Zhuangzi

The teaching

Taught from the book that bears his name, above all its seven Inner Chapters.

The great bird and the little dove

The book's best known stories, the butterfly dream, Cook Ding and his knife, the carpenter's useless oak, the happy fish and the fasting of the heart, are taught on the page of the Taoists, among the mystics. Here is the rest of what it teaches.

It opens with a fish in the northern dark called Kun, so huge no one knows how many thousand li it measures. It changes into a bird called Peng, whose wings are like clouds hanging from the sky, and climbs a whirlwind ninety thousand li high to fly to the southern dark. The cicada and the little dove laugh: we spring up into the elm and sometimes fall short, they say, so what is all this rising to go south?

Small understanding cannot reach great understanding, nor the short-lived the long-lived: the summer cicada never knows spring and autumn. Even Liezi, who rode the wind, still depended on something; the one who rides the truth of heaven and earth, wandering in the boundless, depends on nothing. So the perfect man has no self, the spirit man no merit, and the sage no name. This is free and easy wandering, the name of the first chapter.

The use of the useless

Huizi, the logician who is Zhuangzi's friend and foil, smashed a gourd too big to carry water and too flat to make a dipper. You are clumsy with big things, says Zhuangzi: a family in Song used a salve for chapped hands to bleach silk in cold water for generations, while a stranger who bought the recipe gave it to the king of Wu for a winter battle on the water and was rewarded with land. Why not make your gourd a great boat and float on the rivers and lakes? Your mind is still full of brambles.

Of Huizi's huge tree, too knotted and twisted for the carpenter, Zhuangzi says: plant it in the village of Nothing at All and sleep beneath it; no axe shortens its life, so where is the trouble in being of no use? The madman of Chu sings the same past Confucius's gate: everyone knows the use of the useful, but no one knows the use of the useless.

The piping of heaven

Ziqi of the south wall sits leaning on his armrest, breathing slowly, as if he had lost his partner, and his pupil asks whether a body can really be made like dry wood and a mind like dead ashes. Today I lost myself, Ziqi says. You have heard the piping of men but not of earth, or of earth but not of heaven. The great clod breathes out, and its breath is called the wind; when it rises, ten thousand hollows howl, hollows like noses, mouths and ears, like jars and cups and pools, and when it stops, all fall empty. The piping of heaven blows through the ten thousand things in ten thousand ways, so that each one is itself; but who is it that sounds them?

This and that, and three in the morning

Everything is a that and everything is a this; this and that are born together, and with every it is comes an it is not. The sage therefore takes neither road but lights all things in the light of heaven. Where this and that no longer find their opposites is called the pivot of the Way; set in the centre of the circle, the pivot can answer endlessly.

A keeper of monkeys handing out nuts said, three in the morning and four at night, and the monkeys were furious. Then four in the morning and three at night, he said, and they were delighted. Nothing had changed in name or substance, yet their joy and anger were put to use. So the sage harmonises right and wrong and rests on the potter's wheel of heaven, and this is called walking two roads.

The great dream

Lady Li, daughter of the border guard of Ai, wept when the men of Jin took her until her robe was soaked; but when she came to the king's palace, shared his couch and ate his fine meats, she was sorry she had cried. How does one know that the dead do not wonder why they ever clung to life? While dreaming one does not know it is a dream, and may even read a dream within the dream; only on waking does one know. There is a great waking, after which one knows that this is a great dream, while fools think they are awake. Confucius and you are both dreaming, the book adds, and in saying so I am dreaming too.

Virtue whole, form forgotten

The book fills its pages with cripples, hunchbacks and men whose feet were cut off as punishment, and teaches through them that the body is not the measure of a person. Wang Tai of Lu, who had lost a foot, gave no lessons and held no debates, yet people came to him empty and went home full. He sees what is one in things and does not notice what they lose, and he looks on the loss of his foot as on shaking off a clod of earth. People do not look for their reflection in running water but in still water, and only what is still can still others.

When Huizi asks whether a man can be without feelings, Zhuangzi says that by this he means one who does not let likes and dislikes harm him inside, who goes along with what is so of itself and does not try to add to life.

The true person, and the great smith

The true person of old did not rebel against want or grow proud in plenty, slept without dreams and woke without cares, and did not know how to love life or hate death: he came briskly and went briskly, and that was all. When the springs dry up, the stranded fish spit on each other to keep each other wet; better that they forget each other in the rivers and lakes.

The great clod burdens me with a body, labours me with life, eases me with old age and rests me with death; so whatever makes my life good makes my death good too. When Ziyu is bent double by illness he laughs: perhaps the maker will turn my left arm into a rooster, and I will keep watch on the night. If metal in the furnace leapt up and cried that it must be made into a famous sword, the smith would think it ill-omened metal; heaven and earth are a great furnace and the changing of things a great smith, and wherever it sends one, why should it not be well?

The book gives this freedom as stages, in the teaching of Nüyu. After three days the pupil could put the world outside himself; after seven, things; after nine, his own life. Then came a clearness like the morning, then the sight of the One alone, then the end of past and present, and at last entry where there is no living and no dying. Its name is peace in the midst of turmoil.

The mirror, and the death of Hundun

The perfect man uses his mind like a mirror: it goes after nothing and welcomes nothing; it answers what comes and stores nothing. So he can meet all things and not be hurt.

The emperors of the southern and northern seas, Shu and Hu, Swift and Sudden, often met in the land of Hundun, Chaos, the emperor of the centre, and he treated them very well. Wishing to repay him, they said: every man has seven openings, to see, hear, eat and breathe, and Hundun alone has none; let us bore him some. Each day they bored one hole, and on the seventh day Hundun died. So the Inner Chapters end.

The fish trap and the four seasons

The book's later chapters carry the teaching on. A fish trap is for catching fish; once the fish is caught, the trap can be forgotten. Words are for meaning; once the meaning is caught, the words can be forgotten. Where, the book asks, can I find someone who has forgotten words, so that I can have a word with him?

When his wife dies, Zhuangzi grieves, then looks back to before she was born, before she had a body, before she had even breath. In the dim and the vague there was a change and there was breath; the breath changed and there was a body; the body changed and there was life; now there is another change and she is dead, as the four seasons follow one another. She lies asleep in the great room, and to follow her weeping would be not to understand what is fated. And dying himself, he forbids a rich burial: heaven and earth are his coffin and the stars his pearls, and above ground the crows eat and below ground the ants, so why rob the one to feed the other?