Chuang-Tzǔ: The Inner Chapters

In strong contrast with the rationalising approach of the ‘Autumn floods’ and ‘Know-little’ dialogues is a cycle of stories in ‘Knowledge roams north’ (chapter 22) and neighbouring chapters. In these to speak articulately about the Way is enough to show that one has not grasped it; the proof of insight is that you refuse to speak, or try but forget what you meant to say, or fall into a trance while you are being told, or see in a flash stimulated by some aphorism which on reflection seems meaningless, or burst into improvising song, or are moved by music without understanding what it is doing to you. In one of these stories Confucius propounds something very like the kōans (‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’) with which Zen Buddhists set out to smash the frame of conceptual thinking a thousand years later. He asks, in the style of the debates of the sophists, whether it is ‘allowable’ that ‘there is no past and no present, no start and no end, before you have children and grandchildren you do have children and grandchildren’. The question does not invite a ‘Yes’ but stirs some inkling which tongue-ties the disciple before he can answer ‘No’, and the point is made: ‘Enough, that you failed to answer!’²⁸

Chuang-tzŭ had declared that the man who has unlearned all distinctions and refuses to formulate a preferred alternative has no right even to say that ‘Everything is one’.²⁹ Here too we find the Yellow Emperor admitting that he must be ignorant of the Way because he knows that everything is one.³⁰ To know is to have formulated verbally, which only the ignorant would be so inept as to do – more extravagant games are played with the word ‘know’ than Chuang-tzŭ himself ever ventured. The rationalising ‘Great Man’ philosopher, for whom knowledge is an unquestioned good, is revealed as the target when the Yellow Emperor, in his role of unenlightened wordmonger, actually uses his slogan, the ‘Great Man’.³¹

In this cycle we may notice the fondness for allegorical figures (such as ‘Knowledge’), for the legendary Yellow Emperor (a villain for the Primitivist and the Yangist), and for Confucius, who is treated as a pure spokesman of Taoism. The cycle seems homogeneous and probably belongs to the late third or second century BC, when the Yellow Emperor and the Lao-tzŭ of the book which bears his name have become the acknowledged representatives of Taoism. The ‘Knowledge roams north’ story quotes extensively from Lao-tzŭ, as do other Primitivist and ‘School of Chuang-tzŭ’ passages, but never the Inner chapters.

Knowledge roamed north to the banks of Black Water, climbed the hill of Loom-in-the-gloom, and met with Donothing Saynothing there. Said Knowledge to Donothing Saynothing

‘I have questions I wish to put to you. What should I ponder, what should I plan, if I am to know the Way? What should I settle on, what should I work at, if I am to be firm in the Way? What course should I follow, what guide should I take, if I am to grasp the Way?’

Three things he asked, but Donothing Saynothing wouldn’t reply. No, it wasn’t that he wouldn’t reply, he didn’t know how to reply. Knowledge with his questions unanswered returned to the south of White Water, climbed to the top of Desert-of-doubts, and noticed Scatterbrain there. Knowledge repeated his questions to Scatterbrain.

Half-way through what he wanted to say he forgot what he wanted to say. Knowledge with his questions unanswered returned to the Imperial Palace, saw the Yellow Emperor, and put the questions to him.

‘Don’t ponder, don’t plan,’ said the Yellow Emperor, ‘only then will you know the Way. Settle on nothing, work at nothing, only then will you be firm in the Way. Follow no course, take no guide, only then will you grasp the way.’

‘You and I know it. The other two do not know it. Which of us are on to it?’

‘That Donothing Saynothing is truly on to it, Scatterbrain seems to be, you and I have never been anywhere near it. The knower does not say, the sayer does not know, so the sage conducts a wordless teaching.

The Way is incommunicable,
The Power is impenetrable,
Goodwill can be contrived,
Duty can be left undone.
The Rites are a shared pretence.

“The Way lost, only then Power: Power lost, only then Goodwill: Goodwill lost, only then Duty: Duty lost, only then the Rites. The Rites are the Way’s decorations and disorder’s head.”

“The doer of the Way every day does less, less and less until he does nothing at all, and in doing nothing there is nothing that he does not do.”

Now that we are things already, if we wish to revert and go home to the root, will it not be hard for us? Is it easy for any except the Great Man? Life is an adjunct of death, death is the origin of life, who knows where their threads go back? Man’s life is the gathering of energy; when it gathers he’s deemed alive, when it disperses he’s deemed dead, and if even death and life are deemed adjuncts, is there anything I could still see as a misfortune?

‘Therefore the myriad things are the One. As much of it as we find beautiful is deemed daemonic and precious, as much of it as we find ugly is deemed foul and rotten. The foul and rotten is transformed back into the daemonic and precious, the daemonic and precious is transformed back into the foul and rotten. Hence it is said: “Pervading the world there is only the one energy.” That is why the sage values the One.’

‘When I asked Donothing Saynothing,’ said Knowledge to the Yellow Emperor, ‘he wouldn’t reply to me. No, it wasn’t that he wouldn’t reply to me, he didn’t know how to reply to me. When I asked Scatterbrain, half-way through what he wanted to tell me he wouldn’t tell me. No, it wasn’t that he wouldn’t tell me, half-way through what he wanted to tell me he forgot. Now I ask you, and you do know, so why are we nowhere near it?’

‘That the first of them was truly on to it was because he didn’t know. That the next one seemed to be was because he forgot. That you and I have never been anywhere near it is because we do know it.’

When Scatterbrain heard about it he judged the Yellow Emperor knowledgeable about words. (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 22)

NOTE The explicit quotations are from Lao-tzŭ 38, 48. There are also phrases from Lao-tzŭ 56 and 2.

‘If you adjust your body right and unify your vision, the harmony from Heaven will arrive. If you put together your knowledge and unify your measurements, the daemonic will come to lodge in you. The Power will be your glory, the Way will be your home. Have an innocent eye like a newborn calf and never go looking for precedents.’

Before he finished speaking Gaptooth had fallen asleep. Reedcoat was delighted, and departed singing as he walked

‘A body like dry bone,
A heart like dead ash.
Genuine, the solid knowledge in him:
He needs no precedents to hold himself up.
Dim, dim, drowsy, drowsy,
Hasn’t a heart, you’ll get no advice from him.

‘It is the shape lent to you by heaven and earth. Your life is not your possession; it is harmony between your forces, granted for a time by heaven and earth. Your nature and destiny are not your possessions; they are the course laid down for you by heaven and earth. Your sons and grandsons are not your possessions; heaven and earth lend them to you to cast off from your body as an insect sheds its skin. Therefore you travel without knowing where you go, stay without knowing what you cling to, are fed without knowing how. You are the breath of heaven and earth which goes to and fro, how can you ever possess it?’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 22)

‘Your questions, sir’, said Chuang-tzŭ, ‘miss the whole point. When Director Huo asks the Superintendent of the Market about assessing the pigs, the lower down in the pig he tests with his foot the more likely that if it is fat the whole pig is fat. You deal only in “in no case” and “necessarily”, you have nowhere into which to escape from things. What is so of the ultimate Way is so too of the most comprehensive words. “Universal”, “everywhere”, “all”, these three are different names for the same substance, what they point to is one.

‘Suppose you come roaming with me in the palace where there is nothing at all, where you put things in their places by joining them as the same, without anywhere an end or limit? Suppose you come with me to do nothing at all? To be calm and still! Vacant and pure! In tune and at ease! To diffuse away our intents, to set out in no direction and arrive not knowing where, to come and go without knowing where it will stop. I have already been there and back but do not know where it ends, I have loitered in its immensities, but the greatest knowledge which enters it will not find its limits.

‘What makes things things has no border between it and things; it is the borders which are between things which we mean by the borders of things. It is the unbordered borderer, the unbordered which borders. When we say “fill” and “empty”, “decline” and “prime”, what is deemed the filling or the emptying is not the filling-and-emptying, what is deemed the decline or the prime is not the decline-and-prime, what is deemed the root or the tips is not the root-and-tips, what is deemed the accumulating or the dispersing is not the accumulating-and-dispersing.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 22)

Ah Ho-kan studied with Shen-nung under Old Dragon Lucky. Shen-nung was sleeping, elbow on armrest, in the daytime behind closed doors. Ah Ho-kan at noon flung wide the door and entered to say

Shen-nung, leaning on the armrest, gripped his staff and rose to his feet, threw down the staff with a clatter on the floor and laughed.

‘He that was Heaven to me knew that I am coarse and rude, that is why he abandoned me and died. Enough! Having no mad words to burst me open he died, wasn’t that it?’

‘The man who identifies himself with the Way has gentlemen from all over the world attaching themselves to him. Now of as much of the Way as the tip of an autumn hair he had not yet succeeded in settling on one part in ten thousand, yet he knew enough to keep back his mad words till he died – not to speak of the man who does identify himself with the Way!

Look, it has no shape.
Listen, it has no sound.
In the discourse of men
It is called the Mystery.

Can ennoble,
Can demean,
Can knot together,
Can disperse.

‘Then of Infinity’s not knowing it and Donothing’s knowing, which is on to it and which is not?’

‘Ignorance is profound, knowing it is superficial. Not knowing it is inward, knowing it is outward.’

‘Is it by not knowing it that you know? Is it that if you do know you are ignorant? Who knows the knowing which is ignorance?’

‘The Way is inaudible,’ said Neverbegan, ‘whatever you hear is something else. The Way is invisible, whatever you see is something else. The Way is ineffable, whatever you talk about is something else. Do you know that the shaper of shapes is unshaped? The Way does not fit a name.

‘To answer any question about the Way is to be ignorant of the Way,’ said Neverbegan. ‘Even the asker about the Way never heard about the Way. In the Way there is nothing to ask about, in the question there is nothing to answer. To raise questions about the unquestionable is to ask about the finite, to offer answers to the unanswerable is to lack the inward. As for someone who lacks the inward and awaits questions about the finite, a man like that outwardly never has a full view of Space and Time, inwardly remains ignorant of the ultimate beginning. This is why he will never rise higher than Mount K’un-lun, never roam in the ultimate void.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 22)

Getting no answer, Lightflash looked intently at his countenance. It was an unfathomable blank: looking at it all day he did not see, listening to it all day he did not hear, groping at it all day he did not touch.

‘The utmost!’ said Lightflash, ‘which of us can attain to this? The most you can say about me is that something isn’t there, but not yet that nothing isn’t there. He has got so far that there isn’t anything there; by what road does one attain to this?’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 22)

Jan Ch’iu was at a loss for a question and withdrew. Next day he presented himself again.

‘Yesterday I asked whether what preceded heaven and earth is knowable and you said, sir, that it is. Yesterday that came to me as an illumination, today it is obscure to me. May I ask what you meant?’

‘Yesterday when you were illuminated the daemonic caught on to it ahead of you. If today it is obscure to you, is that because you are seeking it for the undaemonic as well? There is no past and no present, no start and no end, before you have children and grandchildren you do have children and grandchildren – allowable?’

‘Enough, that you failed to answer. One does not by being alive turn death into life, does not by being dead turn life into death. Is it that death and life depend on something else? There is something in which both of them count as one. Would whatever is born before heaven and earth be a thing? What makes things things is not a thing; the emergence of a thing cannot have preceded things. It was as when there are things in it, and being as when there are things in it will never cease. That “the sage never ceases to love mankind” takes its analogy from this.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 22)

‘When Your Majesty performed the music of the Hsien-ch’ih in the wilds of Lake Tung-t’ing, the first time I heard it I was afraid, the next time I idled through it, the last time I was confused. I was overwhelmed, dumbfounded, could not get my bearings.’

‘I was afraid you might find it like that!’ said the Yellow Emperor. ‘First I played it as a work of man, but attuned to Heaven; I made it march in accord with Rites and Duty, but founded in the ultimate clarity.

See the four seasons take their turns,
The myriad things in sequence come to birth,
Now it’s glory, now decline,
Peaceful and martial each in its proper place.
Now the clear notes, now the dull,
The Yin and Yang by tuning harmonised:
Make their notes flow, make them spread,
When first the hibernating insects stir
I startle them awake with a clap of thunder!
No conclusion rounds it off,
There was no overture when it began,
Now they’re dying, now they’re living,
Now they’re falling, now they’re rising,
To the norm that it proclaims there is no end. –

‘Next I played it as the harmony of Yin and Yang, illumined by the torchlight of sun and moon. Its notes

Can shorten, can lengthen,
Can weaken, can harden,
Altering and transforming it evens out in oneness,
Does not submit to precedents and norms.
In a valley it fills the valley,
In a pit it fills the pit.
It stops up the leales, holds fast to the daemonic,
And takes its measure from the things themselves.
Its notes are vibrant and fluid,
The names of its pieces radiant and sublime.

This is what makes the ghosts and daemons stay in the dark, and the sun, moon and stars proceed on their courses. I let it stop at the borders of the finite, but flow in the stream which has no stop. You tried to think about your destination but could not know it, peer after it but could not see it, pursue it but could not reach it. You stood baffled in the Way which has emptiness all around it, you “mumbled lolling on withered sterculia”, eye and knowledge remained limited by what you wanted to see, effort remained constricted by what you wanted to pursue. We had failed to get anywhere, hadn’t we? Shapes were solid, the gaps were empty; then a point came when you veered with the line of least resistance. You were veering with the line of least resistance, that is why you idled through it.

‘Next I played it with notes which never idled, and tuned it to the spontaneous course of destiny. So it was as though

Mingled and merged, densely sprouting,
In the primaeval mass there is no shape.
Spreading and scattering, leaving no trail behind,
In the darkness of its depths there is no sound.
It moves without direction,
Resides in mystery.
Some call it death,
Some call it life,
Some call it the fruit,
Some call it the flower.
Flowing onwards, dispersing outwards,
It does not submit to any note as norm.

The world does not trust it, seeks confirmation from the sage. To be a ‘sage’ is to penetrate to the essential and follow destiny through. To have the impulses from Heaven unreleased but the five senses all ready at our disposal, it is this that is called the ‘music from Heaven’. Wordlessly the heart delights in it. Therefore the House of Yu-yen composed a eulogy of it:

“Listen, and you do not hear its sound.
Look, and you do not see its shape.
It fills up heaven and earth,
And wraps round the limits in the six directions.”

You were trying to listen to it, but there is nothing to perceive in it; that is why you were confused.

‘The “joy” begins in fear; you were afraid, so saw the world as terrible. Next I played it idling along; you idled through it, so escaped from the world. I concluded it in confusion; you were confused, and so a fool; you were a fool, and so on the Way, the Way which can be carried around with you as your baggage.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 14)

NOTE The Confucians immensely valued the ancient ceremonial music as a moral influence of the same order as the rites themselves (cf. the pairing of ‘Rites and Music’, as on p. 92 above). With the loss of all early Chinese music the present episode is inevitably obscure; but we can see that the three performances advance in a dialectical progression.

(1) A strict formal performance inspiring the Confucian virtues. Its structure is imposed on nature, artificially harmonising Yin and Yang, decreeing the reawakening of life in spring. In treating the listener as a member of society with moral duties, it also terrifies him with a sense of his transience in the relentless succession of life and death.

(2) A free spontaneous performance in which nature rebels against art. The listener is still trying to impose a human sense of purpose on to the music, and when he abandons the fruitless effort and surrenders to the flow thinks of himself as idling. (‘Mumbled lolling on withered sterculia’ alludes to Chuang-tzŭ’s taunt at the sophist Hui Shih exhausting himself on intellectual problems, cf. p. 82 above.)

(3) The final perfect performance (and it is indeed the proof of your spiritual development as a Taoist if you can imagine this one) which breaks out of the dichotomy of order and licence. The listener is drawn into a whole in which he no longer distinguishes melody and rhythm, towards the quiescence in which all the senses are prepared to function but he does not yet hear, the ultimate silence out of which music emerges. As he returns to the source out of which things have not yet divided, he ceases to analyse and is content to be a fool. But only if he dares this surrender of rational and moral judgement; most of us want sages to tell us what to do.

The end of the episode alludes to the etymology of the word yüeh, ‘music’, which in spite of a very early divergence in pronunciation is cognate with lo, ‘joy’, and continued to be written with the same graph.

When Confucius was beleaguered between Ch’en and Ts’ai, and for seven days did not eat cooked food, he rested his left hand on a withered tree, with his right hand tapped a withered branch, and sang the air of the House of Yen. He had the instrument but did not beat in time, had the voice but did not keep to the notes of the scale; the sound of the wood and the voice of the man by their licence touched men’s hearts.

Yen Hui, standing stiff with folded hands, rolled his eyes round to peep at him. Confucius was afraid that out of admiration he might incline to overestimate him, out of love might incline to be sorry for him.

‘Not to be affected by losses from Heaven is easy.
–Not to be affected by gains from man is hard.
—There is no start which is not an end.
——What is man’s is one with what is Heaven’s.

‘I venture to ask about “Not to be affected by losses from Heaven is easy”.’

‘Hunger and thirst, cold and heat, being pent in and stopped up and failing to advance, are heaven and earth proceeding on their courses, the off-flow from things as they turn in their cycles; the point is to let oneself flow on with them. As minister of a man you would not presume to desert him, and would you deny the fidelity with which you uphold even the Way of the Minister to the service with which we wait on Heaven?’

‘If from my first employment everything goes easily for me, if titles and salary are mine for the asking and nothing stands in my way, I am being profited by other things, they do not derive from myself; my destiny, yes, is something external to me. A gentleman does not rob, a man of excellence does not steal; who am I to claim these things as my own?

‘As the saying goes, “There is no wiser bird than the swallow.” Where its eye ought not to alight it will not as much as look; even if it drops its berry it will abandon it and make off. When for all its dread of man it will pounce for it in the midst of men, it’s simply that the altars of its homeland are located there.’

‘That which transforms the myriad things within it, yet does not know them as abdicating their places in it, how would it know when they finish, how would it know when they start? We have only to set our course straight and await them as they come.’

‘That something is man’s is of Heaven, that something is Heaven’s is also of Heaven. That man is unable to take as his own what is Heaven’s is his nature. The sage by calmly identifying himself with the onflow lasts out his time.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 20)

NOTE The song on which Confucius improvises is presumably the quatrain ascribed to the House of Yu-yen in the last episode (p. 166 above). He is displaying an admirable serenity in the face of the enemies who beset him. But he refuses to be admired, on the grounds that it is easier to be indifferent to misfortunes which are not one’s own fault than to strokes of luck which are equally independent of merit.

The last item is another attempt to solve the obstinate dichotomy of Heaven and man. In the last resort not only the spontaneous in man, but the deliberate actions for which he takes credit, derive from Heaven. The opposite position, that the man is author even of his spontaneous reactions, is repudiated.

Political divisions are the work not of Heaven but of man, and the swallow knows nothing about them. May not some spot where swallows venture in spite of the throngs of people be the equivalent of their state capital?

The answer to the question ‘Who was the singer?’ is of course not the man Confucius but Heaven speaking through him.

‘When you step slow, sir, I too step slow; when you trot I trot too; when you gallop I gallop too. When you are off so fast that you are gone before the dust has settled, I am left staring after you.’

‘When you step slow I too step slow – what you say I say too. When you trot I trot too – What you argue I argue too. When you gallop I gallop too – what you say about the Way I say too. As for “When you are off so fast that you are gone before the dust has settled, I am left staring after you”, it is simply that without having to give your word you are trusted, that instead of joining a gang you have room for everyone, that although you have no regalia the people come swarming to pay court to you, and you do not know how it happens.’

‘Oh, this does need to be looked into! There is no greater sorrow than the death of the heart, the death of the man is after all second to it. From the rising of the sun in the east to its setting in the far west, all the myriad things take their direction from it; whatever has eyes and feet cannot do its work without this, is present while this is out, absent when this goes in. It is like that with all things; there is something on whch they depend to die, and depend to live. Having once received man’s finished shape, I remain untransformed as I wait for extinction, I move on the course set for me by other things, day and night without an interval, ignorant where it will end. What is fermenting in the finished shape, even a knower of destiny can never spy out in advance; this is how from day to day I become as I was about to be.

‘You and I have been shoulder to shoulder all our lives, how sad that you should fail! I am afraid that you have gone on paying attention to what I used to attract attention. That is already extinct but you seek it supposing that it exists, it’s seeking a horse in the market after everyone has gone. While I am being attentive to you I forget absolutely, while you are being attentive to me forget absolutely too. In any case, why be bothered by it? Even if I do go on forgetting the “I” which is past, there is something unforgetting which remains in me.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 21)

5Irrationalising the Way: ‘Knowledge roams north’

5
Irrationalising the Way: ‘Knowledge roams north’