{134} CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Autumn Waters

The time of autumn waters had come, and all the streams were pouring into the Yellow River. The expanse of its unobstructed flow was so great that a horse on the other bank could not be distinguished from a cow. The River God was overjoyed, delighting in his own powers, believing all the world’s beauty now to be encompassed within himself. Flowing eastward, he arrived at the Northern Sea. Casting his gaze toward the east, he saw no end to the waters. It was then that his face began twisting and turning, a whirlpool of features, in his attempt to take the sea in his sights.

He then addressed Ruo of the Northern Sea¹ with a sigh: “There is a saying in the outlands: ‘He who hears the Course a mere hundred times believes no one can compare with him.’ This describes me perfectly. When I first heard that there are those who belittle the erudition of Confucius and the righteousness² of Bo Yi, I didn’t believe it. But now I have seen your vastness with my own eyes. If I had never come here to your gate, I might have become a laughingstock to the masters of the Great Purview!”³

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “You cannot discuss the sea with a well turtle, for he is limited in space. You cannot discuss ice and snow with a summer insect, for he is fixed in his own time. And you cannot discuss the Course with a nook-and-corner scholar, for he is bound by his doctrines. Now that you have emerged {135} from your dusty banks and had a look at the great ocean, you finally realize how hideous you are! Only now can you be spoken to about the Great Coherence.⁴

“There is no body of water in the world larger than the ocean. All the rivers revert to it ceaselessly, yet it is not filled. It leaks away at Weilu continuously, yet it is not emptied. Unchanging in both spring and autumn, it is unaffected by either floods or droughts. Its superiority to all the streams and rivers is beyond calculation, but I have never for this reason thought much of myself. For if I compare myself to all the beings taking shape between heaven and earth and receiving vital energy from the yin and yang, I see that my position between heaven and earth is like that of a small stone or a tiny weed on a vast mountain. Having thus seen my own insignificance, what conceit could I have? For are not the four seas, calculated against the space between heaven and earth, like a swirling hollow on the surface of a vast lake? Are not the central states, calculated against all the known world, like grains of rice lost in a granary? We number the types of creatures at ten thousand, and man is but one of them. And even in the nine regions crowded with humans, where they are able to grow their crops and ride their boats and carriages, a single person is just one among the throng. Among the ten thousand things, is not the human realm like the tip of a hair on the body of a horse? What the Five Emperors unified, what the Three Hegemons fought for, what the humane men worry themselves about, what the diligent men of distinction labor themselves over is nothing more than this. Bo Yi was considered worthy of fame for renouncing no more than this, Confucius was considered erudite for talking about no more than this—such was their conceit! Does it not resemble your previous conceit over your waters?”

The River God said, “Then I should consider heaven and earth large, and the tip of an autumn hair small—is that right?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “Not at all. For there is no end to the comparative measuring of things, no stop to the changing times, no constancy to the ways things can be divided up, no fixity to their ends and beginnings. Thus when a person of great wisdom contemplates both the far and the near, he does not find what is small to be paltry nor what is great to be much, for he knows that comparative measurings are endless. Scanning the evidences of both ancient and modern times, he does not find the lofty and distant to be dispiritingly great nor the cramped and nearby to be in need of improvement, for he knows that the temporal changes of things are endless. Understanding their fillings and emptyings, he can gain them without joy and lose them without sorrow, for he knows that there is no single constant way of dividing them up. Comprehending their clearings and smearings,^A he does not rejoice in finding himself alive nor bemoan his death, for he knows that there can be no fixity to their finishes and starts. What man knows is far less than what he does not know. The time he exists is insignificant compared to the time he does not exist. It is because he tries to exhaust this vastness with this meagerness that he bewilders and frustrates himself. From this point of view, {136} how can we know that the tip of a hair can delimit the ultimate measure of smallness, or heaven and earth the fullest expanse of vastness?”

The River God said, “The debaters of the world all say, ‘The most subtle has no physical form, and the most vast is unencompassable.’ Is this correct?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “Looking at the vast from the viewpoint of the tiny, it appears inexhaustible. Looking at the tiny from the viewpoint of the vast, it becomes unclear. ‘The subtle’ just means what is small to the point of indistinctness, and wherever our limits are overflowed is the fullest reach of ‘the vast.’ So these terms are suited to different uses, as determined by the situation. But both the subtle and the coarse are limited to the realm of things with definite form. What has no form can be distinguished by no quantities; what cannot be encompassed can be exhausted by no quantities. What can be discussed in words is just the coarser aspect of things; what can be reached by thought is just the subtler aspect of things. But what words cannot describe and thought cannot reach cannot be determined as either coarse or subtle.

“So the conduct of a Great Man harms no one, but he places no special value on humankindness and beneficence. His actions are not motivated by profit, but he does not despise those who slavishly subordinate themselves to it. He does not fight over wealth, but he places no special value on yielding and refusing it. He doesn’t depend on others, but he places no special value on self-sufficiency, nor does he despise the greedy and corrupt. If his own conduct is unconventional, he places no special value on eccentricity and uniqueness, and if his own action follows the crowds, he does not despise it as obsequious flattery. All the honors and stipends in the world are not enough to goad him to action, and all its punishments and condemnations are not enough to cause him shame, for he knows that right and wrong cannot be definitively divided, and that no border can be fixed between great and small. I have heard it said, ‘A man of the Course has no reputation; perfect virtuosities achieve no gains; a Great Man has no definitive identity’⁵—for all divided portions are for him perfectly bound to one another.”⁶

The River God said, “From within things or without, then, where is the standard that can divide the more from the less valuable, the great from the small?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “From the point of view of the Course, no being is more valuable than any other. But from the point of view of itself, each being is itself worth more and all the others are worth less. And from the point of view of convention, a thing’s value is not determined by itself.

“From the point of view of their differences, if we consider something big because it is bigger than something else, no thing is not big. If we consider it small because it is smaller than something else, no thing is not small. When you can understand the sense in which heaven and earth are just like a grain of rice and {137} the tip of a hair is just like a mountain range, you have grasped what determines their differences. If we consider something to be worthy because it achieves something, there is no thing that is not worthy. If we consider it to be unworthy because it fails to achieve something, there is no thing that is not unworthy. When you understand the sense in which east and west are opposed to each other and yet indispensable to one another, you have determined what divides the allotments of their achievements. From the point of view of the inclinations of various beings, if we judge something to be right because there is some way to view it as right, then no thing is not right. If we judge it to be wrong because there is some way to view it as wrong, then no thing is not wrong.⁷ When you understand the sense in which Yao and Jie each considers himself right and the other wrong, you have grasped the operation of their inclinations. In olden times Yao yielded the throne to Shun and Shun became a true emperor, but Kuai yielded the throne to Zhi and Zhi was destroyed.⁸ Tang and Wu fought for the throne and became rulers, but Duke Bo fought for the throne and perished.⁹ From this point of view, the propriety of struggle or of yielding, the conduct of a Yao or a Jie, is given different values at different times, none of which can be taken as a constant. Pillars and crossbeams can be used to ram down a wall, but not to plug a hole, for this requires a different kind of tool. A great stallion can gallop a thousand miles in a day, but it cannot catch mice as well as a cat, for that requires a different kind of skill. Kites and owls can catch a flea or discern the tip of a hair on a dark night, but in the daytime they are blinded and cannot even make out a mountain range, for that requires a different inborn nature. So if someone says, ‘Why don’t we make only rightness our master and eliminate wrongness, make only order our master and eliminate disorder?’ this is someone who has not yet understood the coherence of heaven and earth¹⁰ and the realities of the ten thousand things. That would be like taking heaven alone as your master and eliminating earth, or taking yin alone as your master and eliminating yang—an obvious impossibility. If someone nonetheless insists on talking this way, he is either a fool or a swindler. The rulers of the Three Dynasties sometimes yielded their thrones and sometimes passed them on to their sons; those who did either at the wrong time, contravening the current conventions, were called usurpers, while those who did either at the right time, in accord with current conventions, were called righteous¹¹ men. Silence, River God, silence! How could you know which gateways lead to worthiness and which to worthlessness, or wherein reside greatness or pettiness?”

{138} The River God said, “But then what should I do? What should I not do? How shall I decide what to accept, what to reject, what to pursue, what to renounce?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “Taking the point of view of the Course: what could be worthy, what could be worthless? The question points to their reciprocal overflowings, back and forth. Not restricting your will to any of them, you limp the great stagger of the Course. What is greater, what is lesser? The question points to the bloomings of their witherings, the bounties put forth by their declines. Not unifying your conduct along the path of any of them, you go along uneven and varied with the Course. So strict and rigorous as when a nation finds its ruler, his intrinsic virtuosities unbiased and equally there for all! Giving forth so continuously as when revelers find their shrine, its blessings unbiased and equally there for all! Extensive, it is endless like the four directions, lacking utterly any boundary or limit. Comprehensively embracing all things, to whom could it give any special protection? This is called the methodless, the directionless, the locationless.^B With all things leveled in its oneness, which is long and which is short? The Course has no end or beginning, while creatures are born and die, coming to no reliable completion. Now empty, now full, things do not remain positioned in any one fixed form. The years cannot be held on to, time cannot be stopped; waxing and waning, filling and emptying, each end is succeeded by a new beginning. This is a way of describing the method of their great rightness,¹² doing just what they ought to do in the greatest sense, conveying the mutual coherence of all things.¹³ The becoming of things is like a galloping horse, transforming with each movement, altering at each moment. What should you do? What should you not do? No matter what, you will be spontaneously transforming!”

The River God said, “In that case, what value is there in the Course?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “When you understand the Course, you will be able to see through to this coherence, ¹⁴ and then you will certainly understand what is appropriate to each changing situation. This will keep you from harming yourself with things. Those who have fully realized their intrinsic virtuosities can enter fire without feeling hot, enter water without drowning. Neither heat nor cold can harm them, the birds and animals do not impinge upon them. This is not to say that they treat these things lightly, but rather precisely that they discern where there is danger, remaining calm in both good and bad fortune, careful about what they flee and what they approach. Thus nothing can harm them. Hence is it said, the Heavenly is internal while the human is external. The intrinsic virtuosities belong to the Heavenly. Those who know which activities are of the Heavenly and which are of the human root themselves in the Heavenly and position themselves comfortably in whatever they attain from it. Advancing and retreating, shrinking and expanding according to the time, they return always to what is most basic, most constrained, and yet bespeak the ultimate reaches.”

{139} The River God said, “What do you mean by the Heavenly and what by the human?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “That cows and horses have four legs is the Heavenly. The bridle around the horse’s head and the ring through the cow’s nose are the human.^C Hence I say, do not use the human to destroy the Heavenly, do not use the purposive to destroy the fated, do not sacrifice yourself for the sake of mere names in the hope of gain. Hold onto this carefully and you may be said to have returned to what is genuine in you.”

The unipede adores the millipede, the millipede adores the snake, the snake adores the wind, the wind adores the eye, and the eye adores the mind. The unipede said to the millipede, “Hopping around on my single leg, I manage to get from place to place, but it requires all my skill. And yet you are somehow able to manage ten thousand legs at the same time. How do you do it?”

The millipede said, “It’s not like that. Haven’t you ever seen a person spit? He gives a hock and all at once the big globules come flying forth like innumerable pearls and the little droplets go spreading out like mist, raining down in a tangle. In my case, all I do is set my Heavenly impulse into action—I have no idea how it’s done!”

The millipede said to the snake, “I can move along on all these feet of mine, but it is still no match for the way you do it with no feet at all. How can this be?”

The snake said, “How could the motions of the Heavenly impulse be altered? What use would I have for feet?”

The snake said to the wind, “I move along by putting my spine and flanks into action—at least there seems to be something there doing it. But you come whooshing up from the Northern Ocean and all at once you are whooshing off into the Southern Sea, as if there is nothing there doing it at all. How can this be?”

The wind said, “True, I can whoosh up from the Northern Ocean and just as suddenly into the Southern Sea; but whoever so much as points a finger against me, or slithers through me as you do, has instantly defeated me. Nonetheless, I alone am capable of snapping massive trees in two and tossing whole houses into the sky. I use all my small defeats to make one great victory. But the really great victory of this kind is something accomplished only by the sage.”

When Confucius traveled to Kuang, the people of Song surrounded him in multiple ranks, and yet he went on singing and strumming his strings without pause. Zilu, going in to see him, asked, “How can you be so happy, Master?”

Confucius said, “Come, I will tell you. I’ve been trying to avoid failure for such a long time, and yet here it is—that is fate. I’ve been seeking success for so long, and yet it still eludes me—that’s due to the times. In the days of Yao and Shun, no one in the world was a failure, but this was not thanks to their wisdom.¹⁵ In the days of Jie and Zhou, no one in the world was a success, but this was not due to any failure of their wisdom. It was just the circumstantial tendencies of the {140} times that made it so. To travel over water without fearing the sharks and dragons is the courage of the fisherman. To travel over land without fearing rhinos and tigers is the courage of the hunter. To view death as no different from life even when the blades are clanging in front of one’s face is the courage of the warrior. And to know that success depends on fate and failure on the times, to face great calamities without fear, this is the courage of the sage. Relax, Zilu! My fate is already sealed.”

A short while later, a soldier came in with a message saying, “We surrounded you because we thought you were the insurrectionist Yang Huo. Since we have realized our mistake, we ask leave to yield way to you and withdraw.”

Gongsun Long said to Prince Mou of Wei, “When I was young I studied the Course of the former kings; when grown, I came to understand the practice of humankindness and responsible conduct. I could combine the same and the different, separate ‘hard’ and ‘white,’ make the not-so appear so and the unacceptable appear acceptable. I had confounded the wisdom of all the philosophers and stopped the mouths of all the debaters. I thought I already understood everything. But now that I have heard Zhuangzi’s words, I am bewildered and lost in their strangeness. Does his rhetorical skill surpass mine? Is my knowledge unequal to his? At this point, I barely know how to open up my beak! I venture to ask for some clarification of this.”

Prince Mou leaned against his armrest and let out a great sigh, then gazed up into the heavens and laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the story about the frog in the sunken well? He said to the tortoise of the Eastern Ocean, ‘How happy I am! I jump about on the railings and beams of the well and rest on the ledges left by missing tiles along its walls. When I splash into the water it supports my armpits and holds up my chin, and when I tread in the mud it submerges my feet up to the ankles. The surrounding crabs and tadpoles are certainly no match for me! For to have such mastery over one whole puddle of water like this, possessing all the joy of this sunken well—that is the utmost! Why don’t you come in and have a look sometime?’ But before the tortoise could even get his left foot in, his right knee was stuck in the opening. So he pulled himself back out and told the frog about the ocean: ‘Its vastness exceeds a distance of a thousand miles, its depth is beyond the measure of a thousand fathoms. In Yu’s time the lands were flooded for nine years, but its waters did not rise. In Tang’s day there were seven droughts in eight years, but its shores did not recede. Unpushed and unpulled by either a moment or an eon, unreceded and unadvanced by either little or much—that is the great joy of the Eastern Ocean!’ When the well-frog heard this, his mind scattered in all directions with astonishment, beside himself in his puniness.^D Now for the intellect,¹⁶ which doesn’t even know the limits of its own affirmations and negations, of right and wrong, to contemplate the words of Zhuangzi—that is like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain on its back, or an inchworm trying to scurry across the Yellow River. It cannot be done. Your {141} intellect, not knowing how to make sense of these most wondrous words of his, instead taking delight in its own momentary gains—is it not a frog trapped in a sunken well? As for him, no sooner had he gone traipsing across the Yellow Springs¹⁷ than he was off climbing through the blue of the heavens, free of both south and north, unobstructed and released in all the four directions, submerged in the unfathomable depths. Devoid of both east and west, he begins anew in the dark obscurity and returns to the Great Openness. For you to rigidly seek him out with your acute discernment, searching for him with disputations, why, that’s just like trying to survey Heaven through a tube, or to measure the depth of the earth with an awl. Isn’t it just too small? You’d do best to simply forget about it and go your way. Haven’t you heard about when Yuzi of Shouling tried to learn the gait of the people of Handan? Before he was able to master this local skill, he had forgotten his original gait and had to return home on his hands and knees. If you don’t get out of here, you might lose your original skills and be left without a career!”

Gongsun Long, unable to close his mouth or lower his tongue, broke into a run and bolted away.

Zhuangzi was once fishing beside the Pu River when two emissaries brought him a message from the King of Chu: “The king would like to trouble you with the control of his realm.” Zhuangzi, holding fast to his fishing pole, without so much as turning his head, said, “I have heard there is a sacred turtle in Chu, already dead for three thousand years, which the king keeps in a bamboo chest high in his shrine. Do you think this turtle would prefer to be dead and having his carcass exalted, or alive and dragging his tail through the mud?” The emissaries said, “Alive and dragging his tail through the mud.” Zhuangzi said, “Away with you then! I too will drag my tail through the mud!”

When Huizi was prime minister of Liang, Zhuangzi went to see him. Someone said to Huizi, “Zhuangzi is coming; he wants to take your place as prime minister.” Huizi was greatly alarmed and ordered a search for Zhuangzi throughout the land for three days and three nights. Zhuangzi, when he got there, said to him, “In the south there is a bird called Yuanchu, have you heard about it? This bird rises from the Southern Sea and flies to the Northern Ocean, resting only on the sterculia tree, eating only the fruit of the bamboo, and drinking only from the sweetest springs. But once there was an owl who had found a rotten mouse carcass, who saw the Yuanchu passing overhead and started screeching at it, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ Are you trying to shoo me away from your state of Liang?”^E

Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the bridge over the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, “The minnows swim about so freely, following the openings wherever they take them. Such is the happiness of fish.”

Huizi said, “You are not a fish, so whence do you know the happiness of fish?”

{142} Zhuangzi said, “You are not I, so whence do you know I don’t know the happiness of fish?”

Huizi said, “I am not you, to be sure, so I don’t know what it is to be you. But by the same token, since you are certainly not a fish, my point about your inability to know the happiness of fish stands intact.”^F

Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to the starting point. You said, ‘Whence do you know the happiness of fish?’ Since your question was premised on your knowing that I know it, I must know it from right here, up above the Hao River.”^G

ENDNOTES

A. Tan’tu 坦塗. This has become a conventional phrase meaning “level road,” derived from a reading of this passage, on the basis of the very common interchangeable use of 途 and 塗. But since this phrase seems to be parallel to no less than three dyads of contrasted terms (far/near, ancient/modern, filling/emptying), and is meant to be relevant to undermining the fixed distinction between life and death, an attempt is made here to discern a contrasting pair here that would pertain to a changed understanding of life and death.

B. A triple translation of 無方 wufang. See “Notes on the Translation.”

C. Note the stark difference between this passage and the position put forth in the Inner Chapters, which makes the distinction between the Heavenly and the Human only to overturn it into unknowability, and even provisionally is only willing to say that neither should overpower the other (Chapter 6, p. 53). Here, on the contrary, the Heavenly definitively means the spontaneous, while the Human means the deliberate and artificial; the two terms have definite contents, and these can be unproblematically known, and “the inherent powers belong to the Heavenly.” Compare Chapters 8 and 9, which also offer a fixed definition of the content of the Heavenly inborn nature.

D. With Wang Shumin, reading 嫢for 規.

E. Note the rhetorical similarity of this passage to the beginning of Chapter 1.

F. In other words, your refutation of my position depends on your acceptance of the principle that one being cannot know what another being experiences, which only further proves my point that you cannot know the happiness of fish.

G. In other words, my saying “this is the happiness of fish” is exactly as valid or invalid as your saying “how do you know the happiness of fish?” In both cases we were responding to our own sense of someone else’s subjective state: Zhuangzi to his sense of the fish being happy, Huizi to his sense of Zhuangzi believing that he knows fish-happiness. If my claim is invalid (because all I really know is my own experience, and what I’m calling “fish-happiness” is really just an aspect of my experience over here), then your claim is also invalid (because you, too, really know only your own experience, and what you’re calling “Zhuangzi believing fish-happiness” is really just an aspect of your own experience of Huizi-hearing-Zhuangzi-say-he-thinks-the-fish-are-happy, over there). In that case, we are both just playing around in our own mental pool, and what you say over there has nothing to do with me, and hence cannot refute what I’m doing over here. Conversely, if your claim is valid, then by whatever miracle you’re able to know what you claim I experience over here (i.e., your apprehension of my “belief in fish-happiness” from over {143} there in your experience, though not being me), I am also able to really know from over here what fish experience over there (“being happy”), though not being the fish. An unstated premise here is that, because what words refer to is “peculiarly unfixed” (Chapter 2, p. 12), there is no essential difference in the ultimate knowability of meaning between something stated in an explicit verbal statement (i.e., Zhuangzi’s “That is the happiness of fish”) and any other natural phenomenon (i.e., the fish’s frolicking around): all are always interpretive guesses that admit of no certainty. Thus in whatever sense and to whatever extent you are capable of succeeding in knowing and critiquing my position, I am capable of succeeding in knowing fish-happiness. Either way your objection fails. If you are able even to understand my claim enough to object to it, as a belief or claim occurring elsewhere, beyond yourself, you have admitted its premise; in rejecting my claim, you admit it. To just the extent that it is questionable, it is defensible, no more and no less. Just as my refutation of your objection implicitly accepted its premise, your objection to my initial claim implicitly demonstrated it. As a further wrinkle, Zhuangzi is saying, “I know their enjoyment down there from our enjoyment up here”—a friendly metajoke suggesting that the debate itself is an enjoyment, and thus in a deeper sense there is no disagreement—which also resolves the apparent refutation (really you are not disagreeing, we are agreeing to enjoy arguing) while also preserving it (without the argument and refutation there would be no enjoyment). As in the case of Zhuangzi and the butterfly, which “surely count as two distinct identities” (Chapter 2, p. 21), and the Inner Chapters generally, Zhuangzi’s notion of oneness here depends on the multiplicity of distinct identities and viewpoints, not on collapsing them into literal unity. It is just that each perspective, precisely by dwelling in its own perspective, necessarily posits other perspectives as part of its own experience, and thereby undermines the certainty but also establishes the equal permissibility of its own experience. To be a this is always also to be a that; there is no way to isolate one from the other. So self-knowledge is also intrinsically other-knowledge, but precisely for that reason is no more (or less) certain about itself than about the other. The “knowledge” in both cases is really no more than a constantly transforming stream of moment-by-moment interpretive descriptions of an ongoing series of many-sided this-that moments of experience, forming part of the total process of mutual transformation.

¹. The god of the sea.

². 義 Yi, elsewhere translated, when paired with ren (Humanity), as Responsibility or Responsible Conduct. see Glossary. Bo Yi together with his brother Shu Qi starved themselves to death rather than join the violent Zhou revolution against the allegedly corrupt Shang dynasty, or even to take part in Zhou society or eat its grain. For this righteous refusal even to the point of death, they are thus often cited as exemplars of strict allegiance to “responsible conduct”: given their duties and responsibilities, in their role as sworn subjects of the Shang, it would not be right to violently overthrow one’s own ruler (though their deed is often interpreted more broadly as a principled opposition to violence as such).

³. 大方 dafang. In Chapter 20 (p. 158) and Chapter 25 (p. 216), the same term is translated as “the Vast Ambit.” It also appears in Chapter 24 (p. 205), translated as “the Great Scope.”

⁴. 理 Li. see Glossary.

⁵. Cf. Chapter 1, p. 5.

⁶. This sentence could also mean, “For he shrinks his allotment to its absolute minimum,” or “For he keeps himself perfectly confined within his allotment,” or perhaps, “For he keeps himself perfectly confined within the allotment of each thing.” Alternately, it could mean “the division [between each of these pairs of opposites] has shrunk to its absolute minimum.”

⁷. This could mean either “… because someone can consider it right or wrong,” or “because there is something in it that can be considered right or wrong.”

⁸. This ill-fated attempt to imitate the ancient sage-kings occurred in the state of Yan in 316 BCE.

⁹. In the state of Chu, in 479 BCE.

¹⁰. Li. see Glossary.

¹¹. Yi. Elsewhere translated “responsibility,” “responsible conduct,” “duty,” “justice.” see Glossary.

¹². 義 Yi. see Glossary.

¹³. 理 Li. see Glossary.

¹⁴. 理 Li. see Glossary.

¹⁵. 知 Zhi. see Glossary.

¹⁶. Zhi. see Glossary.

¹⁷. The postmortem underworld.