{195} CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ghostless Saunter

The hermit Ghostless Saunter,¹ on the strength of an introduction by Ru Shang,² had come to meet with Marquis Wu of Wei. Marquis Wu offered commiseration for his visitor’s exertions. “You must be ill, sir!” he said. “Having suffered the hardships of living in the mountain forests, you have still made such an effort to come meet with me!”

Ghostless Saunter said, “I was just about to commiserate with you—how is it that you commiserate with me? For if you inflate your desires and expand the range of your likes and dislikes, the dispositions of your own inborn nature and the allotment of life in you are bound to get diseased. But if instead you try to expel your desires and pluck out your likes and dislikes, your eyes and ears are bound to get diseased. So I was about to commiserate with you—how is it that instead you commiserate with me?” The marquis, with a faraway expression, made no reply.

After a short time, Ghostless Saunter went on, “Let me tell you about how I evaluate hunting dogs. Those of the lowest quality do no more than seize their prey and eat their fill—they have the intrinsic powers of mere foxes. Those of middling quality have a look to them as if they were gazing at the sun. Those of the highest quality have a look to them as if they had lost the one thing that mattered to them, and with it the unity of their own beings.³ But my way of evaluating dogs is not as good as my way of evaluating horses. I find that some run so straight that it matches a measuring line, make turns matching the arc of a hook, turn corners matching the edge of a T-square, and run circles that match those drawn with a compass. These are the horses of national grade. But they are not as good as the horses of the imperial grade. The imperial horses are truly perfect and complete {196} in their natural endowments. They look worried and desolate, as if they were mourning the loss of the one thing that mattered to them, and with it the unity of their own being.⁴ Horses like this pass beyond everything, leaving it all behind them in the dust, never knowing where they are.” Marquis Wu was now grinning with delight.

When Ghostless Saunter departed, Ru Shang followed and asked him, “How did you manage to so delight my lord, sir? Whenever I go to counsel him, I bring in the Classic of Odes, the Classic of Documents, the Classic of Ritual, and the Classic of Music from the side, also advising him step by step about the Golden Tablets and Six Metal Scabbards,⁵ making innumerable policy proposals, which by the way have had enormous success. And yet through all of it my lord has never once cracked a smile. What have you told my lord that was able to delight him so?”

Ghostless Saunter said, “I just told him how I evaluate dogs and horses.”

Ru Shang said, “Is that all?”

The other said, “Have you never heard of the traveler from the distant state of Yue? When he had been away from his homeland for a few days, he was glad whenever he saw an acquaintance. When he had been away for a fortnight or a month, he was delighted to see anyone he had even met with in his home country. After a year, he was delighted to see anyone who even resembled anyone he had met there. Was this not because he missed his countrymen more and more deeply the longer he was away? Now imagine someone who had fled to the empty wastelands, where tangles of goosefeet and woodbine block the paths even of the weasels and polecats who hop from spot to spot through the wastes. How delighted he would be if he were to hear the stomping of human footsteps, and how much more so if he were to catch a sound in the breeze of his brothers and relatives chatting and chuckling somewhere nearby! How long indeed it must have been since my lord has heard even the chatting and chuckling of a Genuine Human anywhere near him!”

Another time, Ghostless Saunter again had a meeting with Marquis Wu, who said to him, “Sir, you have been living in the mountain forests for a long time, willing even to subsist on acorns and fill yourself with onions and chives to keep poor me at a distance. Are you now getting too old for that, or have you started to crave wine and meat? Or might you be here to bring good fortune to my altars of soil and grain?”

Ghostless Saunter said, “I was born poor and lowly, and have never dared to think of partaking of your lordship’s wine and meat. I have come to commiserate with you.”

“What? What is there to commiserate with me about?” said the ruler.

“I commiserate with your lordship’s hardships of spirit and body.”

Marquis Wu said, “What do you mean?”

{197} Ghostless Saunter said, “The nourishment provided by heaven and earth is one and the same for everyone. Those who climb the highest heights cannot extend it, and those who dwell in the lowest depths cannot diminish it. Now you are special in being the lord of ten thousand chariots, which you use to embitter the lives of an entire nation so as to nourish your own ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. But the imponderable in you, the spiritlike, will not allow this. The spiritlike is something that loves harmony and hates any one-sided self-indulgence^A. For one-sided self-indulgence is an illness, and it is for this illness that I commiserate with you. If not this, what is it that you, my lord, consider illness?”

Marquis Wu said, “I have long wished to meet with you, sir. I want only to love and care for my people, practice justice and put an end to warfare. Would that be acceptable?”

Ghostless Saunter said, “Not at all! Love and care for the people is the source of harm to the people. Practicing justice and ending bloodshed is the root of war. If you start from this sort of thing, taking deliberate action to pursue your aims, you are most likely to fail. Perfect beauty is a tool that fashions ugliness. Even if you endeavor to practice humankindness and responsible conduct,⁶ it will be not much different from artifice and duplicity. No doubt you can succeed in shaping yourself into the desired shapes of these things, but as soon as they are fully formed they will certainly become aggressively self-aggrandizing, and as they further transform, that will certainly lead to warfare with whatever is outside them. You must refrain from setting up rows of bells and drums in resplendent towers, from walking your thoroughbred steeds through the pavilions of your altars—do not thus store up adversity for yourself in the midst of your gains. Make use of neither skill nor schemes nor outright warfare to triumph over others. If you kill the elites and commoners belonging to another man’s country and annex his land to nourish your private desires and your own spirit, it becomes impossible to say which side is good or where the victory lies. If you cannot completely refrain from this, you can instead cultivate whatever requires no deliberate faking in your own breast, for that will accord with the true dispositions of heaven and earth without disturbing them. Then the people will already have escaped death—what need would you then have to put an end to warfare?”

The Yellow Emperor was going to meet with Big Teeter⁷ in the Thatchtop Mountains. Scopeclear was captain of the chariot, assisted by Brightspace, with Spreadlike and Studybuddy going before the horses while Brogates and Goofball rode behind. When they arrived in the wilds of Xiangcheng, these seven sagely men got lost and could find nowhere to ask directions, until they happened upon a herding boy. They asked him the way, saying, “Do you know the Thatchtop Mountains?”

{198} “Yes,” the boy said.

“Do you know where Big Teeter lives?”

“Yes, I do.”

The Yellow Emperor exclaimed, “What an extraordinary young man! Not only does he know the Thatchtop Mountains, he even knows where Big Teeter lives! Let me ask you, then: how should the empire be handled?”

The boy replied, “The empire should be handled by doing just what I’m doing now, nothing more. What more is there to do? When I was younger I would wander on my own everywhere within the six conjoined directions.⁸ Then I happened to be afflicted with an illness that damaged my eyesight. That’s when an elder offered me some advice: ‘You must now instead wander only in the wilds of Xiangcheng, as if riding on the sun as your chariot.’⁹ Now that my eyesight has somewhat recovered, I wander even outside the six conjoined directions. That’s how the empire should be handled. What more is there to do about it?”

The Yellow Emperor said, “The handling of the empire is indeed not your problem, my son. But nevertheless, I venture to ask you about how to handle the empire.” But the boy declined to answer. The Yellow Emperor asked again.

Then the boy said, “Handling the empire is no different from tending horses, is it? You just get rid of anything that harms the horses, that’s all.”

The Yellow Emperor bowed twice with his head to the ground, praised the boy as his Heavenly Teacher, and departed.

Intellectual people are unhappy when deprived of the constant transmutation of ideas; debaters are unhappy when deprived of the orderly progression of arguments; critics are unhappy when deprived of the task of berating and nitpicking. These are people who pen themselves in with mere things. Men who can solicit the attention of the age become rising stars at court; those who can satisfy the populace are honored with official positions; those with physical strength are proud of difficult feats. Those who are brave and daring are spurred on by calamity. Those skilled in handling weaponry delight in combat; the dried-out and depleted rest on their reputations; the wielders of law and statute make much of expanding governance; the masters of ritual instruction revere proper demeanor; the men of humankindness and responsible conduct cherish the interfaces of human relationships. When farmers have no work to do with their crops and weeds, they fall to pieces,^B as do merchants deprived of their markets; when the common people are given work to do morning and night, they become diligent; when craftsmen are skilled in handling their tools and machines, they become vigorous. Without an accumulation of wealth, the greedy get anxious; without expanding power and influence, the ambitious get depressed.

This is the only way these slaves to circumstances and external things delight in the process of transformation: when they meet with a time that can make use {199} of something about them, they are unable to resist doing their thing, unable to practice non-doing.¹⁰ Thus do they comply and align themselves with whatever is brought by every passing year, instead of letting change be their very thinghood^C! Thus do they drive their bodies and inborn natures about, sinking beneath the ten thousand things, never turning back for their entire lives. How sad!

Zhuangzi said, “If an archer can be called skillful for hitting a target not designated in advance, then everyone in the world is a master archer like Yi. Would you agree?”

Huizi said, “Yes.”

Zhuangzi continued, “If the world has no universally recognized standard of right, so each man affirms his own idea of rightness as right, then everyone in the world is a sage like Yao. Would you agree?”

Huizi said, “Yes.”

Zhuangzi said, “Well, then. There are the Confucians, the Mohists, the Yangists, the Bingists,^D and yourself. Among these five positions, which is ultimately right? Or is it like the case of Halfwit Hasty? His disciple said, ‘I have mastered your Course. I can get the cauldron boiling in the winter and make ice in the summer.’ Halfwit Hasty said, ‘That is just using the yang to evoke the yang, and the yin to evoke the yin. It is not what I call the Course. Let me demonstrate my Course for you!’ Then he tuned two zithers, placing one in the foyer and one in his room. When he struck the gong tone on one, the gong on the other sounded; when he struck the jue tone on one, the jue on the other sounded—for they were tuned the same way. But then he changed the tuning of one string, matching none of the five tones. When he plucked this tone, all twenty-five strings of the zither resonated at once. It was just a sound like all the rest, and yet it functioned as the lord of all the tones. Is that how it is?”^E

Huizi said, “But how about if whenever I debate the Confucians, Mohists, Yangists, or Bingists, they are so bowled over by my words and weighed down by my statements that none can refute me?”

Zhuangzi said, “It would be like a man of Qi who sends his son on a journey to Song, but assigns cripples to be his bodyguards. Or like someone who seeks out a euphonious bell, but then muffles its sound by keeping it wrapped in cloth. Or like someone who searches for his lost son, but doesn’t look beyond his own house. This is forgetting the right type of thing [to be used for the job]. A man of Chu was angered by the doorman at his lodgings [and so wished to depart, but was still so angry] in the middle of the night, when no one else was around, that he picked a fight with the ferryman. He didn’t get anywhere, but he did manage to make some enemies for himself!”^F

Zhuangzi was attending a funeral when he happened to pass Huizi’s grave. He looked at his followers and said, “There was a man of Ying who, when a bit of plaster no thicker than a fly’s wing got smeared on his nose, had Carpenter Stoney {200} slice it off. Carpenter Stoney swung his ax with a whoosh, slicing it off exactly as requested, removing every bit of the plaster without harming the nose, leaving the man of Ying standing there completely unperturbed. When Lord Yuan of Song heard about this, he called Carpenter Stoney to court and said, ‘Try it on me!’ Carpenter Shi said, ‘It is true that I could once slice like that. But my material is now long dead.’ Since Huizi died, I, too, have had no material to work on. There is no one I can talk to anymore.”

Guan Zhong had fallen ill, and Duke Huan¹¹ asked him, “Father Zhong’s illness has become severe; how could I be permitted not to say what I must say? If the illness gets worse, to whom would Your Highness like me to hand over the state?”

Guan Zhong said, “To whom would you wish to give it?”

“To Bao Shuya,”¹² said the duke.

“No, not him. He is a good man, incorruptible and pure, so much so that he will not associate with those who are not as good as himself. When he is once told of someone’s errors, he never forgets it for the rest of his life. If you have him govern the state, he will tangle with you on the one hand and clash with the people below on the other. It would not be long before he offended you.”

“Then who can do it?” asked the duke.

“If you won’t give up on the whole idea,” said Guan Zhong, “Xi Peng¹³ would be all right. He’s the kind of man who forgets those above him and leaves those below him alone. He is ashamed that he is not as good as the Yellow Emperor, and thus is empathetic to those who are not even as good as himself. Those who share their intrinsic virtuosities with others are called sages, while those who share their wealth with others are called worthies. Those who domineer or subordinate others with their worthiness never succeed in winning them over. There is much Xi Peng doesn’t hear about in his state, and indeed there is much he doesn’t see going on in his own house. So if you won’t give up the whole idea, he’s the one for the job.”

The king of Wu, boating on the Yangtse River, stopped off for a hike on Monkey Mountain. When the monkeys saw him, they scampered away in fright, escaping into the deep thickets. But one monkey among them continued to swivel and pivot his own sweet way, nimbly clutching at the branches, showing off his skill to the king. When the king shot at this monkey, a nimble stab of its hand snagged the arrow in midflight. The king then ordered his attendants to hurry forward and unleash their shots in tandem, straightaway overtaking and killing the monkey dead. The king looked the corpse up and down, and then said to his friend Undoubting Visage, “This monkey showed off its skill, depending on its own agility, {201} acting superior to me, and thus arrived at this terrible fate. Take a lesson from it! Ah! Do not show a haughty demeanor and act superior to others!”

Undoubting Visage returned home and took Oversee Lumbertree as his teacher, which assisted him in adjusting his demeanor, getting rid of any show of delight, and saying good-bye to display. After three years everyone in his country was praising him.

Sir Shoestrap the Southside Unk¹⁴ sat sprawled against his armrest on the ground. Gazing up, he emptied a long sigh out into the heavens. Sir Faceformed saw him there and said, “Master, you surpass all beings. Can the body really be made like dried wood, the mind like dead ashes?”

“I used to live in a mountain cave,” replied Sir Shoestrap. “One time Tian He¹⁵ showed up and managed to get a look at me, and because of that the people of Qi held celebrations three times to congratulate him. I must have had something in me for him to be able to see it in me like that. I must have been selling something for him to come shopping for it like that. If I didn’t have it in me, how could he have come to know it? If I were not selling it, how could he have come to buy it? Alas! It saddened me to see someone lose himself like that, and then it saddened me that I was saddened about that person, and then it saddened me that I was saddened that I was saddened about that person. And from there it just keeps going on and on.”^G

Confucius went to Chu, where the king held a feast in his honor. Sun Shu’ao stood holding the pouring vessel while Yiliao of Marketsouth received the wine and made the libation, saying, “Ah, you are an equal to the men of old! And they would certainly have words to say on such an occasion!”

Confucius said, “I have learned something of the wordless words, but I have never spoken them. I will speak them now. You, Yiliao, merely juggled some balls around, and the conflict between Chu and Song was thereby resolved. And you, Sun Shu-ao, merely fell asleep with a feathered fan in your hand, and the people of Ying halted their troops.¹⁶ As for me, I wish I had a beak three feet long!”

The deeds of those two are what may be called a “nonguiding Course,” while the words of this one are what may be called a “wordless argument.” When all {202} powers and virtuosities are subsumed in the unification of the Course and all words rest in what the understanding does not understand, the utmost has been reached. But no single virtuosity can include¹⁷ all that is unified in the Course, and no argument can adduce what understanding cannot understand. To become famed [for one’s moral virtuosity, understanding and arguments] like the Confucians and Mohists is thus always an inauspicious sign. The ocean refuses none of the rivers flowing into it; its vastness is unsurpassed. Likewise, the sage encompasses heaven and earth, his bounty reaching all in the world, but no one knows who he is. A Great Man is born without titles, dies without posthumous honors, gathers no wealth, and establishes no name for himself. It is not skillful barking that makes a dog good, and it is not skillful talking that makes a man even a worthy, much less a Great Man. Indeed, endeavoring to be great does not make him great, much less any endeavor to be virtuosic! Nothing is more complete than heaven and earth, but do they become so by seeking to be so? One who understands the great completeness seeks nothing, loses nothing, abandons nothing; he never replaces his own self with any definite thing, never alters himself for the sake of anything.^H He returns only to his own self, yet he finds it inexhaustible. He follows the ancients, yet he never becomes their mere copy. This is the unfaked realness¹⁸ of a Great Man.

Sir Shoestrap had eight sons. He had them line up before him and then called over Nineway Blocker, saying to him, “Physiognomize my sons for me. Which one will have good fortune?”

Nineway Blocker said, “Jamb is the one who will have good fortune.” Shoestrap, pleasantly surprised, said, “How so?”

“Jamb will share his meals with the ruler of a state to the end of his days.”

Shoestrap then began to weep inconsolably, crying, “What did my son do to deserve such an extreme fate!”

Nineway Blocker said, “But when someone shares his meals with the ruler of a state, generous support is given even to the three most distant levels of his relations; how much more his own parents! For you to weep in this way upon hearing of his fate is to reject happiness. What father counts his son’s good fortune as a misfortune?”

Shoestrap said, “Blocker! How could you understand it? Would this really make Jamb fortunate? It goes no further than wine and meat, just stuff that goes into the mouth and nose. But that tells us nothing of where it comes from. If, though I have done no shepherding, a ewe is suddenly there giving birth in the southwest corner of my house, and then, though I have had no inclination to go hunting for it, a quail is suddenly there hatching her young in the southeast corner, what should I think it to be if not some ominous anomaly? What I wander in with {203} my son is heaven and earth. Together with him I welcome the joy, the music, of heaven. Together with him I welcome the sustenance, the nutriment, of earth. I do not do any work with him, I do not hatch any schemes with him—we do not do anything anomalous like that. Together with him I chariot upon the unfaked realness of both heaven and earth,¹⁹ never letting him be disturbed by mere things. Together we see all twists and turns as one, never letting ourselves get caught up in what external events do or don’t require. And yet now this conventional reward comes to him! Wherever an ominous anomaly appears, there must have been some ominous anomalous conduct. Danger looms! Since my son and I have not done anything wrong, it must be Heaven that is visiting this upon us! That is why I weep.”

Soon afterward he sent Jamb off to Yan. But he was captured by bandits on the way, and since it would have been difficult to sell him as a slave with his body intact, they cut off his foot to make it easier. They sold him in Qi, where he was made gatekeeper for Duke Ju, in which capacity he was given meat to eat for the rest of his days.

Gnawgap ran into Xu You and said, “Where are you going, sir?”

“I am fleeing from Yao.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yao is so cloyingly kind and humane,²⁰ I am afraid he will become a laughingstock to all the world—and finally will lead people in later times to cannibalize each other! It is not difficult to get people to gather around you: love them and they will feel affection for you, profit them and they will come to you; praise them and they will work hard for you. Give them what they hate, however, and they will scatter. Loving and profiting them do indeed come from humankindness and responsible conduct. But those who freely dispense humankindness and responsible conduct are few, while those who see profit to be gained from practicing humankindness and responsible conduct are many. If there is even the slightest moment of faking²¹ in one’s humankindness and responsible conduct, they instantly become weapons in the hands of brutish greed. Thus for any one man to benefit the world with his decisions and institutions²² can be likened to trying to carve out the shapes of all things with a single slash of the knife.²³ Yao understands how worthy people profit the world, but he doesn’t understand how they plunder {204} the world. For only those who have ousted all worthiness from themselves can understand this!”

There are the subserviently compliant, there are the precariously perched, there are the compromised and put upon.

The subserviently compliant are those who learn the words of one teacher and then, secretly pleased with themselves—so subservient! so compliant!—remain partial to their own theory, regarding it as quite sufficient, without realizing there has never been anything to possess there, or anywhere. Thus they are called the subserviently compliant.

The precariously perched are like lice on a pig. Choosing a place between its wide-set bristles, they think they have found an enormous palace or vast pleasure park for themselves. In the slits of the hooves or creases of the buttocks, or in the cleavage between the teats or the folds behind the knees, they think they have found a secure home in an auspicious site, not realizing that as soon as the butcher claps his hands and spreads forth the kindling, setting it aflame, they will be fried together with the pig. They flourish due to their place, and likewise perish due to their place. Such are the precariously perched.

The compromised and put-upon are people like the emperor Shun. The mutton has no hankering for the ants; it is the ants that hanker after the mutton, for it is rank with musk. Shun’s musky behavior attracted the delight of the people. Thus he changed his residence three times, and in each case a city sprang up around him. After he moved to the wastelands of Deng, it became a metropolis of a hundred thousand families. When Yao learned of Shun’s worthiness, he raised him up from the barren lands, saying, “We are hoping his arrival will bring us prosperity.” When Shun was taken from the barren lands he was already long in years and was losing both his vision and his hearing, but he was never able to return home to rest. This is what I mean by being compromised and put upon.

Hence the Spiritlike Man always hates the arrival of a crowd. For where there is a crowd there is no togetherness, and where there is no togetherness, a crowd is no gain. He keeps no one too close and no one too distant, embracing only his intrinsic virtuosities, warming himself with his own harmony, thereby getting along with the world. Such are what I call Genuine Persons. Even more than those ants they have dropped away all wisdom, even more than the fishes they always find a plan, even more than the mutton they have dropped all deliberate intentions. They view the eye with the eye, listen to the ear with the ear, recover the mind with the mind. Their levelness is like that of a taut cord. Their transformations are a mere following along.

For the Genuine Persons of olden times waited for and depended upon²⁴ it all through the Heavenly in them. They did not intrude into the Heavenly with the human. Such were the Genuine Persons of old! Getting it, they lived; losing it, they died. Getting it, they died; losing it, they lived. It is like medicine. There are crow’s head, balloonflower, cockscomb, and chinaroot. Taken at the right time, {205} any of them can be sovereign, but the case-by-case vicissitudes are beyond exact verbal description.

When Gou Jian was trapped on Mt. Kuai’ji with his three thousand armored soldiers, it was only Zhong who knew how to save them from destruction, but it was also only Zhong who was unaware of the subsequent danger to his own life [at Gou Jian’s hands].²⁵ So I say, the owl’s eyes are suited to certain conditions, and the crane’s neck has its proper proportion. But to change them would cause these creatures suffering. Hence it is said that although both the wind and the sun diminish the river when they pass over its face, nonetheless, even if both were fixed upon it at once, the river would be undisturbed; it merely relies on its source and continues on its way. For the water holds firmly to the earth, the shadow holds firmly to the body, and all beings hold firmly to one another.

So it is that the eye is endangered by keen vision, the ear by sharp hearing, the mind by its self-sacrificing devotion to external things. Every ability endangers its own reservoir. Once this danger has taken shape, it is too late to change it. Once disaster sprouts, it grows and flourishes. To return them [to their source] requires effort, and the results take time. But people think [these abilities] are their most precious treasures—pathetic, is it not? The ceaseless destruction of nations and the slaughter of the people come from never thinking to question this.

The feet occupy just the span of earth upon which they stand, but it is all the untrod land that allows them to travel well. Man’s conscious understanding is puny, but it is all that it does not understand that allows it to understand what is meant by the Heavenly. To understand it as the Great Oneness, as the Great Dark, as the Great Eye, as the Great Equality, as the Great Scope,²⁶ as the Great Dependable, as the Great Stability—that is to arrive at the utmost. As the Great Oneness it runs through and connects all things; as the Great Dark it solves and dissolves them all, as the Great Eye it beholds them all, as the Great Equality it enframes them all, as the Great Scope it incorporates them all, as the Great Dependable it is verified in them all, as the Great Stability it supports them all. Bringing each as far as it can go and using it up, the Heavenly is there. Following them all, illumination is there. Vanishing into them, a pivot is there. Starting anew, something other is always there.²⁷ To solve it seems like leaving it unsolved, to know it seems like leaving it unknown, for it can be known only by not knowing. It cannot be {206} inquired after in terms of either the bounded or the unbounded. But within all the scraping and slippage there is a solidity that is never replaced through all the ages, never lacking. So may we not say that it has manifested itself plainly and put itself greatly forth? Shall we not inquire into this? What else is all our perplexity for? To resolve our perplexity into the ever unperplexed, thus returning it to the unperplexed, this would still be the greatest unperplexity.

ENDNOTES

A. Following Guo Xiang, reading 姦 in its earliest attested sense as given in the Shouwen, i.e., 私也.

B. Following Luo Miandao.

C. Buwuyuyi 不物於易. Most commentators understandably suggest one of three possible corrections of this difficult phrase: (1) changing the bu to an er 而, which would mean something like “complying with and aligned by the course of the year, but thereby made into a mere determinate thing by the process of change”; (2) reversing the wu and yi, which would mean something like “complying with and aligned by the course of the year, but not exchanging itself with other things”; or (3) both, which would mean something like, “complying with and aligned by the course of the year, but letting themselves be changed by external things.” I follow the minority attempt of commentators like Lu Shuzhi and Zhu Dezhi to make sense of the original phrase, which compels us to take it to be making a contrast between two ways of going along with change and two kinds of thinghood, in both cases distinguishing a superficial sense that is critiqued from a profounder sense that is extolled. The superficial form of going along with change means merely taking a limited place within the whole process of change, fulfilling one’s determinate role and locking into that single inert and partial identity, whereas the thoroughgoing form of going along with change is to take change as one’s very thinghood, to be made of change itself, which means to actually also have as one’s deepest inner essence the uncanny and spiritual power of constant self-transformation, always going beyond any one fixed and determinate identity.

D. Traditionally identified as the followers of the logician Gongsun Long (see Chapter 17, p. 140), who however was probably born too late to have been known to the historical Zhuang Zhou. Some scholars have thus suggested that this could be a distorted reference to followers of Song Xing or the proto-Daoist/Legalist Tian Pian (see Chapter 33, p. 269). But it is just as likely that this story is an imaginative fiction about Zhuangzi written after his death, when Gongsun Long had already come to prominence.

E. Huizi had developed a form of argumentation that used the alteration of perspective to undermine hard and fast distinctions, leading to the conclusion that all things are one (see Chapter 33, p. 273). Zhuangzi adopts this method from Huizi but conceives its status and function very differently. For it is this method that develops into Zhuangzi’s “going by the rightness of the present ‘this’” (yinshi 因是), the “wild card.” (see Glossary; see also “Zhuangzi as Philosopher” at https://www.hackettpublishing.com/zhuangziphil.) This method, shared by Huizi and Zhuangzi, is what is here compared to the one tone that matches none but makes all the other strings resonate. This passage perhaps shows us the difference between Huizi and Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi points out that this wild card is still one more card—“it is just a sound like {207} all the rest”—and that it still doesn’t resolve anything about what is so, above and beyond all argument, in the way Huizi thinks. It just means he can win every argument. But this is still “laboring your spirit to make all things one” (Chapter 2, p. 15). The wild card view has certain special characteristics, can resonate with every string, can win every argument: but it is not for that reason to be regarded as the establishment of an objective truth.

F. To think that winning a dispute is the way to establish the truth is using the wrong type of thing for the job. All that is actually accomplished is bad blood with the defeated, but the whole point was to establish agreement, a harmonious relation, between the disputants. Similarly, the man of Chu wanted to get away from his lodgings and cross the river because of his anger at something there, but it was his anger that kept him from getting across the river. Zhuangzi’s alternative is the use of “going by the present this” not to show the others that they are wrong and that they ought to regard all things as one but to follow along with whatever their partial viewpoint is, as in the tale of the monkey keeper (Chapter 2, pp. 15–16).

G. Following Luo Miandao’s reading.

H. A double translation. See “Notes on the Translation.”

¹. The name “Wugui” 無鬼 means “without ghosts,” a term used by Mohists to describe a position they hoped to dispel: that there are no such things as ghosts, i.e., spirits of the deceased who monitor the behavior of the living.

². Construing 女 as the surname 汝. The given name means Merchant. If we were to take this as another fantasy name, and regard the first character as semantically significant rather than as a surname, it would means something like either “Lady Merchant” or “Youseller.”

³. A double translation. See “Notes on the Translation.” Literally, “lost their one(ness).” This could also mean “lost the Oneness,” or “lost themselves,” or “lost their own unity.”

⁴. See previous note.

⁵. Works of military strategy.

⁶. Renyi. see Glossary.

⁷. Dawei 大隗. Possibly a deliberate or inadvertent miswriting of dakuai 大塊, “the Great Clump,” but in any case unmistakingly echoing that term visually. Cf. Chapter 2, p. 11 and Chapter 6, pp. 56 and 59.

⁸. North, south, east, west, up, down.

⁹. Cheng Xuanying takes this to mean active only during the daylight, resting at night, following the changes of the sun and its daily renewal.

¹⁰. Wuwei. see Glossary.

¹¹. On Duke Huan and Guan Zhong, see also Chapter 19, pp. 152–53.

¹². Virtuous minister of the state of Qi, and Guan Zhong’s own close friend and confidant.

¹³. Another Qi minister, whom Guan Zhong recommended as his successor but who died in the same year as Guan Zhong.

¹⁴. Either an alternate name for, or a parody of, “Southwall Ziqi” (Nanguo Ziqi) from the opening vignette of Chapter 2.

¹⁵. De facto ruler of the state of Qi from 404 BCE to his death in 384 BCE.

¹⁶. Xiong Yiliao of Marketsouth appears in Zuozhuan, Duke Ai 16, as a man who refused to get involved in a proposed political uprising, unmoved by threats and authority; the uprising failed and peace was restored. Luo Miandao further relates a tale of Yiliao juggling ninety-nine balls, keeping ninety-eight in the air at all times in the midst of a battle between Song and Chu. Like Sun Shu’ao’s ability to nap in a similar situation, this inner repose, unaffected by external things, ended up having the most powerful effect on external things, as the armies stopped their fighting, transfixed. In other versions of the Yiliao story, however, it was only the enemy Song troops who were transfixed, allowing for an easy Chu victory. Yiliao also appears in Chapter 20, p. 158, note 3.

¹⁷. Following the editions that have zhou 周 rather than tong 同. If using the latter, the meaning would be, “But no single virtuosity can be the same as all that is unified in the Course….”

¹⁸. 誠 Cheng.

¹⁹. 誠 Cheng. Compare “what is true both to heaven and earth,” Chapter 1, p. 5.

²⁰. Ren. see Glossary.

²¹. 無誠 wucheng.

²². Duan zhi 斷制. Both words also imply carving and severing; hence the comparison that follows.

²³. Following Guo Xiang, as supplemented by the suggestion of Zhang Binglin. In other words, violently imposing a single shape on the multifarious variety of all things, rather than gently shaping each in its own way with whittle after tiny whittle.

²⁴. Dai. see Glossary.

²⁵. Gou Jian (d. 464 BCE?) was king of the kingdom of Yue. Wen Zhong, originally from the state of Chu, was considered a master strategist and became one of Gou Jian’s top military advisors in his campaign to reclaim his throne after Yue was annexed by the state of Wu. After they had successfully destroyed the state of Wu and Gou Jian was once again king of Yue, Wen Zhong stayed on at his court to enjoy the honors earned by his contributions, only to meet his death when Gou Jian later suspected him of plotting a revolt.

²⁶. 大方 dafang. In Chapter 17 (p. 134), the same term is translated as “the Great Purview.” In Chapter 20 (p. 158), and Chapter 25 (p. 216), it is translated as “the Vast Ambit.”

²⁷. This line can also be parsed differently, but it is equally obscure either way. The other parsing might be rendered, “In all of them the Heavenly is there to follow, for in all there is a darkness that illuminates, a pivoting to a new beginning, providing always an alternate standard.”