The Taoist does not take the heart, the organ of thought, as his teacher or authority (cf. pp. 51, 68 above); the only instructor he recognises is the ultimate Ancestor who generates all things, whose guidance is discovered in reverting to pure spontaneity. Its profoundest lesson is reconciliation with death, by a surrender without protest to the process of living and dying as mere episodes in the endless transformations of heaven and earth.
‘To know what is Heaven’s doing and what is man’s is the utmost in knowledge. Whoever knows what Heaven does lives the life generated by Heaven. Whoever knows what man does uses what his wits know about to nurture what they do not know about. To last out the years assigned you by Heaven and not be cut off in mid-course, this is perfection of knowledge.’
However, there’s a difficulty. Knowing depends on something with which it has to be plumb; the trouble is that what it depends on is never fixed. How do I know that the doer I call ‘Heaven’ is not the man? How do I know that the doer I call the ‘man’ is not Heaven? Besides, there can be true knowledge only when there is a true man. What do we mean by the ‘True Man’? The True Men of old did not mind belonging to the few, did not grow up with more cock than hen in them, did not plan out their actions. Such men as that did not regret it when they missed the mark, were not complacent when they hit plumb on. Such men as that climbed heights without trembling, entered water without a wetting, entered fire without burning. Such is the knowledge which is able to rise out of the world on the course of the Way. The True Men of old slept without dreaming and woke without cares, found one food as sweet as another, and breathed from their deepest depths. (The breathing of the True Man is from down in his heels, the breathing of plain men is from their throats; as for the cowed, the submissive, they talk in gulps as though retching. Wherever desires and cravings are deep, the impulse which is from Heaven is shallow.)
The True Men of old did not know how to be pleased that they were alive, did not know how to hate death, were neither glad to come forth nor reluctant to go in; they were content to leave as briskly as they came. They did not forget the source where they began, did not seek out the destination where they would end. They were pleased with the gift that they received, but forgot it as they gave it back. It is this that is called ‘not allowing the thinking of the heart to damage the Way, not using what is of man to do the work of Heaven’. Such a one we call the True Man. Such men as that had unremembering hearts, calm faces, clear brows. They were cool like autumn, warm like spring; they were pleased or angry evenly through the four seasons, did what fitted in with other things, and no one knew their high point. The True Man of Old –
His figure looms but suffers no landslides:
He seems to lack but takes no gifts.
Assured! his stability, but not rigid:
Pervasive! his tenuous influence, but it is not on display.
Lighthearted! Seems to be doing as he pleases:
Under compulsion! Inevitable that he does it.
Impetuously! asserts a manner of his own:
Cautiously! holds in the Power which is his own.
So tolerant! in his seeming worldliness:
So arrogant! in his refusal to be ruled.
Canny! Seems he likes to keep his mouth shut:
Scatterbrained! Forgets every word that he says.
The True Men of old used what is Heaven’s to await what comes, did not let man intrude on Heaven. The True Men of old used the eye to look at the eye, the ear to look at the ear, the heart to recover the heart. Such men as that when they were level were true to the carpenter’s line, when they were altering stayed on course. Hence they were one with what they liked and one with what they disliked, one when they were one and one when they were not one. When one they were of Heaven’s party, when not one they were of man’s party. Someone in whom neither Heaven nor man is victor over the other, this is what is meant by the True Man.
NOTE At the end of chapter 5, Chuang-tzŭ took the side of Heaven against man; here he tries to resolve the dichotomy. As in several examples in chapter 2, he starts from a preliminary formulation, either his own or quoted from some unknown source, and then raises a doubt. The formulation takes the dichotomy for granted, and lays it down that the purpose of man’s thought and action is to nourish the spontaneous process which is from Heaven, as in the support of the body, which is engendered by Heaven to last to a ripe old age provided that the man looks after it properly. But can one make an ultimate distinction between the spontaneous motion and the deliberate action? The reformulation at the end attacks the dichotomy with the paradox that the sage remains fundamentally one with things whether he is being united with them by Heaven or is dividing himself off as a thinking man.
Death and life are destined; that they have the constancy of morning and evening is of Heaven. Everything in which man cannot intervene belongs to the identities of things. Those have Heaven only as their father, yet still for our part we love them, and how much more that which is exalted above them! A man thinks of his lord merely as better than himself, yet still for his part will die for him, and how much more for the truest of lords!
That hugest of clumps of soil loads me with a body, has me toiling through a life, eases me with old age, rests me with death; therefore that I find it good to live is the very reason why I find it good to die. We store our boat in the ravine, our fishnet in the marsh, and say it’s safe there; but at midnight someone stronger carries it away on his back, and the dull ones do not know it. The smaller stored in the bigger has its proper place, but still has room to escape; as for the whole world stored within the world, with nowhere else to escape, that is the ultimate identity of an unchanging thing. To have happened only on man’s shape is enough to please us; if a shape such as man’s through ten thousand transformations never gets nearer to a limit, can the joys we shall have of it ever be counted? Therefore the sage will roam where things cannot escape him and all are present. That he finds it good to die young and good to grow old, good to begin and good to end, is enough for men to take him as their model; and how much more that to which the myriad things are tied, on which we depend to be transformed just once!
As for the Way, it is something with identity, something to trust in, but does nothing, has no shape. It can be handed down but not taken as one’s own, can be grasped but not seen. Itself the trunk, itself the root, since before there was a heaven and an earth inherently from of old it is what it was. It hallows ghosts and hallows God, engenders heaven, engenders earth; it is farther than the utmost pole but is not reckoned high, it is under the six-way-oriented but is not reckoned deep, it was born before heaven and earth but is not reckoned long-lasting, it is elder to the most ancient but is not reckoned old. Hsi-wei found it, and with it dangled heaven and earth in his hand; Fu-hsi found it, and with it ventured into the Mother of all breath. The Dipper which guides the stars found it, and through all the ages points unerringly; the sun and moon found it, and through all the ages never rest. K’an-p’i found it and ventured into Mount K’un-lun, P’ing-yi found it and swam the great river, Chien Wu found it and settled on Mount T’ai, the Yellow Emperor found it and rose up in the cloudy sky, Chuan Hsü found it and settled in the Black Palace. Yü Ch’iang who found it stands in the farthest North, the Western Queen Mother who found it sits in Shao-kuang; none knows their beginning, none knows their end. P’eng-tsu found it, who lived right back in the time of Shun, right down to the Five Tyrants. Fu Yüeh found it, and used it to minister to Wu Ting, ere long possessor of the Empire; he rides the East Corner and straddles Sagittarius and Scorpio, a neighbour to all the constellated stars.
Tzŭ-k’uei of Nan-po asked the woman Chü
‘You are old in years, how is it that you look as fresh as a child?’
‘I have heard the Way.’
‘Can the Way be learned?’
“Mercy me, it can’t be done, you’re not the man for it! That Pu-liang Yi had the stuff of a sage but not the Way of a sage, I have the Way of a sage but not the stuff of a sage. I wanted to teach it to him; could it be that he would really become a sage? In any case it’s not so hard to tell the Way of a sage to someone with the stuff of a sage. I wouldn’t leave him alone until I’d told him: three days in a row and he was able to put the world outside him. When he had got the world outside him I still wouldn’t leave him alone, and by the seventh day he was able to put the things we live on outside him. When he got the things we live on outside him, again I wouldn’t leave him alone, and by the ninth day he was able to put life itself outside him. Once he had got life itself outside him, he could break through to the daylight, and then he could see the Unique, and then he could be without past and present, and then he could enter into the undying, unliving. That which kills off the living does not die, that which gives birth to the living has never been born. As for the sort of thing it is, it is there to escort whatever departs, is here to welcome whatever comes, it ruins everything and brings everything about. Its name is “At home where it intrudes”. What is “at home where it intrudes” is that which comes about only where it intrudes into the place of something else.’
‘Where did you of all people come to hear of that?’
‘I heard it from Inkstain’s son, who heard it from Bookworm’s grandson, who heard it from Wide-eye, who heard it from Eavesdrop, who heard it from Gossip, who heard it from Singsong, who heard it from Obscurity, who heard it from Mystery, who heard it from what might have been Beginning.’
Four men, Masters Ssŭ, Yü, Li, and Lai, were talking together.
‘Which of us is able to think of nothingness as the head, of life as the spine, of death as the rump? Which of us knows that the living and the dead, the surviving and the lost, are all one body? He shall be my friend.’
The four men looked at each other and smiled, and none was reluctant in his heart. So they all became friends.
Soon Master Yü fell ill, and Master Ssŭ went to inquire.
‘Wonderful! how the maker of things is turning me into this crumpled thing. He hunches me and stick out my back, the five pipes to the spine run up above my head, my chin hides down in my navel, my shoulders are higher than my crown, the knobbly bone in my neck points up at the sky. The energies of Yin and Yang are all awry.’
His heart was at ease and he had nothing to do. He tottered out to look at his reflection in the well.
‘Ugh! The maker of things still goes on turning me into this crumpled thing.’
‘Do you hate it?’
‘No, why should I hate it? Little by little he’ll borrow my left arm to transform it into a cock, and it will be why I am listening to a cock-crow at dawn. Little by little he’ll borrow my right arm to transform it into a crossbow, and it will be why I am waiting for a roasted owl for my dinner. Little by little he’ll borrow and transform my buttocks into wheels, my daemon into a horse, and they’ll be there for me to ride, I’ll never have to harness a team again! Besides, to get life is to be on time and to lose it is to be on course; be content with the time and settled on the course, and sadness and joy cannot find a way in. This is what of old was called “being loosed from the bonds”; and whoever cannot loose himself other things bind still tighter. And it is no new thing after all that creatures do not prevail against Heaven. What would be the point in hating it?’
Soon Master Lai fell ill, and lay panting on the verge of death. His wife and children stood in a circle bewailing him. Master Li went to ask after him.
‘Shoo! Out of the way!’ he said. ‘Don’t startle him while he transforms.’
He lolled against Lai’s door and talked with him.
‘Wonderful, the process which fashions and transforms us! What is it going to turn you into, in what direction will it use you to go? Will it make you into a rat’s liver? Or a fly’s leg?’
‘A child that has father and mother, go east, west, north, south, has only their commands to obey; and for man the Yin and Yang are more than father and mother. Something other than me approaches, I die; and if I were to refuse to listen it would be defiance on my part, how can I blame him? That hugest of clumps of soil loaded me with a body, had me toiling through a life, eased me with old age, rests me with death; therefore that I found it good to live is the very reason why I find it good to die. If today a master swordsmith were smelting metal, and the metal should jump up and say “I insist on being made into an Excalibur”, the swordsmith would surely think it metal with a curse on it. If now having once happened on the shape of a man, I were to say “I’ll be a man, nothing but a man”, he that fashions and transforms us would surely think me a baleful sort of man. Now if once and for all I think of heaven and earth as a vast foundry, and the fashioner and transformer as the master smith, wherever I am going why should I object? I’ll fall into a sound sleep and wake up fresh.’
The three men, Master Sang-hu, Meng Tzŭ-fan and Master Ch’in-chang, were talking together.
‘Which of us can be with where there is no being with, be for where there is no being for? Which of us are able to climb the sky and roam the mists and go whirling into the infinite, living forgetful of each other for ever and ever?’
The three men looked at each other and smiled, and none was reluctant in his heart. So they became friends.
After they had been living quietly for a while Master Sang-hu died. Before he was buried, Confucius heard about it and sent Tzŭ-kung to assist at the funeral. One of the men was plaiting frames for silkworms, the other strumming a zither, and they sang in unison
‘Hey-ho, Sang-hu!
Hey-ho, Sang-hu!
You’ve gone back to being what one truly is,
But we go on being human, O!’
Tzŭ-kung hurried forward and asked
‘May I inquire whether it is in accordance with the rites to sing with the corpse right there at your feet?’
The two men exchanged glances and smiled.
‘What does he know about the meaning of the rites?’
Tzŭ-kung returned and told Confucius
‘What men are these? The decencies of conduct are nothing to them, they treat the very bones of their bodies as outside them. They sing with the corpse right there at their feet, and not a change in the look on their faces. I have no words to name them. What men are these?’
‘They are the sort that roams beyond the guidelines,’ said Confucius. ‘I am the sort that roams within the guidelines. Beyond and within have nothing in common, and to send you to mourn was stupid on my part. They are at the stage of being fellow men with the maker of things, and go roaming in the single breath that breathes through heaven and earth. They think of life as an obstinate wart or a dangling wen, of death as bursting the boil or letting the pus. How should such men as that know death from life, before from after? They borrow right-of-way through the things which are different but put up for the night in that body which is the same. Self-forgetful right down to the liver and the gall, leaving behind their own ears and eyes, they turn start and end back to front, and know no beginning-point or standard. Heedlessly they go roving beyond the dust and grime, go rambling through the lore in which there’s nothing to do. How could they be finicky about the rites of common custom, on watch for the inquisitive eyes and ears of the vulgar?’
‘In that case, sir, why depend on guidelines yourself?’
‘I am one of those condemned by the sentence of Heaven. However, let us see what we can do together.’
‘I venture to ask the secret of it.’
‘As fish go on setting directions for each other in the water, men go on setting directions for each other in the Way. For the fish which set directions for each other in the water, you dig a pool and their nurture is provided for. For us who set directions for each other in the Way, if we cease to be busy life fixes its own course. When the spring dries up and the fish are stranded together on land, they spit moisture at each other and soak each other in the foam, but they would be better off forgetting each other in the Yangtse or the Lakes. Rather than praise sage Yao and condemn tyrant Chieh, we should be better off if we could forget them both and let their Ways enter the transformations. As the saying goes, “Fish forget all about each other in the Yangtse and the Lakes, men forget all about each other in the lore of the Way”.’
‘Let me ask about extraordinary men.’
‘Extraordinary men are extraordinary in the eyes of men but ordinary in the eyes of Heaven. As the saying goes, “Heaven’s knave is man’s gentleman, man’s gentleman is Heaven’s knave”.’
Yen Hui put a question to Confucius.
‘Meng-sun Ts’ai wailed when his mother died but did not shed a tear, in his inward heart he did not suffer, conducting the funeral he did not grieve. In spite of these three failings, he is renowned as the best of mourners throughout the state of Lu. Are there really people who win a name for it without possessing the substance? I am utterly amazed at it.’
‘That Meng-sun has the whole secret, he has taken the step beyond knowledge. If you merely simplify it you don’t succeed, finishing with it altogether does simplify something. Meng-sun does not know what he depended on to be born, does not know what he will depend on to die, does not know how to be nearer to the time before or the time after. If in transforming he has become one thing instead of another, is it required that what he does not know terminated in being transformed? Besides, at the stage of being transformed how would he know about the untransformed? At the stage of being untransformed, how would he know about the transformed? Is it just that you and I are the ones who have not yet begun to wake from our dream?
‘Moreover he has convulsions of the body without damage to the heart, has abodes for no longer than a morning but no true death. It’s just that Meng-sun has come awake. When another man wails he wails too; it is simply that, all the way up from that which they depend on to be-about-to-be, he is with him in recognising him as “I”. How would I know what it is I call recognising as “I”?
‘You dream that you are a bird and fly away in the sky, dream that you are a fish and plunge into the deep. There’s no telling whether the man who speaks now is the waker or the dreamer. Rather than go towards what suits you, laugh: rather than acknowledge it with your laughter, shove it from you. Shove it from you and leave the transformations behind; then you will enter the oneness of the featureless sky.’
Yi-erh-tzŭ visited Hsü Yu.
‘What riches did you get from Yao?’ said Hsü Yu.
‘Yao told me: “Be sure to devote yourself to Goodwill and Duty and say plainly ‘That’s it, that’s not’.” ’
‘Then what do you think you’re doing here? When that Yao has already branded your hide with Goodwill and Duty, and snipped off your nose with his “That’s it, that’s not”, how are you going to roam that free and easy take-any-turn-you-please path?’
‘At any rate I should like to roam by its hedges.’
‘No. Blind pupils can never share in the sight of beautiful eyebrows and face, nor pupilless eyes in the spectacle of green and yellow vestments.’
‘Wu-chuang losing his beauty, Chü-liang his strength, the Yellow Emperor his wisdom, were all simply in the course of being smelted and hammered. How do we know that the maker of things will not make my brand fade and my snipped nose grow, so that finding myself whole again I can be your disciple?’
‘Hmm, we can’t be sure. Let me put it for you in a few words. My Teacher, O my Teacher! He chops fine the myriad things but it is not cruelty, his bounty extends to a myriad ages but it is not goodwill, he is elder to the most ancient but it is not growing old, he overhangs heaven and bears up earth and cuts up and sculpts all shapes but it is not skill –
‘It is over this that you have to roam.’
(Therefore when the sage goes to war, though he ruins states he does not lose men’s hearts; the benefits of his bounty extend to a myriad ages, but he is not deemed to love mankind. Hence to delight in being expert in things is not sagehood, to be more kin to some than to others is not goodwill, to pry into what is Heaven’s is not cleverness. If your benefits and harms do not interchange you are not a gentleman, if in pursuit of a name you lose your own self you are not a knight, if by forgetting what you are you fail to be genuine you are not a master of men. As for such as Hu Pu-hsieh, Wu Kuang, Po Yi, Shu Ch’i, Chi-tzŭ, Hsü Yü, Chi T’o, Shen-t’u Ti, they were men who served what served others, were suited by what suited others, not by what suited themselves.)
NOTE The rhapsodic address to the Way as ‘My Teacher’ must have especially appealed to the Syncretist editor, for it has inspired the chapter title ‘Teacher who is the ultimate ancestor’, and is quoted as Chuang-tzŭ’s in a Syncretist essay (p. 260 below). The bracketed passage, which we shift here from earlier in the chapter, seems to be a comment on or development of it, whether by Chuang-tzŭ or by another hand. The list of names at the end is of men who pointlessly sacrificed themselves on trifling points of honour; the ‘Yangist Miscellany’, which also finds them obnoxious, tells several of their stories (pp. 231–3, 238 below).
‘I make progress,’ said Yen Hui.
‘Where?’ said Confucius.
‘I have forgotten about rites and music.’
‘Satisfactory. But you still have far to go.’
Another day he saw Confucius again.
‘I make progress.’
‘Where?’
‘I have forgotten about Goodwill and Duty.’
‘Satisfactory. But you still have far to go.’
Another day he saw Confucius again.
‘I make progress.’
‘Where?’
‘I just sit and forget.’
Confucius was taken aback.
‘What do you mean, just sit and forget?’
‘I let organs and members drop away, dismiss eyesight and hearing, part from the body and expel knowledge, and go along with the universal thoroughfare. This is what I mean by “just sit and forget”.’
‘If you go along with it, you have no preferences; if you let yourself transform, you have no norms. Has it really turned out that you are the better of us? Oblige me by accepting me as your disciple.’
Master Yü was friendly with Master Sang, and it had been raining incessantly for ten days. ‘I am afraid Sang will be in trouble,’ said Yü, and wrapping up some rice took it him for his dinner. When he reached Sang’s gate there was a sound as much like wailing as singing, to the strumming of a zither.
‘Was it father? – Was it mother? – Heaven? – Man?’
There was something in it of a voice too frail to hold out and in a hurry to finish the verse.
Entering, Master Yü asked
‘The verse you were singing, what did you mean by it?’
‘I was imagining who it might be that brought me so low, and can’t find an answer. How could my father and mother have wanted me to be poor? Heaven is impartial to everything it covers, earth to everything it carries; why would heaven and earth discriminate to make me poor? I can’t find out who it is that did it. That nonetheless I have sunk so low – shall we say it’s destiny?’