《南華真經口義》Vol. 12

Opening of “Qie Qie” (Thieves’ Tricks)

When people want to guard against thieves who pick pockets, lift wallets, and pry open boxes, they tie things tight, lock them, and bolt doors shut—what the world calls “cleverness” is mostly this kind of anti-theft skill. Yet when a great thief arrives, he simply carries off whole chests and sacks on his back, and only wishes you had not tied and locked things so well, so he can take everything in one go. Seen this way, what “clever people” do in ordinary life is often stockpiling loot and laying in goods for the great thief.

So we may ask: among those the world calls “wise,” is there anyone who does not hoard for the great thief? Among those called “sages,” is there anyone who does not guard the house for him? Why say this?

Long ago in Qi, cities stood within sight of one another; cockcrow and dogs’ barking could be heard across the land; nets and plows were everywhere, and the realm stretched two thousand li or more. Within its borders, ancestral temples, altars of soil and grain, districts and counties—what was not built according to the Way of the sages? Yet Tian Chengzi (Tian Chang, a powerful Qi minister) one day killed the ruler of Qi and “stole” the state as well. He stole not only land and people but also the sages’ techniques and methods of stratagem, and put them to use. So Tian Chengzi bore the name of thief yet lived as securely as Yao or Shun: small states dared not denounce him, great states dared not attack; his house held Qi for twelve generations—was this not stealing Qi and then using the stolen “methods of sagely wisdom” to protect his own body as thief?

(Lin Xiyi’s oral explication)

Reading this chapter, one feels Zhuangzi’s indignant, forceful style. He first weaves a strange analogy: qie is prying open; qie (篋) is a chest. Tan nang is reaching into a bag; fa gui is opening a trunk (petty thieves do such things—so in the main text the six characters about “opening trunks” and the like describe small-time methods). Jian teng are cord knots; she is winding; jiong is a door bolt; jue is a lock. Worldly wisdom was made for mouse-sized theft; when the great thief comes, he takes bundles, locks, and all.

The Tian clan’s usurpation of Qi and such matters as using a private measure to lend and the public measure to collect—see the Zuo Zhuan for clarity: they borrowed the sages’ institutions to complete the thief’s design. Such things were common in the Warring States period; Zhuangzi uses Tian Chengzi as the example. Later passages on “utmost knowledge” and “utmost sagacity” continue the same question: is there highest wisdom or highest sagehood that does not pile goods for the great thief or watch his house? The reasoning is the same.

How do we know this is so? In the past Long Feng, worthy minister of Xia’s Jie, was beheaded; Bi Gan, worthy minister of Shang’s Zhou, had his heart cut out; Chang Hong, grandee under King Ling of Zhou, was dismembered; and Wu Zixu, loyal minister of Wu, was minced into paste. All four were regarded as worthy men, yet none escaped violent death. So a follower of Dao Zhi asked him, “Is there a Way to thievery?” Dao Zhi replied, “What undertaking has no Way? Guessing what is hidden in a house without entering is called ‘sagacity’; going in first is called ‘courage’; coming out last to cover the retreat is called ‘righteousness’; judging whether a job can succeed is called ‘wisdom’; dividing the loot fairly is called ‘benevolence.’ Without any one of these five, no great robbery can succeed—there is no such thing in the world.” Seen in this light, good people cannot stand firm without the Way of the sages, and Dao Zhi cannot become a great bandit without the Way of the sages either. The worthy are few and the unworthy many in the world, so what sages bring the world is little benefit and much harm.

“Tearing apart” and “rotting into paste” both describe death by punishment and the loss of life. Though the four were worthy, they still ended in guilt and execution. Dao Zhi turns the argument on its head to excuse himself: the worthy cannot rely on worth alone to save their lives, while those who steal the name of the “sage’s Way” often use it for private gain—much like a robber preaching sagacity, courage, righteousness, wisdom, and benevolence. Zhuangzi deliberately invents such names to satirize the Confucians; the language is bizarre, yet judged against worldly affairs, the point holds. When he says the good are few, the bad many, and sages benefit the world little while harming it much, he drives the critique home with exceptional sharpness.

Thus it is said: when the lips are gone, the teeth feel the cold; when Lu made its wine weak, Handan was besieged (the story runs that Chu attacked Lu over thin wine, which in turn entangled Liang’s rescue of Zhao). Once sages are exalted, great thieves rise with them. Overthrow the sages and loosen the fetters on robbers, and the world can settle. When rivers dry up, valleys stand empty; when hills are leveled, the deep pools fill. If sages do not perish, great thieves never cease. Honor sages again and again to govern the world, and you are, again and again, handing gifts to forces like Dao Zhi’s.

Chu’s attack on Lu used thin wine as a pretext; Liang’s attack on Zhao followed because Lu’s relief could not come—lip and tooth seem unrelated, yet without the lip the tooth grows cold; river and valley seem unrelated, yet when the river dries the valley is hollow; hill and abyss seem unrelated, yet level the hill and the deep fills. As the folk saying puts it, “Zhang drinks the wine, Li gets drunk”: the sages’ laws were never made for thieves, yet they often become thieves’ capital. Hence when sages appear, great thieves flourish; until sages are discarded and thieves are not indulged, the world can hardly know real peace.

Vernacular Interpretation of the Nanhua Zhenjing Kouyi (Oral Exegesis of the True Scripture of Southern Florescence)

I

If the sage does not arise in theworld, the great thief will not arise either. The saying “strike down the sages and release the robbers” means: if there were no sages in the world and no robbers either, the realm would more easily be at peace.

It is like when the rivers are full—every valley holds water; when the rivers run dry, the valleys are naturally empty. Though valley and stream are not directly connected, in spring and summer they brim and in autumn and winter they dry up, yet the pattern of change is one. When mounds are leveled and mountains collapse into flat ground, it is as if the mountain clings to the earth and peels away; after the mountain is flattened, what was high falls into the deep abyss—seemingly unrelated, yet in fact mutually bound. Without a “cause,” there is no “event.” To exalt the sage in order to govern the realm is to let the sage appear again; once the sage appears, laws grow ever tighter, and the cunning use the laws as cover for fraud—hence it is said that this is “thick profit for Robber Zhi” (the great thief Zhi profits all the more).

(Stories such as “thin Lu wine and the siege of Handan” are also recorded in the Huainanzi, with slightly different wording but much the same meaning.)

II

Use bushels and pecks to measure, and the thief steals bushels and pecks along with the grain; use scales and balances to weigh, and he steals scales and balances as well; use tallies and seals to establish trust, and he steals tallies and seals too; use benevolence and righteousness to straighten the age, and he steals benevolence and righteousness as well. How do we know? The petty thief who steals a belt hook is put to death, while the man who steals a state becomes a feudal lord—and within the gates of such lords one often finds the name of benevolence and righteousness hung up. Is that not stealing the benevolence and righteousness of the sages, and their craftiness too?

Bushels and pecks, scales and balances, tallies and seals, benevolence and righteousness—the four pairs are stated together to deflate and expose these “lofty” labels. Stealing a hook is petty theft; many Warring States lords seized power by usurpation—all were great thieves. Once they were lords, in founding their states they often proclaimed love for the people and benefit for things; thus they did not only steal the state—they also appropriated the sages’ benevolence, righteousness, and clever devices as their own.

III

Therefore those who follow the great thieves, set themselves up as feudal lords, steal benevolence and righteousness, and take for themselves the gains of bushels, pecks, scales, balances, tallies, and seals cannot be turned back by high office and rich reward, nor stopped by axe and halberd. This situation of “thick profit for Robber Zhi” that no prohibition can check is precisely the fault of the sages. Hence it is said: fish cannot be taken from the deep; the sharp instruments of the state must not be shown to the people lightly. The sage is himself a “sharp instrument” of the realm, yet he is not necessarily one who illuminates the realm and makes things clear to all.

Those called “great thieves” are people everyone wants to catch; yet the feudal lords of our day mostly seize states by force and still sit above the multitude—who does not see this? So it is said: when great thieves act in the open, they steal benevolence and righteousness, measures (bushels and piculs), balances (scales), and tokens of authority (seals) and keep them for themselves, while no one sets bounties for their capture or uses punishment to stop them—these are all words of bitter protest against the age.

Fish cannot leave the deep; words cannot leave their context. The sage’s way can be practiced only in oneself; it cannot be made known to all. Hence the saying that it is “not for illuminating the whole world”—if it truly lit up everything, the whole world would know.

Therefore, only when one “abolishes the sage and discards wisdom” do great thieves stop; only when one “smashes jade and destroys pearls” do petty thieves not arise; only when one “burns the tallies and breaks the seals” do the people grow plain and simple, and only when one “smashes the bushels and breaks the balances” do the people cease to contend. Only after every so-called “sage law” in the world is torn away do the common people become one, and one can discuss the Dao with them. Smashing jade and pearls, burning tallies, smashing bushels—these are fierce formulations meant to clinch the idea of “abolish the sage and discard wisdom,” not literal policy. “Destroy and cut away” means stripping away the sage’s laws entirely; only then can one speak with the people. Critics often mock with “split the bushels, break the balances, burn the tallies”; in fact this is close to Laozi’s “do not value goods hard to obtain, so the people will not steal,” only pushed further. Su Dongpo said that once a person learns to read, trouble begins—must we really wish that no one in the world could read?

“Throw the six tones into confusion, melt away pipes and zithers, stop the ears of the blind musician Kuang”—only then does the world reach the point where “each person keeps his own hearing.” “Obliterate writing and patterned ornament, scatter the five colors, seal shut the eyes of Li Zhu”—only then does the world reach the point where “each person keeps his own sight.” Destroy hooks and plumb lines, cast aside compasses and squares, “break the fingers of the craftsman Chui”—only then does the world reach the point where “people have their own skill.” Hence: supreme skill looks like clumsiness. “Cut short the conduct of Zeng and Shi, clamp shut the mouths of Yang and Mo, cast away benevolence and righteousness”—only then does the world’s virtue begin to be “mysteriously unified.” When people hold their clarity within, the world is not dazzled; when they hold their hearing within, they are not dragged down; when they hold their knowing within, they are not lost; when they hold their virtue within, they are not warped. Zeng, Shi, Yang, Mo, Kuang, Chui, and Li Zhu all set up virtue outwardly and thereby threw the world into disorder—these are still words of indignant protest; do not treat them as real governance.

This passage is commentary from Nanhua Zhenjing Kouyi on the “Age of Perfect Virtue” section in Zhuangzi. The core move is to use the era of the twelve ancient clans to explain the Daoist ideal of society governed by wuwei (non-action).

Core of the commentary

“Those who blaze and disorder the world are precisely what the Way’s norms have no use for.”

“Zhuoluan” (blazing disorder) means pulling the ordered hierarchy of the six tones out of place and ruining it; “shuojue fenqi” means melting down and abandoning such things entirely.

Critique of artificial contrivance

• Only ears like Shi Kuang’s (the famed ancient music master) can handle the work of tones; if you stop up people’s ears, hearing returns to accord with Tian (Heaven) naturally, without these human fabrications.
• The lines on “bright skill” mean the same: the word “skill” invokes Laozi’s “great skill seems clumsy”—a standard exegetical move here.
• Zeng Shen, Shi Yu (models of loyalty and filial piety), and Yang Zhu, Mo Di (teachers of benevolence and righteousness)—their doctrines should be cleared away so talk of ren and yi no longer circulates; then everyone can return together to the xuan (mysterious) root.
• “Not scattered,” “not entangled,” “not deceiving one another,” “not partial”—listing Zeng–Shi and Yang–Mo alongside Shi Kuang, Gong Chui, and Li Zhu uses the “small” to suppress the “great”; “establishing virtue outwardly” means prizing external things and losing the heart-mind.
• “Those who blaze and disorder” scorch and unsettle the world; from the perspective of the orthodox fa (Way/norm) of the Dao, such people are useless and should all be discarded—hence the force of “what the Way’s norms have no use for.”

The Age of Perfect Virtue and the twelve clans

“Do you alone not know the Age of Perfect Virtue?”

In antiquity there were the clans of Rongcheng, Dating, Bohuang, Zhongyang, Lilu, Lixu, Xuanyuan, Hexu, Zunlu, Zhurong, Fuxi, and Shennong—twelve in all.

Only Xuanyuan (the Yellow Emperor), Fuxi, and Shennong appear in the classics; the earlier clans are unrecorded—perhaps legendary, perhaps Zhuangzi’s invention; we cannot be sure. As in Buddhist sutras that say “in such-and-such a past kalpa”—it sounds extravagant, yet on the scale of heaven and earth, only a few thousand years since Fuxi are documented; were there only those three millennia? Eras before Fuxi, unwritten in the Six Classics, surely existed; saying so risks sounding absurd, but we cannot flatly deny it.

For example, Fujian appears in records from Wuzhu (Han-era King of Min) onward; civilization thickened by the Tang; before Wuzhu it was likely still wild.

Would you like a concordance table mapping key terms in this Kouyi passage to the modern paraphrase for quicker study?

(Author’s note from the oral commentary)

The exact period is hard to pin down. Recently someone was plowing open ground in front of Nangsi Temple when they suddenly unearthed a cave. Inside were many gold vessels, bronze tripods, and ritual implements; people quietly carried off quite a lot. Later the hole was dug empty, and villagers went in groups to look—every brick, large or small, was carved with human figures, dragons, and tigers, exquisitely done. That was the very cave mentioned earlier. Someone then struck a disk with hoe and axe; it rang hollow, yet was so hard they could not pry it loose. It must have been cast with poured bronze or iron, not like an ordinary family tomb. Otherwise the classics record nothing of the sort in Fujian—so perhaps such things existed but were never transmitted. Viewed this way, figures of high antiquity such as Rongcheng and Dating cannot be declared impossible.

(Paraphrase of Zhuangzi’s original meaning)

People of that age kept records with knotted cords. They found their food sweet and their dress fine, and were content with the customs and dwellings of their own place. Neighboring states could see one another; the crowing of cocks and barking of dogs could be heard across borders—yet the people lived out their lives without crossing to visit each other. If the world were truly like that, it would be the utmost order (zhizhi). Today people crane their necks and stand on tiptoe, saying “There is a worthy man in such-and-such a place,” and set off with grain on their backs to join him—abandoning kin at home and leaving their proper lord to serve another, footprints reaching into the marches of feudal lords, wheel ruts stretching a thousand li beyond. All this comes from the fault of those above who hao zhi (delight in clever knowing, stratagem, and artifice). When those in high place truly hao zhi yet lack the great Dao, the realm falls into chaos. On what grounds is this said?

(Oral commentary)

Below lines such as “they found their food sweet,” the text also says that in the mountains there were no paths or tunnels, yet things were “drawn out and spun forth”—hinting that by then there was already the line of sage narratives pushed upward by Mencius, Xunzi, and the like, with Confucius folded into that scheme. Look at the Jixia Academy in Qi and men such as Su Qin and Zhang Yi, and you see Zhuangzi was criticizing the temper of his day: hao zhi is not the way of nature; hence “hao zhi without the Dao.”

(Paraphrase of Zhuangzi’s original meaning)

When crossbows, hand-held nets (bi), and corded arrow hunting (yi) multiply, birds wheel and dodge in the heights. When hooks, bait, seines, and weirs multiply, fish dart and scatter in the depths. When geges, snares, pitfalls, and hunting nets multiply, beasts stampede through the marshes. When guile, slow poison, crooked slickness, the “hard and white,” splitting hairs, and sameness-and-difference (the tricks of the name schools) multiply, the world is bewildered by war of words. Thus the realm is often in great disorder—and the crime lies in hao zhi.

(Oral commentary)

Bi: a net on a pole. Yi: hunting with a stringed bolt (jiao). Jibian: expedient shifts, fraud. Xiao: here glossed with geges and similar beast-catching gear, in line with the earlier “geges, snares, and pitfalls.”

In Han Shu, “ge” (格) is explained as “chuxu” (储胥)—like today’s wooden palisades; they were used to catch rabbits and deer, and there were also nets and snares such as “ju” and “fu”.

“Knowing fraud” (知诈): using cleverness to scheme against and deceive one another.

“Gradual poison” (渐毒): mutual contamination and infection, brewing disorder.

“Jie” (頡桀): “jie” refers to Xia Jie, the tyrant Jie.

“Slippery mire” (滑汩): utter chaos and confusion.

“Unknotting filth,” “partitioning horns,” “hard and white” (解垢、隔角、坚白): names or doctrines of the sophists (辩士) of that time who excelled at specious argument.

Placing methods of catching fish, birds, and beasts alongside these sophists is like lining up Zeng Shen and Shi Yu (ancient moral exemplars) with the dou, hu, scales, and weights (度量器具) for satire—the intent is the same.

“Again and again” (每每): time after time, constantly, until the realm falls into chaos—all crimes summoned by “exalting cleverness and artifice” (崇尚智巧).

So everyone in the realm rushes after what they do not yet know, and does not settle what they already know; everyone busies themselves condemning what they call others’ lack of goodness, and does not examine the “good” they have already fixed in themselves.

Thus the realm falls into chaos.

Those who do not know chase novelty outward; what is already known is in fact plain and easy to see—that is the principle of nature. What is not good in others—what is already “good” in oneself—is what the Qi Wu Lun (Discussion on Leveling Things) speaks of: affirming what one affirms and denying what one denies. People only see others’ errors and do not see that what they themselves affirm may not be right either.

Then above they violate the brightness of sun and moon, below they ruin the essences of mountains and rivers, and in between they disrupt the movement of the four seasons; even creatures that breathe and crawl, tiny and nimble flying insects, lose their innate nature. Exalting cleverness and artifice to disorder the realm—truly excessive! From the Three Dynasties downward it has been so: abandoning the plain and honest common people while drawing near to toiling, scheming flatterers; casting aside tranquil wuwei (non-action) while favoring nagging, garrulous talk. Garrulous talk has already thrown the realm into disorder.

Above are sun and moon, below are mountains and rivers, in between are the cold, heat, and four seasons; smaller still are crawling creatures on the ground (such as snails) and tiny, light flying insects (such as bees and butterflies). “Xiao” (肖) is read like “xiao” (萧); “zhong zhong” (种种) describes beings with shells or armor. “Yi yi” (役役) means hurrying about and forced striving. “Tun tun” (啍啍) means tedious chatter and nitpicking over words. The preceding passage has already concluded; “from the Three Dynasties downward” drives the point home: people after the Three Dynasties have been just like this.

Thus, from the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties onward, it has been this way—the two lines “tun tun” and “yi yi” are set in paired opposition.

The note that follows takes only “tun tun” as the knot that gathers the whole meaning; in substance it is continuous with the earlier point that only by returning to plain simplicity can the common people’s original nature be preserved.

In the “Free and Easy Wandering” (Xiaoyao you), there is “Tang asked Ji—that is all there is to it,” which is an opening move; here, “since the three dynasties, that is all there is to it,” is a closing move. Opening and closing differ in wording, yet they use the same rhetorical pattern and turn on the same axis.