beside the corpse is fitting for them. The ancient kings instituted ritual so that likes and dislikes would be balanced and people would return to the human way as it should be. Then is taking return to the true as joy not precisely the point of ritual?

Those who wander “outside the bounds” take Heaven as their companion; they take death as joy and need not mourn. Those who wander “within the bounds” take humanity as their companion; they take death as sorrow and dare not rejoice. If everyone were like these three men—taking them as fellow wanderers and rejoicing in their death—then those who forget life and double death would be far too many. Without these three, the world would be tangled in life and death and unable to free itself—and that is exactly what the perfected person mourns.

Inner and outer aims differ, so they cannot easily reach one another. Confucius sent Zigong to offer condolences because he wanted him to understand: the point of ritual does not go beyond the truth of nature and life; the subtle principle of the world sometimes lies outside the letter of rites and law. Wandering in the single qi of Heaven and Earth, one is neither yin nor yang. If one treats life as a hanging wart, one sees life as a burden and makes much of it; if one treats death as bursting a boil, one sees death as release and takes joy in it. Borrowing form in alien things, entrusting the body to the same substance—they never hold these as truly possessed. Liver, gall, ears, and eyes may all be forgotten and cast aside; then through cycle after cycle of beginning and end, one knows neither start nor finish—how could one perform the rites of the world?

If Confucius thought himself already within the bounds yet loudly praised the heights of those outside—Zigong wondered: though one wanders within the bounds, what one relies on may be in the heart, not in outward traces. What one wanders in is the trace; what one relies on is the heart. “Heaven’s marked person” means one whom Heaven’s sentence is hard to lift; someone like Confucius embodies spirit, holds the spirit within, and wanders in the mundane world—what reliance could weigh on his heart? Thus one may wander within the bounds without having to leave them, and rest under Heaven’s sentence without having to be released.

Again fish are offered as a simile: dig a pool and keep them—you need not a great sea. When there is nothing to do, life settles—you need not be outside the bounds. Forgetting one another in rivers and lakes is more than staying in a dug pool; forgetting one another in the Way and its arts is more than having nothing to do. The “crippled” or unconventional person stands level with Heaven, hence outward and not inward. “Heaven’s person among men, the gentleman of humanity”—those who strictly keep ritual and law yet do not know the truth of nature and life are of this kind.

Yan Hui asked Confucius, “When Meng Sun Cai’s mother died, he wept without tears, showed no grief in his heart, and throughout the mourning period did not seem sorrowful. He lacked all three of these, yet people said he was skilled at conducting the funeral. Could it be that in the state of Lu there are people who gain a fine reputation without genuine ability?” Yan Hui was puzzled by this.

Confucius said, “Meng Sun has already taken this matter as far as it can go. In understanding he has gone beyond ordinary people. He appears to seek only simplicity, yet he has not yet reached true simplicity—because in his heart he still holds on and still makes distinctions. Meng Sun does not know where life comes from or where death goes. He does not rush ahead, nor does he lag behind. It is as if he entrusts himself to the transformations of the ten thousand things and waits for changes he cannot know in advance. When transformation is about to occur, how can one know it will not change? When it is about to remain unchanged, how can one know it has already changed? You and I are talking—perhaps we are still in a dream and have not truly awakened.

“Though a person has a physical form, one need not treat it as something to be destroyed; spirit is like a morning’s temporary lodging, yet one is not bound by fixed desires. Meng Sun simply did this: when others wept, he wept too—that was responding to the natural situation of the moment. You and I say ‘you’ and ‘I’—how can we be sure that the ‘I’ in my mouth is the ‘I’ in your mouth? Moreover, when you dream you are a bird, you fly in the sky; when you dream you are a fish, you sink in the deep abyss—who knows whether the one speaking now is the waking person or the one in the dream?

“Just as one is about to feel at ease and has not yet begun to laugh, and laughter has just risen and has not yet been dispelled—once one follows the arrangement and dissolves into transformation, one can enter the vast, empty oneness and unite with the Great Dao.”

When viewing ritual in Lu, Yan Hui looked into his heart and fully grasped the meaning of life and death and whether inner and outer were in accord; his conduct followed the Way of Heaven—something no ordinary sort of “knowing” could equal. Therefore it is said that he had already gone beyond cleverness and entered the state of “Simplicity.” Trying to choose between life and death, one cannot catch any essential difference between them, just as spring, summer, autumn, and winter follow the four seasons.

Once one has reached Simplicity, one no longer holds on, and so there is no unease; without unease, the mind is not dragged by life and death, and everything is left to natural transformation and nurturing. Life and death turn and return, merging with transformation as one; even what one knows in the present is forgotten—how could one worry in advance over what has not yet happened? Already transformed, one is born—how could one know the time before one was born? In the midst of transforming, one dies—how could one know what comes after death? Hence there is nothing to flee; one simply goes along and is born together with transformation. Life and death are one with transformation—that is still only forgetting all present knowledge; why wait for the unknown and worry ahead of time? Transformed and born—how know the moment before birth? Transformed and dead—how know after death? Therefore nothing is shunned; one accepts it and is born together with transformation.

There are those who “startle the form without injuring the mind”: in change, only the body is shaken; they do not treat life and death as a burden on the heart. There is also the idea of “taking each morning as one’s home, dying without attachment”: the bodily frame renews day by day as if one moved house every day—the feelings do not count that as death. One who is always awake finds nothing that does not fit; when others weep, I weep too—that is what the moment requires. Life, death, and change are all already “me,” all come from me—what have I lost? Having never lost myself, what is there to fear? Without resisting, when people weep one weeps as well; without worry, one cries but not in grief. Nothing is “not me,” so inner and outer harmonize and past and present run through as one; one is together with transformation that renews each day—how could one pin down where “I” is? To dream one is a bird, to dream one is a fish—meaning that wherever one goes, one is at ease. If the transformations of waking and dreaming leave no direction unacceptable, then the changes of life and death are never worth clinging to at any time. Wherever one arrives, all is fitting—then one forgets “fitting.” Master Meng Sun is always at ease, so he weeps without grief and goes off together with transformation. At peace in shifting and going together with transformation, he enters vast openness and becomes one with Heaven.

From this point up through Zisi, the attainment is the same; what each holds to in mourning differs, so their singing and weeping are not the same.

Lu Huqing’s commentary: Only when one understands that things have never had a fixed beginning in the first place (weis shi you wu) will one stop treating inner and outer, life and death, as two different things. Why must one leave the ordinary human way and go to the “beyond the square” (fang wai) to treat death as entering emptiness and stillness and merging with the Way of Heaven? From this passage through the story of Zisi (Zi Si) later on, the main theme is “oneness” (qi yi): each person mourns differently, so some sing and some weep.

Lu Huqing’s commentary: Only when one understands that things have no beginning from the start can one fail to see inner and outer, life and death, as distinct. Why insist on going to the beyond the square, taking death for joy, even singing over a corpse? Therefore, when mourning, one weeps when one should, like everyone else, yet is not bound by grief—that is how one differs in appearance from ordinary people. So Meng Sun Shi (Meng Sun Shi, the noble in Zhuangzi who grasped life and death) is invoked to show: the perfected person does not leave the world—living is still living, weeping is still weeping; even deliberate simplification cannot strip that away. Zisi, Ziyu, and Zili do not know where life and death ultimately lie, yet they treat birth as loss and death as return; one cannot say they fail to understand why there is life and why there is death. Taking return to the genuine as joy and being praised by others does not mean they are racing ahead or lagging behind. Meng Sun Shi, by contrast, does not know why there is life or death—nothing is lost in life, nothing is gained in death; he neither leads nor follows, need not rejoice at death nor lament life. More than that: someone about to transform into another mode of being is still trapped in change he does not yet know, and he still does not know himself. About to change—how can one know it will not change? About not to change—how can one know it has already changed? Then are you and I perhaps still in a dream and never awake? He has human form, so the body may startle, but the heart does not follow, so the heart is not harmed; life and death are like day and night, hence the “morning” (dan) dwelling; without ordinary human sentiment, there is no vulgar attachment to death—that is where Meng Sun Shi is especially clear-sighted. (The text later repeats the same point.) Because he grasped this, when others wept he wept too, yet without tears and without true grief—that was his natural state, nothing strange. Moreover, when you dream you become a bird or a fish, you do not know it is a dream; then whether these words now are waking or dreaming truly cannot be settled—this is used to show Meng Sun Shi as one who forgot the “self” and was exceptionally clear. The phrase “what is meant for dismissal, if done only when forced, is not self-enjoyment, hence not true dismissal”: dismissal is done to push grief away by force, not from spontaneous ease, so it is not real dismissal; laughter is used to cope, not from genuine joy, so it is not real laughter either. Meng Sun Shi forgot life and death; that cannot be achieved by deliberate contrivance or performance for others. “Arrangement” (an ming, accepting fate) is not willfully rejecting; “following transformation” is knowing change cannot be resisted and yielding; “openness” (liao, emptiness and stillness) does not obstruct Heaven; “non-” (bu, not clinging to the human) does not enter worldly fixation; “oneness” (yi) is not twofold—the essentials of the Dao are all here.

Tracing to the Source (Following the Root Text)

At root: someone skilled at “knowing speech”—eloquence and making doctrines clear—is still not the equal of one who “simplifies” at a funeral. Here “simplify” means sun (to reduce): reducing contrivance and reducing emotional fixation. Students of the Way want only to lessen the seven emotions, yet often cannot; Master Mengsun had already achieved some reduction.

The “self” (ji) in “above, transformed into things” is the person already dissolved into the myriad things, assimilated with them; the “self” in “below, transforming the self” is one not yet transformed, still clinging to an “I.” “The one who transforms the self in a way one does not know” means: even how one is being transformed, and into what, cannot be known by oneself—the words seem to say “the one who died first has already transformed into a thing, waiting for those who die later”; yet that dead person is still in the midst of transformation—how could they know there is something “not transformed”? The living “self” is also on the way toward “not transforming”—how could one know what “already transformed” really is? The “nai,” “er,” and “ru” here stand over against “wo” (I) below: “father and mother” are one’s closest kin; others may be addressed as “er” or “ru.” Master Mengsun simply wept when others wept—weeping did not come from the heart but arose according to the “er/ru” relationship of the person addressed. The text treats kin like kin among strangers, hence “nai,” leading into “wo.”

Then Confucius is made to say: Yan Hui and I, in how we regard kin, are still inferior to Master Mengsun—he treated kin as kin between ordinary people (without clinging to the special status of “my kin”). Again: is this “I” (wo) I speak from my mouth really “me”? Dream and waking clarify: ordinarily to dream one is fish or bird is unremarkable; if in a dream as bird one shoots straight to the sky, as fish one dives straight to the deep abyss, clearly in the dream “my body” is fish, is bird—yet now we speak, know, and see here—is this waking? Perhaps still dream? Thus “I” (wo) cannot be fixed. Earlier “I especially with you” was “not yet awakened”; here “awakening” too may still be dream—a step deeper.

“Shi” is shi (fitting pleasure, accord with what delights). Where there is joy there must be laughter; suddenly entering a state of fitting pleasure, the heart has true joy without waiting for laughter to appear to count as shi; “xian xiao” is laughter that bursts out on its own. “Pai” is to arrange, to set in order—laughter one gives of oneself arises naturally, with no time to arrange or command oneself to laugh; it images the innocent and spontaneous, without binding to ritual form. Following “pai,” the text says “arranged and then going to transform”: wealth, honor, poverty, and low station each have allotted share, as if arranged by the maker of things—one should only accept in peace; when a person dies they transform into the kinds of things, and there is nothing else.

“Liao” has the sense of vast remoteness; “the One” (yi zhe) is the time before Taiji (the Supreme Ultimate) was distinguished; “entering the Liao Heaven” is returning to that primordial source.

Yierzi went to visit Xu You. Xu You asked, “What did Yao use to support and cultivate you?” Yierzi said, “Yao told me: You must personally practice benevolence and righteousness, and clearly preach what is right and what is wrong.”

Xu You said, “Then why have you come here at all? Yao has already tattooed your face with benevolence and righteousness, and cut off your nose with right and wrong. How can you still walk freely on that vast, easy, wander-where-you-will road?”

Yierzi said, “Even so, I still want to walk along the edge of that road.”

Xu You said, “No. A blind person cannot share with you the beauty of brows and complexion; one without eyeballs cannot enjoy with you the look of blue, yellow, and splendid patterns.”

Yierzi said, “Wuzhuang lost his handsome looks, Jubian lost his strength, and Huangdi lost his cleverness—all of this happened in the forging of the Creator’s furnace and hammer. How do we know the Creator will not stop my ‘tattooing,’ repair my ‘nose-cutting,’ and let me ride on what is already accomplished in my nature and follow you, sir?”

Xu You said, “Alas, that is still uncertain. Let me tell you roughly: My master, my master! He nurtures and completes the ten thousand things yet does not claim to be ‘righteous’; his favor extends through ten thousand generations yet he does not claim to be ‘benevolent’; he outlasts the most ancient past yet does not claim to be ‘old’; he covers and carries heaven and earth and carves the myriad forms yet does not claim to be ‘clever.’ To wander is to wander in this realm.”

Note on the marginal glosses in the text (destroying benevolence, righteousness, and right/wrong is likened to tattooing and nose-cutting; fan means borderland; Wuzhuang, Jubian, and Huangdi illustrate losing what they once had in the smithy’s forging; Guo Xiang stresses “nature” and “non-doing”): To ruin original natural virtue and repackage it as benevolence and righteousness is like tattooing the face; to split unified understanding into right and wrong is like cutting off the nose. Zisui means letting feelings find their own ease. “Fan” means boundary or margin—not the deep center. Wuzhuang, Jubian, and Huangdi all say that people must, in the smelting of the Dao, let go of the beauty, strength, and wit they once clung to—not everything is perfect from birth; some things must be forged in the furnace before they become vessels. Going straight by nature is natural; mending after nature is harmed is also natural. How can we be sure the Creator will not stop my “tattoo,” mend my “nose-cutting,” and let me ride on what is already accomplished in my nature and follow you, sir? To insist on hiding this would fear betraying the Creator’s deepest intent. So-called “bestowing favor on the ten thousand things” only means each thing is as it is—no one extra bestows grace or righteousness; saying “not old” means ever-renewing; saying “not clever” means not boasting of artificiality. What is meant by “this is the realm in which to wander” is taking non-action as teacher and taking no-teacher as teacher.

(Lü commentary)

The Great Dao is vast, free and unfettered, ever shifting and never fixed—one walks precisely this path. Wuzhuang prides himself on “beauty” and is instead weighed down by beauty; Jubiang relies on brute strength and is instead weighed down by strength. Huangdi too once fasted, gathered his mind, and restrained body and form, wishing to return to a state of “no knowing,” yet at first he still could not avoid having to use “knowing.”

The furnace is for melting and casting; the hammer is for forging and refining. The point that the three could shed their respective burdens is not that they never had them from birth—they also had to work at it in this “melting and forging.” And how do you know the Creator will not ceaselessly remove your branding for you and repair your severed nose, so that with a “formed heart” already refined you may follow the Master’s kind of wuwei (non-action)?

That Dao which nurtures the ten thousand things, has nourished them since high antiquity, and yet carves and shapes the myriad forms—that is precisely the hammer I use for “forging”; it is also what I roam within in heart and take as master and model. If you wish to still the marks of branding and make whole what was lost in nose-cutting, you need only take this as your teacher—that is enough.

(Main text: Yan Hui and Zhongni)

Yan Hui said, “I have made progress.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I have forgotten benevolence and righteousness.” Confucius said, “Good—but not enough.”

Another day he came to see him. Yan Hui said, “I have made progress again.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I have forgotten ritual and music.” Confucius said, “Good—but not enough.”

Again another day he came to see him. Yan Hui said, “I have made progress again.” Confucius asked, “What do you mean?” Yan Hui said, “I sit in forgetfulness.” Confucius said in surprise, “What is sitting in forgetfulness?”

Yan Hui said: Treating limbs and ears and eyes as surplus and discarding them (dui), extinguishing cleverness and intelligence (chu), leaving the body aside and casting off cleverness and artifice, mingling with the Great Dao as one—this is called sitting in forgetfulness (zuowang).

Confucius said: To mingle with the Dao is to have no private preferences; to follow transformation is not to be bound by constant form. You are truly the better of us! I, Kong Qiu, am willing to follow you and learn.

Guo Xiang’s Commentary

When Yan Hui says “Hui has gained,” that “gain” is real increase bought by decrease—what is added comes from what is stripped away.

“Benevolence (ren)” leaves traces of caring for others; “righteousness (yi)” shows up as achievements directed at things outside oneself. Once love appears in action, it is no longer the substance of ren itself; once there is merit in what is done, it is no longer the substance of yi itself. Merely holding to ren and yi is not enough to see that love and benefit actually arise from wuxin (no-mind, non-deliberate heart)—so those can be forgotten. Yet forgetting only merit and traces still does not reach the deepest insight.

Ritual (li) is the deployment of the bodily form; music (yue) is a means to ease and joy in life. To forget the instruments is still not as far as forgetting why there are such instruments.

What is called “sitting and forgetting (zuowang)”—what could remain unforgotten? Having forgotten traces, one also forgets the root that produces traces: inwardly there is no longer a sense of “my” body, outwardly no longer a sense of heaven and earth, and one merges with transformation (bianhua) so that nothing is blocked, nothing is alien, nothing is out of place; and where nothing is out of place, why distinguish good from bad? Being one with transformation, one simply goes wherever transformation goes—so there is no fixed, unchanging shape.

(Detailed branch-and-root explanation:) To take tributaries for the hundred streams is to see rivers but not the sea; to gather the hundred streams into the great sea is to see the sea but not the rivers. The Dao is like the sea; ren, yi, li, and yue are like the hundred streams. After Yan Hui attained the Dao he forgot ren, yi, li, and yue—like seeing the sea and forgetting the streams—yet at that stage he had still not forgotten “the Dao” itself. Only when one leaves form, forgets things, sheds knowing, and forgets the mind, resting free of all attachment—where then is the Dao? When Dao and self forget each other, that is why Yan Hui is so exalted. Yi is close to li, ren is close to yue, so one must forget yi before li, ren before yue. What Hui forgot was what ought to be forgotten; his increase was completed through what is called “loss”—not forgetting what should be forgotten is returning to sincerity; on loss, further loss, until there is nothing left to lose—unless it is the subtle realm of zuowang, nothing else measures up to this.

Lu Huiqing’s Commentary

That humans have been human has been so for a long time. Though awakening to the Dao can begin in a single phrase, to return to “no-thing” (wu wu) is not something one can accumulate in a single day. When Yan Hui heard of “mind fasting (xinzai),” he had not yet truly had a “Hui”—awakening in one phrase; as for ren, yi, li, yue… (this note ends here in the source text; the plain-language reading follows only the text as preserved.)

Lu’s commentary: People have lived in the world for a long time. Sometimes awakening to the Dao seems to happen in a single phrase, yet returning to the state of “no-thing” is not something accumulated in one day. When Yan Hui heard the teaching of “fasting of the mind,” he had not yet truly reached the level of Yan Hui—awakening on one phrase; as for benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music, all the way to “sitting in forgetfulness,” that was not the work of a single day. “Being the same as things” means treating what one is the same with as one body, hence no partiality; “transformation” means not yet having reached the end. Being the same with the great flow through impermanence is only being the same with transformation.

Scripture (main gist of Zhuangzi’s original): Ziyu and Zisang were friends. It rained for ten days straight. Ziyu said, “Zisang is probably very ill.” He wrapped some food and went to visit. At Zisang’s door he heard something like singing and like weeping, with a zither playing, the words: “Father? Mother? Heaven? Man?” Ziyu did not wait for the song to finish but hurried in and said, “You are singing—why like this?” Zisang said, “I was thinking: who brought me to this state, yet I cannot figure it out. Would my parents wish me to be poor? Heaven covers without partiality, earth bears up without partiality—would heaven and earth deliberately make me poor? I trace who caused this and cannot trace it. Yet having come to this pass—that is ming (fate/destiny).”

Guo’s commentary: These two associated in the spirit of wuwei (non-action) and mutual accord. Now Ziyu wrapping food to bring was simply following natural principle as it was—there was no prior calculation of “I must help” before going. Why did Zisang sing that way? Because he still detected “attachment to emotion” in the words, so Ziyu rushed in, fearing a drift from the great Dao. What is called ming is that the ten thousand things are all so of themselves, naturally and without contrivance.

Lu’s commentary: Zhuangzi’s “Da Zongshi” (Great Ancestor of the Way) chapter, in the end citing Meng Sun Cai and Yan Hui, seems to suggest that only someone like Confucius—preserving nature and guarding spirit while moving in the world—counts as the highest. Yet he also feared learners would think: figures like Zisang are inferior to Meng Sun’s clan, and figures like Ziyu inferior to Zisang. So he brings the threads together again, speaking until everything rests on “being at ease with ming.” Each person’s path differs, but with the Dao as the great ancestor of the Way, when it comes to ming, it is one matter.

The chapter Da zong shi (Great Master) is the title scholars hold in highest regard; the word “great” is like calling it “the father of all fathers”—nothing ranks above it.

It opens with knowing Heaven and knowing the human, and with grasping yi (rightness) and ming (fate/command)—that is how it lays the root. Then it treats the True Person and true knowing: in sleep, no dreams; awake, no worry. Ordinary people love their fathers and are loyal to their lords, yet the body still dies; how much more so that state of outstanding utmost genuineness? The worth of the genuine far surpasses the charge of lord and father, but the world does not know this and busies itself with hùrú—moistening each other with saliva, clinging in wet foam—when it would be better to forget each other in the rivers and lakes.

The great clod (Heaven and Earth) bears our form; in old age we rest at ease, in death we rest in stillness—that is how creation is kind to our bodies. Because people grasp at life and fear death, the parables of hiding a boat in a ravine and hiding a mountain in a marsh break that delusion: whatever has form and life does not fail to change; even if you hide a boat in the deepest ravine or a mountain in the widest marsh, you cannot escape transformation. With a limited body, trying to store away the boundless cosmos—how can you be sure nothing is lost? Only when “you store the world in the world” is there nowhere to flee; that is where the Sage roams and what unity in transformation relies upon.

Heaven and Earth give birth to Heaven and Earth; the myriad transformations are inexhaustible and never reach an end—why should we be especially glad merely because we happen to have received a human body? Living long in antiquity without feeling old, ascending to the cloud-heavens and dwelling in the dark palace—these are the subtle workings of the True Person. The Da zong shi chapter takes this as its substance; the people and disciples lean on it as their support.

Nüyu (a figure in the allegory who has attained the Way) has neither antiquity nor the present, so life and death cannot tie her down; coming and going never oppose each other as friends, so nothing can wedge itself between self and things. Thus hardship on the left, strumming the zither on the right—the spirit turns like a horse’s rump in its socket, letting creation transform as it will and resting in whatever it meets. What the ancients called xuánjiě (suspending the inverted knot—release from upside-down suffering) has no need to quibble over “worm arm and rat liver” (petty shifts of form and name) or to raise the suspicious mind of “leaping into the smelter” (vying to become a useful vessel).

Zifan and Qin Zhang, friends of Zisang, helped sing at the mourning for Sang Hu (Sanghu)—taking involvement with the world as toil and friendship with the genuine as fortune. They wandered outside the square (beyond convention), unlike the mundane. Once friends with creation, the changes of long life, early death, poverty, and success cannot exhaust their description; cold, heat, Heaven, and Earth cannot constrain their bodily passage.

Meng Sun Shi (Mengsun Cai): the form was shattered but the heart was not harmed—like dreaming one is a fish or a bird, soaring to the sky or sinking into the abyss, resting in the transformation of the moment. How could the core self change because the body differed?

Yan Hui (Yanzi) sloughed off limbs and dismissed cleverness, reached the utmost through zuòwàng (sitting in forgetfulness), penetrated the inner recesses of the principle of the heart, and inherited the lineage of the sage’s gate—truly the power of a teacher who transforms well.

As for Zisang drumming the zither, now singing, now weeping—asking who made him so and getting no answer—he finally returns to ming (fate). The True Person, having attained the Way, transcends fate; the world’s burdens cannot bind him. So-called true knowing means probing Heaven and the human to the limit, flowing freely through xing (nature) and ming (life/fate) without doubt. “Exhausting principle to the full extent of nature, and on to fate” speaks of fate from settling oneself; “following the transformation of things while guarding the root” speaks of fate from governing things. Zisang can exemplify fate in settling oneself; fate in governing things—perhaps only the realm revealed in the Da zong shi chapter truly qualifies.

Guo Xiang’s commentary says that only someone who has no deliberate agenda and accords with things so that the ten thousand beings transform themselves is fit to be a ruler. This chapter treats how a ruler ought to rule; once one grasps this, one returns to the realm of great antiquity—hence the inner chapters end here.

Nie Que asked Wang Ni four questions; Wang Ni four times answered, “I do not know.” Nie Que was so pleased that he jumped for joy and ran to tell Pu Yi Zi. Pu Yi Zi said: So you only understand this now?

You Yu Shi cannot match Tai Shi. You Yu Shi still treats “benevolence” (ren) as something to hoard in the heart and use to draw people in; though he does win people over, he never steps outside the sphere of artificial contrivance (renwei). Tai Shi sleeps in deep peace and wakes in easy leisure; sometimes he takes himself for a horse, sometimes for an ox. What he holds to is true sincerity (zhenxin); his virtue is plain—and he never sinks into artificial contrivance.

(In the text, “cang ren” means treating a benevolent heart as a banner to bind people to oneself; “xuxu” is settled ease; “yuyu” is a state without fussy knowing or disturbance—simply at ease.)

Guo Xiang adds: You Yu and Tai Shi are both traces within the affairs of the world, not the traceless root itself—who in the world could truly fix a name on that? With no fixed name, how could there be high and low, winner and loser? So one follows endless change and treads through myriad ages; ages have order and disorder, traces have better and worse. What one likes one calls “human”; what one dislikes one calls “not human”—drawing boundaries by right and wrong. Only by stepping out of the domain of the “not human” does one enter the domain where there is no “not human.” Then there is nothing gained, nothing lost, nothing that must or must not be done—far more than merely hoarding benevolence to invite people. Being horse or ox—where is the split between artificial and non-artificial? Let each person know and obtain for themselves; that is why it is non-action (wuwei): not entering the realm of right and wrong, and thus utterly cut off from the You Yu style of ordering the world.

This passage explains the depth of the episode in the Zhuangzi in which Nan Guozi Qi puts four questions in a row to Wang Ni, and Wang Ni answers with a single word: “not knowing.”

The four questions and “not knowing”

The four questions run roughly as follows: Do you know what all things have in common? Do you know what you yourself do not know? Then are all things without awareness? When we say “knowing,” it is not “not knowing,” and when we say “not knowing,” it is not “knowing”—so what counts as truly understanding? Wang Ni answers only with “not knowing.” The commentary takes the view that the “sameness” of things can only be rested in what people have not yet known; Wang Ni’s “not knowing” is not feigned ignorance but genuinely abiding in “not knowing” and becoming one with it.

You Yu Shi and Tai Shi

“You Yu” can also be read as carrying constant worry and anxiety; “Tai Shi” suggests stability and ease. To know and always worry is inferior to not knowing and resting in that stability. You Yu Shi still leaves the trace of “harboring benevolence to win people”—keeping benevolence hidden in order to draw others in, so that people follow and one seems to “gain people”; yet to treat benevolence as something that can be stored up and displayed inevitably means rejecting what is labeled “unbenevolent,” and one remains within the humanly contrived, never truly arising from the “non-human” (natural, non-artificial).

If one speaks of “having humanity” on one side and “non-human” on the other, the account becomes confused and inconsistent. Tai Shi breathes slowly in sleep and wakes at ease, treating himself as ox or horse without dislike; his knowing is solid and unwavering, his De genuine and not fake—how can one insist that what might be called “unbenevolent” in his case is not precisely a return to the “non-human” natural state? From Wang Ni’s perspective, You Yu Shi falls short of Tai Shi; the “not reaching” means You Yu Shi is still on the level of traces and appearances; Tai Shi comes close to the original condition that You Yu Shi pursues. To grasp that original condition, one must unbind the mind and release the spirit, and enter deeply into the “not knowing” that Wang Ni embodies.

Following the root (brief summary)

You Yu Shi harbored the way of benevolence to bind people to him and did “gain people,” but that was still artificial; it is not like the “non-human” way of simply dwelling together in a state without mutual demands, which is why the text says he never truly stepped out into “non-human.” The ancient Tai Shi merely slept and abided—almost as if unaware that there is knowing—and that was all.

Plain Reading

Youyu Shi (Emperor Shun) kept “benevolence” (ren) in his heart and used it to win people over and unite them. He could indeed gain the people’s support, but in the end this still came from deliberate human effort—not from the natural way of “non-artificial” dao. In that natural state, people related to one another through “meeting without forced contrivance.” So it is said that he had not truly left the realm of the artificial (he still operated on the level of intentionally seeking people’s hearts).

In high antiquity, the lord of the Tai clan (Taiyi age) slept and rose according to nature, without forced action. Sometimes he treated himself as a horse, sometimes as an ox—he had no fixed title or role. That was because the Tai lord’s wisdom was genuine trust, and his virtue utterly sincere, unlike Youyu Shi, who harbored benevolence in order to “demand” people’s loyalty. Yet the Tai lord did not deliberately set out to be this way; hence it is said that he had not fallen into the artificial (the text says “had never departed from the non-human”; the commentary also reads a layer as “had never entered into the non-human”).

Commentary (Jingchuan): Shun still had mind and intent; Yu still walked the “human way,” not the “heavenly way.” “Had never entered into the non-human”—the Tai lord accorded with the heavenly way; it happened without being planned.

Commentary (Guanjian): True wisdom approaches “no knowing,” and thereby can “know all without knowing.” The way of emperors and kings above all should forget clever stratagems and let things transform themselves: let the sharp-eared listen, the clear-eyed see, the clever plan, the brave defend—while the ruler sits upright with folded hands and governs, achieving the policy of wuwei (non-action). Is that not great? When dao aligns with heaven, people come of themselves—this is the first meaning of “Fit for Emperors and Kings.”

Jian Wu went to see Kuang Jieyu (Mad Jieyu). Kuang Jieyu asked: “What did Shi Ri tell you today?”

Jian Wu said: “He told me: as a ruler, if you bring out fixed laws and standards to regulate people, who would dare not obey or fail to be transformed?”

Kuang Jieyu said: “That is deceiving virtue! To govern the world by this method is as impossible as digging a river to cross the sea, or making a mosquito carry a mountain. When a sage governs the world, he rectifies the root first and then acts—following what each person can do and entrusting them to their own nature. Birds fly high to escape arrows; the zhi mouse digs down to the foot of the Spirit Mound to escape smoke and digging—if even these two small creatures know how to preserve themselves, how much more so human beings?”

(Jieyu’s mockery: imposing “standards I have fixed” on people is not following heaven and entrusting things to their nature; it is labor without result.)

Guo Xiang’s commentary (main idea)

When you use your own standards to force external things into line, those things lose their native genuineness. If you leave affairs to each thing’s own course, non-action completes itself; if you try to govern all under Heaven with your single body, achievement is hard to realize and the burden is more than you can bear. Therefore the sage who governs all under Heaven only keeps to his proper share and lets each person settle his own nature and life—he does not force what cannot be done. Even birds and beasts each have their own way of preserving themselves; if the ruler of men lets things be natural and does not act rashly, all under Heaven will come to fulfillment on its own. Are you really inferior to those two tiny creatures, each standing on its own without waiting for someone to teach them?

Bi Cheng (main idea)

“Rib Zhongshi” is a personal name; “the patterns of the classics and the measures of righteousness” are rules meant to straighten people out. To turn against one’s nature and forcibly play at “already perfected” is called “deceiving virtue” (qide). Crossing the sea you must drown; digging a river channel is hard to finish; if a gnat or midge tries to carry a mountain, its strength cannot suffice—governing all under Heaven with deceptive virtue is the same kind of thing. When the sage governs all under Heaven, he follows what the people can govern for themselves; he does not press them with the classic patterns and righteous measures of the “upright person.” Hence it is said that he acts only after stepping outside those orthodox forms—decisively doing only what falls within the proper work of nature and life. That work of nature and life is precisely “I practice wuwei (non-action) and the people straighten themselves.” Birds and rats avoid harm without waiting to be taught; humans have intelligence—are they really below those two insects, such that they must set up separate classic patterns and measures to disturb their constant nature?

Zhuangzi main text (Tian Gen meets the Nameless Person)

Tian Gen was traveling in the region of Yinyang and came to the bank of the Liao River, where he happened upon a “Nameless Person” and asked, “May I ask how to govern all under Heaven?”

The Nameless Person said, “Away! You vulgar fellow—what a dreary question. I am about to join the Maker of Things in being human; when I grow weary, I will ride the light, airy bird of vast emptiness, fly out beyond the six extremities, and enter the Land of Nothing Whatever, dwelling on the open, boundless plain. Why must you disturb my heart with matters of governing all under Heaven?”

Tian Gen asked again. The Nameless Person said, “Let the heart wander in plainness and simplicity; let breath merge with empty stillness; follow things as they are naturally, without private designs—and all under Heaven will govern itself.”

(Note: mang miao describes lightness and drifting emptiness; kuang lang denotes open, far-reaching expanse; yi here means formulas and fixed routines.)

Guo Xiang’s Commentary

If one asks how to “govern the world,” that is not a matter of stepping beyond the Tai chu (primordial beginning) or stopping in primordial chaos and obscurity. If one speaks of sharing the same body with zaohua (creation and transformation) and taking one’s place as “human,” that only means letting the multitude each act on their own—the so-called “vast, scattered fragments” means just this. Riding upon these mixed, broken bits and racing through the midst of the ten thousand things, one can go out and enter, always passing without obstruction, and let oneself go in the realm where each finds its own joy; without governing, the world transforms itself.

“Roaming the heart in plainness” means following one’s native nature and adding no ornament. “Blending qi in the vast stillness” means resting in one’s nature within indifference and coming to stillness. Following things without a private heart, the world governs itself. What is called “following nature” is that the public arises of itself; when the heart wishes to add something for itself, that is private. Harboring a private heart, one ultimately cannot fully accomplish sustaining life; only when one sustains life while following the public is one complete.

Lü Huiqing’s Commentary

The “nameless person” is one who embodies the Dao. One who embodies the Dao originally has no delight or aversion; the delight and aversion spoken of here are emotions the same as ordinary people’s: when delighted, one is “human” together with the maker of things; when turning away, one rides the bird of vast obscurity and goes outside the six extremes. Why? Because as human, life and death depend on oneself, going out and entering leave no trace—who would be willing to take the world as his task? Why should you tie yourself to the thought of “governing the world”? What is called “moving the heart” is roaming the heart in plainness, until private intent cannot lodge—this is the way of wuwei (non-action) by which one takes the world.

Bi Cheng

“Yu” (preparedness/anticipation) is the Yu of the Yijing: “If in all matters there is yu, then one stands firm”—it means there is something prior to “being for the world.” Without this “prior,” yet seeking from the world to “be for the world,” one in worldly affairs actually falls behind.

“Being human together with the maker of things” is moving with transformation, letting things be natural and not aiding what is private. “Riding the vast obscurity and going outside the six extremes” is treading the subtle above emptiness, transcending the surface of yin-yang. “Roaming” without fixed abode; “dwelling in the broad wild”—that is the domain where the Dao is made, dwelling with emptiness—this is the way of Yu.

The other party still did not understand, so it is stated plainly again: “Roaming the heart” is drifting at ease and returning to utmost stillness, hence roaming the heart in plainness; “blending qi” is breathing deeply and returning to utmost emptiness, hence blending qi in the vast stillness. All of this follows things naturally and does not impose one’s own will, so the world is governed. In short, having no intention to be for the world, yet no way of being for the world is finer than this.

Yangzi Ju (a disciple in the Liezi who once studied under Laozi) went to see Laozi. Laozi said: If someone responds as swiftly as an echo, appears firm and resolute, understands how things work, and keeps inner clarity in emptiness, one may say they accord with the vast, silent qi (vital energy). All of this means following things as they naturally are, without imposing one’s own will on them—so the world is well ordered. In essence: one does not deliberately set out to “govern the world,” yet aligns with the way of governing it; nothing could be finer than that.

Yangzi Ju asked again: If someone pursues the Dao tirelessly and acts like this, can they compare with an ideal king—one who transforms people through de (virtue/power) without parading his own merit?

Laozi said: For a sage, that is still someone who binds himself with clever craft, wears out the body, and startles the spirit. Moreover, tigers and leopards are hunted for their patterned hides; monkeys are caught for their agility and put to work; dogs that catch raccoons are led on ropes and used—can any of this compare with an ideal king?

Yangzi Ju changed color at once and asked respectfully: Then how does an ideal king govern the world?

Laozi said: An ideal king governs so that his achievements cover the world yet seem not to come from himself; he nurtures and bestows on the ten thousand things, yet the people do not depend on him; he has merit but does not boast a name, letting each thing feel it is simply so by nature and be content; he stands in a realm of unfathomable change and roams freely in “non-being.”

Guo Xiang’s commentary takes the gist as follows: “responding swiftly,” “firm and resolute,” and the like describe the speed of an echo and a resolute bearing; tian is hunting, and jie is tying with a rope. “Binding oneself with craft and skill, tiring the body and alarming the mind” means relying on technique to encumber oneself—not enough to compare with a sage-king. Tigers, leopards, and monkeys all burden themselves with ornament or skill; they do not govern the myriad directions from empty openness. Without an ideal king, the ten thousand things could not each attain their place; letting things take their own course is precisely the ideal king’s work. Yet the ideal king acts through wuwei (non-action) and still lets the world act on its own, so the achievement seems not to be the king’s alone. The ideal king follows and fulfills each thing’s nature, so everyone thinks it is simply natural and does not know they rely on the king. Though his merit covers the world, he does not claim it as his name, so things each think they have gained and rejoice. “Standing in the unfathomable” means dwelling on the path of change, renewing day by day without fixed form; “roaming in non-being” means sharing one body with the ten thousand things—the place of roaming is emptiness. One who cannot merge silently with things will clash with them and have no leisure to roam in the void.

Plain-Language Commentary

Lu’s Commentary (Upper Section)

“Acting in haste” means rushing affairs and chasing quick results; “qiangliang” (overbearing force) is not the way of soft overcoming hard or seeing things through to the end. Thinking one is “nipping trouble in the bud with clear insight,” that clarity is not the kind that grows naturally from “clarity in wuwei (non-action).” If in studying the Dao one cannot day by day reduce selfish desire, one is not truly “practicing the Dao.” Once one relies on some craft or skill, the body is worn down; when the mind is tied to outer things, the heart is shaken with fear—like artisans swapping long and short, presence and absence, or the zengeng official driving convict labor: that is not how a sage governs the world. Tigers, leopards, apes, and dogs are used to hunt the fields because there are ways to control them; likewise, those whose bodies are exhausted and hearts frightened yet are treated as “tools for governing the world” are also products of overbearing force, slackness, and self-trust in cleverness. “Borrow” here means clever strength is borrowed and put to use. Having strength yet not claiming it, nurturing the ten thousand things yet not hoarding merit—then every “doing” that leaves a trace cannot be sustained, and only a “name” remains: letting people employ outer things while those things find their own ease. This is because one stands in what cannot be measured and roams the heart in the realm of “having-not.”

Lu’s Commentary (Lower Section) and Xunben

“Xu” refers to convicts; “yi” to the zengeng (the official in charge of forced labor). “Jixi” is binding oneself with technique. Those whom the zengeng drives wear out the body; those who tie themselves up with skill frighten the inner heart.

Main Narrative

In the state of Zheng there was a spirit-medium named Jixian who could foretell a person’s life and death, survival and loss, fortune and disaster, length and brevity of life—so accurately that he could reckon by month, by year, even by ten-day periods, like a god. When the people of Zheng saw him they fled. Liezi went to see him, was dazzled and convinced, and on returning told Huzi (Pot Master), “I used to think your Dao was the summit; now I see there is something higher.” Huzi said, “What I taught you—you have only learned to adorn the surface, not the substance. Though you have got the Dao, it is like a flock of hens with no rooster—how can you hatch an egg? Yet you take this Dao to compete with the world; you will be seen through, so people can read your face. Try bringing him here and let me look at him too.”

The next day Liezi brought Jixian. After Huzi went out, Jixian said to Liezi, “Alas, your teacher is dead and will not live; he will not last many days! What I saw was the look of damp ash—dead.” Liezi went in weeping and told Huzi. Huzi said, “Just now I showed him ‘diwen’—the earth’s pattern: life stirring yet not moving, upright without bias. He probably saw me with the virtue-mechanism closed off. Bring him again.”

Another day Liezi brought Jixian again. After Huzi went out, Jixian said, “Lucky your teacher met me—he can be saved; he is full of vital breath. I saw that he had shut off the mechanism of change.” Liezi went in and told Huzi. Huzi said, “Just now I showed him ‘tianrang’—heaven and earth’s soil: name and reality do not enter the heart, yet life-force rises from the heels. He probably saw me in the mode of good release of the mechanism. Bring him again.”

Again Liezi brought Jixian. After Huzi went out, Jixian said, “Your teacher’s spirit is unsettled—I cannot read him. Wait until he steadies, then I will look again.” Liezi went in and told Huzi. Huzi said, “Just now I showed him ‘taichong mosheng’—the great void’s qi (vital energy) harmonized, beyond counting. He probably saw me balancing the qi-mechanism. ‘The girdled newt’s coiling makes a deep pool; still water’s coiling makes a deep pool; running water’s coiling makes a deep pool—deep pools have nine names; here are three of them’ (shen, same sound as pan, means where water gathers and eddies; ni is a fish, huan is to circle; still water and running water each have their deeps; of nine names for abyss, three are meant here). Bring him again.”

Another day Liezi brought Jixian again. Before Huzi had steady footing, Jixian had already fled in terror. Huzi said, “Run after him.” Liezi could not catch up and returned to report. Huzi said, “Already I cannot be seen; already cannot be caught—I cannot keep up with him. Just now I showed him ‘weishi chu wu zong’—not yet having brought out my root. I met him in emptiness and yielded like a serpent; neither knew which was which; going with it like a crumbling wave, going with it like drifting on the current—so he ran away.”

After that Liezi felt he had never truly learned. He went home and for three years did not leave the house; cooked for his wife as for a guest; felt no closeness or distance toward worldly affairs; carved and returned to simplicity, stood alone as a block of form, sealed himself amid confusion, and lived out his life that way.

Supplementary Glosses (as in the Notes)

“Many hens, no rooster—how hatch an egg?”: your instruction is not ripe, you are not yet formed—like hens without a rooster, no egg can be laid. “Diwen” shares meaning with “earth” (showing the look of earth-qi blocked). “Ni” is fish, “huan” is to circle; “shen” was originally written “pan,” a place where water pools and flows back (some say writing it as another character is wrong). “Di” in the compound with “ren” and “diao” is pronounced like tui, related to “tui” in “tui mi” (crumbling, listless).

Section One

Liezi fled from Jixian, unwilling to hear again that he was about to die. Guo Xiang comments: “Having no fixed achievement is like the multitude, each different”—Liezi had not yet truly penetrated the Great Dao; without that penetration, the mind holds on, and holding on means straining in one direction, wanting the world to believe in you absolutely—hence he let Jixian read his face. The Perfect Person (Zhenren), resting in stillness, does not deliberately straighten himself—like withered wood or wet ashes, all returns to silence. This is the state before the Perfect Person has been touched by outer things.

Section Two

When the Perfect Person moves, it is like Heaven; when still, like Earth. In action like flowing water, at rest like a deep abyss. Abyss-like silence, water’s flow, Heaven’s motion and Earth’s rest—all are “without deliberate effort,” naturally so, essentially one thing. When Jixian saw him sit like a corpse, enter zuowang (sitting and forgetting), he said Liezi was dying; when he saw spirit move with Heaven, he said he was alive. One who truly responds to things without stirring the mind naturally accords with change, takes worldly affairs as measure, and only then suffices to be master of the ten thousand things and follow the times without end—so it is not something a face-reader can fathom. This is the gist of “Ying Diwang” (responding to emperors and kings). “The mechanism of De (Virtue/Power) does not deploy”—the subtle art of virtue stays hidden.

Section Three

“Du quan” (blocking the mechanism)—du also means ji (mechanism); Liezi now awakens on his own and sees that what he witnessed yesterday was Jixian’s art blocked, hence the pronouncement of death. Between Heaven and Earth, the function of covering and bearing the ten thousand things already shows itself—compared with Diwen (Earth’s pattern), is that not still beyond it? This is the form that responds to stimulus. Letting natural covering and bearing be, the Heavenly mechanism responds on its own, and adornments of fame and profit become things to discard. The mechanism rises from the heel yet always works at the highest point; one release and skill at that place—only then does the other see. At the extreme of Taichong (the utterly empty, utterly still heart), the mind vast and clear, darkly one with all directions, so victory and defeat cannot wedge in between. Going nowhere uneven, blended into one. Those who peer at Heaven through a tube do not see its edge, so things seem uneven. Yuan (abyss) means silence; water is originally without mind, following outer things—whether flowing or stopping, whether ni huan (a fish name, image of roaming) or dragon leaping—it is often abyss-like and at ease, never losing silence. The Perfect Person may use or discard differently, but silence is the same—hence three kinds of difference are briefly shown. Though nine transformations churn and order and chaos swirl, one at the extreme is often calmly self-possessed, almost forgetting “deliberate action,” never leaving one’s root—though change is unbounded, the ground is deeply still.

Section Four

Weiyi (yielding, winding)—without mind, following things in transformation, not knowing who one is, drifting with nothing to cling to. Change is tangled, worldly affairs like waves, nowhere without cause. The Perfect Person has only one heart, yet responds to the world’s shifts and moves with the time—so the face-reader has nowhere to look and loses himself and leaves. This shows that one who “responds to emperors and kings” has no fixed method. Eating pork like eating human flesh—forgetting high and low; toward affairs neither intimate nor distant, only following what meets one. Carving returns to uncarved block, stripping ornament for substance; standing as a lump of clay, outer show gone. Though moving, the genuine does not scatter. “Take one and thereby finish”—let each of the ten thousand things reach its own end.

The Lü commentary explains: What is said on the surface about "wen" (form, appearance, phenomena) is not yet finished; what is truly meant by "shi" (substance, real meaning) lies in the realm of "not knowing, not recognizing."

The Dao was never a fixed thing to begin with. In emptiness there is no fixed shape, and nothing can be compared to it. It is like a flock of females with no male: the Dao does not respond to outer things, yet something seems hidden in the breast—as if eggs could hatch without a cock. So the Dao clashes with the world, yet it is also what people cannot help but trust inwardly, and thus they can use it to observe and measure one another.

"Di wen" (Earth pattern): Earth shares virtue with yin; others cannot see it directly. Hu Tzu displayed "di wen," and only then could Ji Xian see him. If stillness does not quake and movement does not move, it will not move; if not upright, it cannot stop. "Ji" is the pivot of activation and change. At first Ji Xian saw something like wet ash—dead and still—and did not know that was du quan (a deliberate feint), not zheng (the real state). When he later saw "sheng" (life) qi, he knew what he had seen before was du quan, not zheng.

"Tian rang" (Heaven's soil): Heaven shares wave with yang; others likewise cannot see it directly. Hu Tzu displayed "tian rang," and only then could Ji Xian see him. When fame and profit cannot enter the heart, there is no "ji" rising from the heel—this is what was shown to others. "Rang" is where the myriad things grow; "zhong" (heel) is where breath rises from there, so one is made to know there is "sheng," and the pivot of "shan" (goodness) lies in "ji." Di wen leans yin over yang; tian rang leans yang over yin; Tai chong (supreme emptiness, utmost penetrating qi) is such that nothing can surpass it and it does not lean to one side, so Ji Xian suspected Hu Tzu was "not whole." Since nothing can win over it, each holds half—hence it is said to be like heng qi ji (like a scale's weight, the pivot of activation).

The meaning of "san yuan" (three abysses) is to explain the heart. Shan yuan (goodness like an abyss): whether water flows or rests, like ni and huan (creatures in water), they are never not in the abyss. Tai chong mo sheng (nothing surpasses the great penetration) is the same idea.

When it reaches "wei shi chu wu zong" (not yet having gone out from my root lineage), Hu Tzu hid the Dao in Heaven and showed "nothing to show"—Ji Xian could not see at all, so he lost himself and ran away. Ji Xian used his own heart to fathom and observe another's heart; Hu Tzu had no heart, so the apparatus Ji Xian used to observe could not stand—hence he "lost" it, it vanished, and could not be recovered.

Empty and wei she (yielding like a snake, bending with things without fixed form)—not knowing who moves—is wuxin, wuwei (no-mind, non-action); stop when stopping is due. Again it is taken as di mi (toppling like di grass); others then do not know it is mi. When it moves, again it is taken as bo liu (wave-flow); others do not know it is flow. Seek him between movement and rest—you find nothing. This is why Liezi fled.

"Shi shi ru shi ren" (eating a pig like eating a person): to eat pig like eating person is forgetting self to the utmost—no partiality toward affairs or people. Diao zhuo fu pu (carving and ornament restored to simplicity): strip ornament and return to plainness; kuai ran (like a clod of earth) existing alone. Turmoil yet like wave-flow—others do not know it is flow; seek between movement and rest—you find nothing. This too is reason for flight.

Feng zai yi (how sealed is the One): use this "One" to close. Though the myriad things are in uproar, "my" feng (holding the One, embracing unity) remains at ease and unchanged throughout.

Context: This passage explains the Zhuangzi episodes where Hu Tzu shows Ji Xian the phases di wen, tian rang, tai chong, wei shi chu wu zong, and where Liezi (Lie Yukou) after studying with Hu Tzu reaches "shi shi ru shi ren" and "diao zhuo fu pu." The Lü note threads wen/shi, du quan/zheng, ji, san yuan, and tai chong into one account of wuxin, cang zong (hiding the root), and not being fathomed by those who seek signs in cultivation and conduct in the world.

Li Shibiao says: Ji Cheng uses his own heart to guess and pull at others’ hearts, and his own views to steer others’ views—so empty labels like “fortune and misfortune, long life and early death” get invented. Names are empty to begin with; when people speak and believe in empty names, those in the world who cling to appearance and outward traces yet cannot guard against the empty end up taking the empty as real—so Ji Cheng had no choice but to leave Huzi and go.

As for the “perfect person,” they settle the body in the realm without form and step beyond what can be counted before “number” has even arisen—how could they be seen through by physiognomy? So when Huzi first showed “earthly pattern,” Ji Cheng suspected he was about to die; when he showed “heaven’s soil,” he suspected he had come back to life—he did not understand that the life and death of the body are really the arising and ceasing of the heart; the arising and ceasing of the heart is the presence or absence of “appearance” (what shows as form). Huzi originally had no fixed intention: in stillness he harmonized with yin virtue, in movement he moved with yang’s wave. “Chong” (the hub) is the center before yin and yang tilt—nothing surpasses that great peace like heaven and earth. The myriad ways are originally one body, with no high or low; because Ji Cheng’s seeing was not one, he thought things were “uneven.” Earthly pattern, heaven’s soil, and great chong—all three are called “ji” (trigger/mechanism), because where there is movement there are still measurable signs and guardable clues.

When it reached “not yet having left my root”—still keeping to the root of the great master, showing people by showing nothing: the other came with a solid heart, here was empty; the other came with “having,” here was “not having.” The other’s mind was enslaved to appearance, so what was seen had a limit; Huzi left the human and entered heaven—his subtlety had no end, so Ji Cheng lost himself and fled. Huzi also said: you have seen my three “ji,” but you are still setting up self and other, this and that; on my side it is empty and weiyi (yielding and bending with things)—not knowing who is showing or what is shown; the other invests the real in me while here is empty, receives “having” from me while here is “not having”—at that point even “I” is forgotten: who is showing? who is seeing? who is in wrong view?

Zhuangzi uses “Ying Diwang” (Responding as Emperor and King) to say: the emperor who responds to the world should only be still and unmoved, responsive and then penetrating; only retreat and hide in the secret, sharing fortune and misfortune alike. Once one “leaves one’s root” and treats all under heaven as business to finish and an “I” to establish, people can read and measure you. That is why ancient emperors were “vast and boundless—the people could not name their merit.”

Wang Dan said: In ancient times, when emperors governed the realm, they invariably used methods ordinary people could not penetrate, so that no one could “read” them through fixed impressions. Confucius said: The junzi has three faces—from a distance he looks grave and solemn; up close he becomes warm and easy to approach; when you hear him speak, you again feel stern and alert. How could one judge a person by holding on to a single look? Yao too was one person with many sides: close at hand he was bright as the sun; seen from afar he was hard to grasp, like clouds; his benevolence was like Heaven, his wisdom like a spirit. That is how sages are changeable. Confucius’s “three transformations” of the junzi show precisely that one must not fix on a single aspect when judging people. Yao’s “one” yet many aspects is exactly the logic of taking hold of the realm and using it: when people cannot fully size you up, that is the way to steer the empire.

Bicheng (editorial note in the book): In Cui’s edition the line reads bu zhen bu zhi (not bu zhen bu zheng); in the Liezi text quanran appears as huiran, mo sheng as mo zhen, shen as pan, wu yu qin as wu qin, and feng zai as feng rong—in meaning the Liezi readings are stronger and should be preferred. (This is the editor’s note on variant readings between Zhuangzi and Liezi; it parallels the discussion above on changeability and unknowability: the written text also has multiple recensions, and one must not treat a single version as the only correct one.)

Plain-language interpretation

Do not act as master of “names,” storehouse of “schemes,” bearer of “affairs,” or lord of “knowing.”

(Here shi means to take charge as master—do not monopolize titles and labels; do not hoard stratagems; do not take every task upon yourself; do not stand as “I know” and rule over knowing.)

Set the self within the boundless; wander in a state where no trace can be found; fully receive what Heaven grants, without striving to “see and obtain”—and that is nothing but emptiness and stillness.

The perfected person (zhiren) uses the mind like a mirror: neither going out to meet nor holding back; when something comes, respond; when it goes, do not keep it. Thus they can encompass outer things without being harmed by them.

Guo Xiang’s commentary explains:

• Shi: to be master. Fu: to gather/store.

Names rest with things each in their own name—you need not be master of names. Schemes let things each plan—you need not be the treasury of schemes. Affairs let things each bear them—you need not be the one in charge of affairs. The lord of knowing lies in no-mind (wuxin); then the ten thousand things each exercise their knowing—you need not be master of knowing.

• Tijin wuqiong (embodying the boundless): because the ten thousand things under Heaven each are what they are, one can move through the infinite. You wuzhen (wandering where no trace): letting things transform themselves, hence no track to follow.

• Jin qisuo shou hu tian: when enough, stop. Wu jian de: if you still want to “see and obtain,” you do not know where to stop. Yi xu eryi: without emptiness one cannot bear the fullness of the many reals (each thing’s own truth).

• Ru jing (like a mirror): reflecting things without partiality. Bu jiang bu ying, bu cang: come, then respond; go, then cease. When things arrive, mirror them; mirroring without private intent—so though the realm under Heaven is vast, there is no strain of spirit or toil.

Main idea: The perfected person practices wuwei: not mastering names, schemes, affairs, or knowing, letting the ten thousand things each take their place; body and mind unite with the boundless and wander without trace; receive only what fate/heaven gives, not seeking to see and grasp—maintaining emptiness and stillness. Mind like a mirror—respond but do not retain—thus prevailing over things without injury. Guo Xiang stresses: this is yielding to nature and mindlessly letting things be, not deliberate contrivance.

Commentary of Lü (paraphrase)

If one does not take “name” upon oneself, though I have no name, no one in the world can impose a title on me. If one does not take “scheme” upon oneself, I do not plot, yet the world naturally comes to counsel. If one does not take “affairs” upon oneself, I practice Wuwei (non-action), and those who handle matters of themselves fulfill their roles. If one does not take “cleverness” upon oneself, I do not overthink, yet the world thinks on my behalf. Aligning with the body of the boundless, brilliance extends to the utmost; roaming in a realm without trace, even ghosts and spirits cannot see one—how much less ordinary people. One who can be like this simply fulfills the portion received from Heaven without imagining one has special insight; this is what is meant by following nature and not adding extra to life. What is called “emptiness”—is it emptiness forced on purpose? My heart is empty by nature. The heart is like a mirror: without actively grasping, what is past does not lodge within; without greeting what is to come, what is future is not foreseen; responding to events without hoarding outcomes, affairs past and present cannot fill the heart. What is received from Heaven being thus, one can master things without being harmed by them.

The Parable of Hundun

The Emperor of the Southern Sea was called “Shu” (Sudden), the Emperor of the Northern Sea was called “Hu” (Abrupt), and the Emperor of the Central Region was called “Hundun” (Chaos). Shu and Hu often met at Hundun’s place; Hundun treated them very well. Shu and Hu wished to repay Hundun’s kindness and said: people all have seven openings for seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing—only Hundun lacks them; let us try to open them for him. So they carved one opening each day; on the seventh day, Hundun died. (The commentary says: Shu stands for the formed image, Hu for the formless; Hundun stands for the natural state before clear and turbid were divided. A shorter version says: Shu and Hu take the sense of “swift”—a metaphor for deliberate action (youwei); Hundun is the appearance of harmony—a metaphor for Wuwei (non-action).)

Commentary of Guo

“One who acts fails”—forcing action and acting arbitrarily turns out badly.

In Lü’s commentary, “Nanyang” (a place name) stands for Shu—“suddenly there is”; “Beiyin” stands for Hu—“suddenly there is not.” The center is neither “being” nor “non-being”; it is exactly where the two meet. Though Shu and Hu are not the same as Hundun (Chaos), Hundun is not really different from them either—hence “treating them very well.” Seeing that this is good yet wanting to repay it, they day by day bored open the faculties used for seeing, hearing, eating, drinking, and breathing, opening them to outer things—so keeping that plain inborn nature from being lost became impossible.

In ancient times, those who matched the way of a true sovereign: through wuwei (non-action) the myriad things transformed themselves; through being without desire the world was itself sufficient; through deep stillness the people were naturally at peace. That is why the Nanhua Jing (the Zhuangzi) opens this chapter with Nie Que questioning Wang Ni—You Yu (Shun) stands for excessive deliberation, Tai Shi for wuwei; wuwei is enough to be paired with Heaven, and that is what a sovereign should align with.

If one takes doctrines and norms one has made up and tries to use them to educate the people under Heaven, it is no different from using short arrows, smoke, and digging to catch birds and rats—it only drives them to fly high and burrow deep to escape.

Where there is deliberate action there is a scheming heart; where there is that heart there is stratagem; from stratagem come deceit and cunning. Even the natural affection between father and son cannot be preserved—how much less between ruler and people can one expect the mutual indifference of branches on a tree and wild deer, forgetting each other in outward life?

Therefore Tian Gen asks about “governing the world,” and the answer is a heart calm and qi (vital energy) vast, following things without selfishness; Zi Ju asks about the governance of an enlightened king, and the answer is forgetting merit and generously letting things be, so that things take joy in themselves—all of this expounds the theme of “responding to the role of emperor”: use wuwei to undo forced action.

In Zheng there was a spirit-medium who could tell life and death—like a man of schemes and counsel who scrutinizes the times and is enough to infer a state’s rise and fall. Scheming and numerology never go beyond human artifice, so in use they run out; a wuwei sovereign—how could stratagem measure him or numerology spy him out?

At the end, the emperors of the south and north meet in the center: the Dao disperses into things, leaves the void and enters being—now they unite as one, which is not a bad thing; but once there is “one,” there is dispersion, and the boring open by Shu and Hu begins. Better that they be without mind toward each other, forget each other, and mutually transform and nurture.

This chapter presents Zhuangzi’s “responding to the role of emperor”: the ruler should accord with the Dao, transform the people through wuwei, and reject using stratagem and imposed law to rule by force. The parable of Shu and Hu boring open the seven apertures of Hundun shows that once there is mind and deliberate action, the plain inborn nature can hardly be preserved.

General Remarks on the Inner Chapters

The Nanhua Zhenjing (the Zhuangzi) reads in swift, undulating prose and, among the Masters, refuses to be tied to conventional forms; yet the inner chapters plumb spirit and transformation to the limit—the Way runs through Heaven and human—and their inner discipline stands with the Yijing and Laozi as peers. The book runs from “Xiaoyao You” (Free and Easy Wandering) through “Ying Diwang” (Fit for Emperors and Kings).

The crux of learning the Way lies in turning inward: not clinging to the pleasure of “only this will do,” then looking outward at the myriad things and finding no principle that is not of one piece; once things are equalized, fixation on self can be released; when self can be forgotten, the master of nurturing life stands firm. Nurturing life begins with Xiaoyao You and closes with Ying Diwang—still, the path is to turn inward, free of “only this will do,” then see that among the myriad things no principle fails to align; equalize things, then forget self; forget self, and the master of nurturing life is secured. Nurturing life is how one well nurtures oneself; responding to the world is how one well meets things—both rest on filling out with De (Virtue/Power); when De is full, the myriad things accord, and “Da Zongshi” (The Great Ancestral Teacher) takes this as teacher—then the root of the Great Ancestral Teacher is established. Apply this Way in ordering the world—what difficulty remains? Inward one may become sage or spirit; outward one may answer to emperor or king—gathered in one person it is not too much, spread through the realm it is not too little. What the zhenren (true person) attains, though it lies within these seven chapters, is not bound to the letter; speak apart from the seven chapters and it still fits. Thus outwardly blend with dust and light, inwardly keep wise illumination. The good student works on the inner chapters—more than half the thinking is already done.

Outer Chapter · Pianmu, Chapter Eight (Opening)

A thumb grown double, a finger grown forked—is that from original nature, or from “De” pushed to excess? Wens and hanging moles—is that from bodily form, or from “xing” (nature/disposition) pushed to excess? Benevolence and righteousness come from many directions; those who deploy them are arrayed among the five viscera—yet none of this is the straight path of Dao and De…

(The quoted scripture continues below; the citation stops at “and not Dao-De’s,” without continuation.)

Connected big toes and extra fingers are things one is born with—yet people still make a great show of “De” (Virtue/Power) over them. Warts that grow on the body and excrescences that hang from it are part of the physical form—yet people still spread themselves too thin over “xing” (innate nature). Splitting benevolence and righteousness into many variants, as if ren and yi were each assigned and lined up in the five viscera, is already not the straight path of Dao and De as they originally are.

So it is said: a connected toe on the foot is merely flesh joined into one useless lump; an extra finger on the hand is merely one more useless segment of finger. Likewise, when people add many such “connected branches” in feeling and in the five viscera—practicing benevolence and righteousness in skewed, mixed ways, and deploying cleverness and craft in endless tricks—that too is surplus and not centered.

Note on the text (already woven in above)

“Pian mu” means the big toe joined to the second toe; “zhi zhi” means an extra finger on the hand. “Fu zhui” and “xuan you” are growths attached to or hanging from the body. “Duo fang” means many sides or many tricks. Older commentators took “lie yu wu zang” to mean mapping ren, yi, and the like onto the spirit of the liver, lungs, and other viscera, and held that some occurrences of “duo fang” in the received text may be interpolations; the line below about “more than cleverness” supports that reading.

Guo Xiang’s commentary: To speak of “long” is not to call something surplus; to speak of “short” is not to call something insufficient—conjoined toes and extra fingers are just how form and nature are, not something added afterward. Whether conjoined or not, each nature is already complete in itself; only conjoined toes and extra fingers look “extra” in the eyes of the crowd, hence they are called “surplus” (chi). The confused think this is not innate nature and want to cut and discard it—as if the Dao were not preserved and De not upheld, people abandoning their endowment and things losing their use: how could that be perfect order? Things have large and small, much and little; “large” is what conjoined toes add, “much” is what extra fingers pile on—the boundary between conjoined and redundant exists in all things. To ignore this entirely would be to discard the nature of all things. One who merges with things has no distinction of “more” or “less.” Exerting oneself greatly in benevolence and righteousness may still be counted among the five viscera, yet it remains a partial rightness, unable to meet things without fixed direction and each to correct nature and life—hence it is said not to be “the rightness of Dao and De.” As for the many and few of “directions,” the world has no fixed limit, yet each degree of more or less has its allotted share; not even a hair’s breadth may be crossed. When each keeps to its direction, more and less are all self-sufficient. If one hears that “much” cannot rectify “little” and then wants to discard the much and rely on the little, that is like abandoning the whole world—is it not reckless? Conjoined toes on the feet and extra fingers on the hands are inevitably so from nature and life, not because they are “useful.” The dispositions of the five viscera are naturally manifold; yet the few forcibly exalt themselves, even to excess and perversity, losing what is most fitting within the body. The uses of intelligence each have their proper allotment.

Lü Huizhi’s commentary: Conjoined toes and extra fingers do not fail to come from nature, yet they are what De does not have; attached lumps and hanging warts do not fail to come from form, yet they are what nature does not have. Where there should be nothing, something appears—hence it is called “inflating one’s qi.” The five phases as undertakings, the five constants as virtue, the five affairs as practice, the five viscera as form—exerting oneself in many directions in benevolence and righteousness, the user is not unlisted among the five viscera, yet if it is not “the rightness of Dao and De,” it likewise belongs to “what is not there.” Conjoined toes on the feet and extra fingers on the hands are useless; the so-called rightness of Dao and De lies in Wuwei (non-action) so as to return to oneness.

Cui Zhuan said: Webbed toes and superfluous warts are not what human nature is supposed to be like in the first place; when all kinds of thoughts of benevolence and righteousness arise in the five viscera, we cannot say they are not “matters of the five viscera” when we act on them. Yet neither is the proper path of Dao and De—beyond that, there is nothing else to rely on. So webbed toes on the feet and extra fingers on the hands are both surplus and useless; as for the proper path of Dao and De, it is Wuwei (non-action), returning to the original state of unity (“one”).

Cui Zhuan also said: Webbed toes and warty growths, though not what nature intends as correct, still grow on the body and cannot be forcibly cut away; the desires of the five viscera, though not what morality intends as correct, are still inherent in one’s nature and cannot be wiped out by “governing.” Nowadays, using the teaching of benevolence and righteousness to restrain the feelings of the five viscera is like taking a knife to shave off webbed toes and warty growths—it violates natural principle and actually makes the “illness” worse.

【Commentary by Lü】

“Ming” (clarity) originally means being able to see clearly for oneself and to be aware on one’s own; people today, however, take whatever the eyes pick up in the outer world as “ming.” When that happens, “how one oneself sees” and “what one sees outside” get mixed together and tightly bound into one thing.

“Cong” (acuity) originally means being able to hear clearly for oneself and to grasp meaning on one’s own; yet if tones, scales, and string-and-bamboo music are all counted as “cong,” those things are entirely outside—so one is only heaping more and more clutter onto the mind from beyond it.

Therefore what the Dao values is not this kind of outward-chasing “ming” and “cong.”