The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature

Once upon a time, Chuang Chou¹ dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself. He didn’t know that he was Chou. Suddenly he awoke and was palpably Chou. He didn’t know whether he were Chou who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly who was dreaming that he was Chou. Now, there must be a difference between Chou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things.

The emperor of the Southern Sea was Lickety, the emperor of the Northern Sea was Split, and the emperor of the Center was Wonton.¹ Lickety and Split often met each other in the land of Wonton, and Wonton treated them very well. Wanting to repay Wonton’s kindness, Lickety and Split said, “All people have seven holes for seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing. Wonton alone lacks them. Let’s try boring some holes for him.” So every day they bored one hole, and on the seventh day Wonton died.

When the time of the autumn floods arrived, the hundred tributaries poured into the Yellow River. Its onrushing current was so huge that one could not discern an ox or a horse on the opposite side or on the banks of its islets. Thereupon the Earl of the River¹ delightedly congratulated himself at having complete and sole possession of all excellences under heaven. Following along with the current, he went east until he reached the North Sea. There he looked eastward but could not see the water’s end, whereupon he crestfallenly gazed across the surface of the sea and said with a sigh toward its Overlord,² “There is a proverb which says, ‘He who has heard the Way a hundred times believes no one may be compared with himself!’ This applies to me. Furthermore, when I first heard those who belittle the learning of Confucius and disparage the righteousness of Po-yi, I did not believe them. But now that I behold your boundlessness, I realize that, had I not come to your gate,³ I would have been in danger⁴ and ridiculed forever by the practitioners of the great method.”⁵

The Overlord of the North Sea said, “You can’t tell a frog at the bottom of a well about the sea because he’s stuck in his little space. You can’t tell a summer insect about ice because it is confined by its season. You can’t tell a scholar of distorted views about the Way because he is bound by his doctrine. Now you have ventured forth from your banks to observe the great sea and have recognized your own insignificance, so that you can be told of the great principle.

“Of all the waters under heaven, none is greater than the sea. The myriad rivers return to it ceaselessly, but it never fills up; the drain⁶ at its bottom endlessly discharges, but it never empties. Spring and autumn it never varies, and it knows nothing of flood and drought. Its superiority to such streams as the Yangtze and the Yellow River cannot be measured in numbers. Yet the reason I have never made much of myself on this account is because I compare my own form to that of heaven and earth and recall that I received my vital breath from yin and yang. Midst heaven and earth, I am as a little pebble or tiny tree on a big mountain. Since I perceive of myself as being small, how then can I make much of myself? May we not reckon that the four seas in the midst of heaven and earth resemble the cavity in a pile of stones lying in a huge marsh? May we not reckon that the Middle Kingdom⁷ in the midst of the sea is like a mustard seed⁸ in a huge granary? When we designate the number of things there are in existence, we refer to them in terms of myriads, but man occupies only one place among them. The masses of men occupy the nine regions,⁹ but wherever grain grows and wherever boats and carriages reach, the individual occupies only one place among them. In comparison with the myriad things, would he not resemble the tip of a downy hair on a horse’s body? The succession of the five emperors, the contention of the three kings, the worries of humane men, the labors of the committed scholars all amount to no more than this. Po-yi declined it for the sake of fame. Confucius lectured on it for the sake of his erudition. This is because they made much of themselves. Is this not like you just now making much of yourself because of your flooding waters?”

“This being so,” asked the Earl of the River, “may I take heaven and earth as the standard for what is large, and the tip of a downy hair as the standard for what is small?”

“No,” said the Overlord of the North Sea. “Things are limitless in their capacities, incessant in their occurrences, inconstant in their portions, uncertain in their beginning and ending. For this reason, great knowledge observes things at a relative distance; hence it does not belittle what is small or make much of what is big, knowing that their capacities are limitless. It witnesses clearly the past and the present; hence it is not frustrated by what is far off or attracted by what is close at hand, knowing that their occurrences are incessant. It examines fullness and emptiness; hence it is not pleased when it obtains or worried when it loses, knowing that their portions are inconstant. It understands the level path; hence it is not enraptured by life or perturbed by death, knowing that beginnings and endings are uncertain. We may reckon that what man knows is less than what he doesn’t know; the time when he is alive is less than the time when he is not alive. When he seeks to delimit the boundaries of the extremely large with what is extremely small, he becomes disoriented and can’t get hold of himself. Viewed from this vantage, how do we know that the tip of a downy hair is adequate to determine the parameters of the extremely small? And how do we know that heaven and earth are adequate to delimit the boundaries of the extremely large?”

“The deliberators of the world,” said the Earl of the Yellow River, “all say, ‘That which is extremely minute has no form; that which is extremely large cannot be encompassed.’ Is this true?”

“If we look at what is large from the viewpoint of what is minuscule,” said the Overlord of the North Sea, “we won’t see the whole. If we look at what is minuscule from the viewpoint of what is large, we won’t see the details. Now, that which is minute is the smallest of the small; that which is enormous is the largest of the large. Hence their differences are suitable and in accord with their circumstances. Yet, the minute and the coarse are both dependent upon their having a form. That which has no form is numerically indivisible; that which cannot be encompassed is numerically undelimitable. That which can be discussed in words is the coarseness of things; that which can be conceived of in thought is the minuteness of things. That which can neither be discussed in words nor conceived of in thought is independent of minuteness and coarseness.”¹⁰

“How, then,” asked the Earl of the Yellow River, “are we to demarcate the value and magnitude of a thing, whether it be intrinsic or extrinsic?”

The Overlord of the North Sea said, “Observed in the light of the Way, things are neither prized nor despised; observed in the light of things, they prize themselves and despise others; observed in the light of the common lot, one’s value is not determined by oneself. Observed in the light of gradations, if we consider to be large that which is larger than something else, then the myriad things are without exception large; if we consider to be small that which is smaller than something else, then all the myriad things are without exception small. If we regard heaven and earth as a mustard seed and the tip of a downy hair as a mountain, we can perceive the numerousness of their relative gradations. Observed in the light of merit, if we grant whatever merit they have, then the myriad things without exception have merit; if we point to whatever merit they lack, then the myriad things lack merit. If we recognize that east and west, though opposites, cannot be without each other, their shared merit will be fixed. Observed in the light of inclination, if we approve whatever they approve, then the myriad things without exception may be approved; if we condemn whatever they condemn, then the myriad things without exception may be condemned. If we recognize that Yao and Chieh approved of themselves but condemned each other, we can perceive their controlling inclinations.

“Long ago, Yao yielded his throne to Shun and the latter became emperor, but when K’uai yielded his throne to Tzu Chih¹¹ they were both cut down. T’ang and Wu became kings through contention, but the duke of Po contended and was destroyed.¹² Viewed in this light, the etiquette of contending and yielding, the conduct of Yao and Chieh, may be either prized or despised in accord with the times, but may not be taken as constants. A beam or a ridgepole may be used to breach a city wall, but it cannot be used to plug a hole, which is to say that implements have specific purposes. A Ch’i-chi or a Hua-liu¹³ may gallop a thousand tricents in a day, but for catching rats they’re not as good as a wild cat or a weasel, which is to say that creatures have different skills. An owl can catch fleas at night and discern the tip of a downy hair, but when it comes out during the day it stares blankly and can’t even see a hill or a mountain, which is to say that beings have different natures. Therefore, when it is said ‘Make right your teacher, not wrong; make good government your teacher, not disorder,’ this is to misunderstand the principle of heaven and earth and the attributes of the myriad things. It would be like making heaven your teacher and ignoring earth, like making yin your teacher and ignoring yang. The unworkability of this is clear. Still, if one goes on talking like this and does not give it up, one is either being stupid or deceptive. The emperors and kings of old had different modes of abdication, and the rulers of the three dynasties had different modes of succession. He who acts contrary to the times and contravenes custom is called a usurper; he who accords with the times and conforms to custom is called a disciple of righteousness. Keep silent, oh Earl of the Yellow River! How could you know about the gate of honor and baseness and about the practitioners of small and large?”¹⁴

“Then what am I to do?” asked the Earl of the Yellow River, “and what am I not to do? With regard to rejecting and accepting, taking and giving, how should I behave?”

“What is prized and what is despised

May be referred to as alternating developments of each other.

Do not persist in following the dictates of your will,

For it will bring you into great conflict with the Way.

“Then what is to be prized about the Way?” asked the Earl of the Yellow River.

The Overlord of the North Sea said, “She who knows the Way must apprehend principle; she who apprehends principle must be clear about contingency; she who is clear about contingency will not harm herself with things. She who has ultimate integrity will neither be burned by fire nor drowned in water, will neither be harmed by cold and heat nor injured by bird and beast. This does not mean that she belittles these things, but rather that she examines where she will be safe or in danger. She is tranquil in misfortune or in fortune; she is careful about her comings and goings, so that nothing can harm her. Therefore it is said, ‘The heavenly is within, the human is without; integrity lies in heaven.’ When you know the operation of the heavenly and the human, you will root yourself in heaven and position yourself in contentment. Then you will be hesitant and flexible, reverting to what is important and bespeaking perfection.”

The Overlord of the North Sea said, “Oxen and horses having four feet is what is meant by ‘heavenly.’ Putting a halter over a horse’s head or piercing through an ox’s nose is what is meant by ‘human.’ Therefore it is said,

‘Do not destroy the heavenly with the human;

Do not destroy destiny with intentionality;

Do not sacrifice your good name for attainments.’¹⁷

If you guard this carefully and do not lose it,

You may be said to have returned to the truth.”

The unipede envies the millipede; the millipede envies the snake; the snake envies the wind; the wind envies the eye; the eye envies the mind.

The unipede said to the millipede, “I go hippity-hopping along on my one foot but barely manage. How is it, sir, that you can control myriad feet?”

“It’s not so,” said the millipede. “Haven’t you seen a person spit? When they spew forth, the big globs are like pearls, the droplets are like a mist. All mixed up together, the number that falls is immeasurable. Now, I just move by my natural inner workings but don’t know why it is so.”

The millipede said to the snake, “I go along on my multitudinous feet, but I’m not as fast as you who have no feet. How come?”

“How could we change the movements of our natural inner workings?” asked the snake. “What use do I have for feet?”

The snake said to the wind, “I go along by moving my spine and ribs, thus I have a shape. But you, sir, who arise with a whoosh from the North Sea and alight with a whoosh in the South Sea, have no shape at all. How can this be?”

“It’s true that I arise with a whoosh from the North Sea and alight in the South Sea,” said the wind, “but whoever points at me vanquishes me, and whoever treads upon me vanquishes me. Nonetheless, only I can snap big trees and blow down big houses. Therefore, the great vanquishing depends upon a host of minor defeats. It is only the sage who can be a great vanquisher.”

Master Chuang was fishing in the P’u River.¹⁸ The king of Ch’u dispatched two high-ranking officials to go before him with this message: “I wish to encumber you with the administration of my realm.”

Without turning around, Master Chuang just kept holding on to his fishing rod and said, “I have heard that in Ch’u there is a sacred tortoise that has already been dead for three thousand years. The king stores it inside a hamper wrapped with cloth in his ancestral temple. Do you think this tortoise would rather be dead and have its bones preserved as objects of veneration, or be alive and dragging its tail through the mud?”

“It would rather be alive and dragging its tail through the mud,” said the two officials.

“Begone!” said Master Chuang. “I’d rather be dragging my tail in the mud.”

When Master Hui was serving as the prime minister of Liang, Master Chuang set off to visit him. Somebody said to Master Hui, “Master Chuang is coming and he wants to replace you as prime minister.” Whereupon Master Hui became afraid and had the kingdom searched for three days and three nights.

After Master Chuang arrived, he went to see Master Hui and said, “In the south there is a bird. Its name is Yellow Phoenix.¹⁹ Have you ever heard of it? It takes off from the South Sea and flies to the North Sea. It won’t stop on any other tree but the kolanut; won’t eat anything else but bamboo seeds;²⁰ won’t drink anything but sweet spring water. There was once an owl which, having got hold of a putrid rat, looked up at the Yellow Phoenix as it was passing by and shouted ‘shoo!’ Now, sir, do you wish to shoo me away from your kingdom of Liang?”

Master Chuang and Master Hui were strolling across the bridge over the Hao.²¹ “The hemiculters²² have come out and are swimming²³ so leisurely,” said Master Chuang. “This is the joy of fishes.”

“You’re not a fish,” said Master Hui. “How do you know what the joy of fishes is?”

“You’re not me,” said Master Chuang, “so how do you know that I don’t know what the joy of fishes is?”

“I’m not you,” said Master Hui, “so I certainly do not know what you do. But you’re certainly not a fish, so it is irrefutable that you do not know what the joy of fishes is.”

“Let’s go back to where we started,”²⁴ said Master Chuang. “When you said, ‘How do you know what the joy of fishes is?’, you asked me because you already knew that I knew. I know it by strolling over the Hao.”²⁵

In seeds there are germs. When they are found in water they become filaments. When they are found at the border of water and land they become algae.¹ When they germinate in elevated places they become plantain. When the plantain is found in fertile soil it becomes crow’s foot.² The crow’s foot’s roots become scarab grubs and its leaves become butterflies. The butterflies soon evolve into insects that are born beneath the stove. They have the appearance of exuviae and are called “house crickets.” After a thousand days the house crickets became birds called “dried surplus bones.”³ The spittle of the dried surplus bones becomes a misty spray and the misty spray becomes mother of vinegar. Midges are born from mother of vinegar; yellow whirligigs are born from fetid wine; blindgnats are born from putrid slimebugs. When goat’s queue couples with bamboo that has not shooted for a long time, they produce greenies. The greenies produce panthers; panthers produce horses; horses produce men; and men return to enter the wellsprings⁴ of nature. The myriad things all come out of the wellsprings and all reenter the wellsprings.

Duke Huan¹ was hunting in the marshes with Kuan Chung² as his charioteer when he saw a ghost. Grabbing hold of Kuan Chung’s hand, he asked, “Did you see something, Father³ Chung?”

After the duke returned he babbled incoherently and became ill, so that he did not go out for several days. There was a scholar of Ch’i named Master Leisurely Ramble who said to him, “Your Highness is harming yourself. How could a ghost harm you? If an embolism of vital breath caused by agitation disperses and does not return, what remains will be insufficient; if it rises and does not come back down, it will cause a person to be easily angered; if it descends and does not come back up, it will cause a person to forget easily; if it neither rises nor descends, it will stay in the center of a person’s body, clogging his heart, and he will become ill.”

“There are. In pits there are pacers; around stoves there are tufties. Fulgurlings frequent dust piles inside the door; croakers and twoads hop about in low-lying places to the northeast; spillsuns frequent low-lying places to the northwest. In water there are nonimagoes; on hills there are scrabblers; on mountains there are unipedes; in the wilds there are will-o’-the-wisps; and in marshes there are bendcrooks.”

“The bendcrook,” said Master Ramble, “is as big around as the hub of a chariot wheel and as long as the shafts. It wears purple clothes and a vermilion cap. This is a creature that hates to hear the sound of rumbling chariots. When it does, it stands up holding its head in its hands. He who sees it is likely to become hegemon.”

Duke Huan erupted in laughter and said, “That was what I saw.” Whereupon he adjusted his clothing and cap, and had Master Ramble sit down with him. Before the day was over, his illness left him without his even being aware of it.

Of all early Chinese thinkers, Master Chuang possessed the most fertile imagination, and his highly creative literary style had a greater impact on later writers throughout history than any other figure from the pre-Ch’in period. While the Chuang Tzu is invariably characterized as a Taoist text both by Taoists and by others, the positions espoused in the book are so diverse and protean that they defy easy classification. Certainly the book is not by one author. The seven “Inner Chapters” are generally considered most clearly associated with the shadowy individual named Chuang Chou. While some of the fifteen “Outer Chapters” and eleven “Miscellaneous Chapters” also include passages of great interest, much of the material in them consists of thinly disguised Confucianism and Legalism, as well as other more conventional ideologies that are at odds with the unconstrained playfulness of the more genuine chapters.

1. Master Chuang (Chuang Tzu). The surname Chuang means “sedate” and Chou, his personal name, signifies “[all] round” or “whole.”

1. The undifferentiated soup of primordial chaos. As it begins to differentiate, dumpling-blobs of matter coalesce. Wonton soup probably came first as a type of simple early fare. With the evolution of human consciousness and reflectiveness, the soup would have been adopted as a suitable metaphor for chaos.

6. More literally, “tail-confluence” (wei-lü), a hole with a gigantic stone plug at the bottom of the sea whence its waters are removed.

8. The Chinese text has a bisyllabic term meaning “tares” or “panic grass.”

9. The ancient Chinese conceived of their realm as being divided into nine sections, somewhat like a tic-tac-toe diagram.

10. The following lengthy paragraph has been inappropriately inserted at this point:

Therefore the conduct of the great man is not aimed at hurting others, yet he does not make much of his humaneness and kindness. When he moves, it is not for profit, but he does not despise the porter^a at the gate. He does not wrangle over goods and property, yet he does not make much of his declining and yielding. In his affairs, he does not rely upon others and does not make much of utilizing his own strength, but he does not despise those who are avaricious and corrupt. His conduct may differ from that of the common lot, but he does not make much of his eccentricity. His behavior may follow that of the crowd, but he does not despise the glib flatterer. All the titles and emoluments in the world are not enough to encourage him, nor are penalties and shame enough to disgrace him. He knows that right and wrong are indivisible, that minuscule and large are undemarcatable. I have heard it said, “The Man of the Way is not celebrated; the man of ultimate virtue is not successful; the great man has no self.” This is the pinnacle of restraint.

11. In the year 316 B.C.E., King K’uai of Yen yielded his throne to his minister, Tzu Chih, in conscious imitation of Yao handing over his throne to Shun. This led to three years of internal strife and the invasion of Yen by the state of Ch’i.

12. T’ang and Wu were the founding kings of the Shang and Chou dynasties respectively. The duke of Po was the grandson of King P’ing of Ch’u. His father, the crown prince, was demoted when the king became infatuated with a woman from the state of Ch’in. He fled to Cheng and married a woman who gave birth to the duke of Po. When the latter grew up, he returned to Ch’u and raised an armed insurrection in 479 B.C.E. to take revenge for his father, but was defeated and eventually committed suicide.

14. The words “gate” and “practitioners” here are resonant with their occurrence in the Earl of the Yellow River’s first speech at the beginning of the chapter.

16. It would be totally out of keeping with this magnificent dialogue between the Overlord of the North Sea and the Earl of Yellow River to translate yi here in its restricted Confucian sense of “righteousness.”

17. Most commentators interpret the last clause as meaning “do not sacrifice yourself for the sake of fame,” but this totally ignores both the syntax and diction of the sentence. The problem with the present interpretation is that we would not expect the Overlord of the North Sea to care the slightest about name or fame. One suspects, therefore, a lapse on the part of the author.

19. The precise meaning of the name yüan-ch’u is uncertain, although the second graph seems to indicate that the bird in question was young.

20. Since bamboo flowers (and hence produces seeds) only rarely—some species as seldom as once a century—the implication is that the Yellow Phoenix (which itself only appears at great intervals) is very particular about its food. Another interpretation of the sinographs in question yields “fruits of the Melia azedarach,” said to be favored by the phoenix and the unicorn but shunned by the dragon. Common names for this plant are pride of India, pride of China, and chinaberry.

22. Small fish found in rivers and lakes. They are only a few inches long with thin, flat bodies that, according to old Chinese texts, are “shaped like a willow leaf.”

23. Note that this is a rendering of the same graph translated in the previous sentence as “strolling” and elsewhere in the Chuang Tzu as “wandering” or occasionally as “traveling.”

25. Although not so protracted and elaborate, the entire style of argumentation in this famous passage bears an uncanny resemblance to many philosophical arguments found in the works of Plato. Chapter 17 ends here.

1. The Chinese expression may be rendered more literally as “clothing of frogs and oysters.”

2. This is a literal translation of the two sinographs forming the name. The plant in question is commonly called blackberry lily in English.

3. The precise identification of this and several of the following terms is impossible because they are colloquial names lost to the tradition of classical explication.

4. The sinograph for “wellsprings [of nature]” includes within it the graph for “germs,” which occurs at the beginning of this bizarre romp through evolution. There is little doubt that the two words are etymologically related in Sinitic. This has prompted many scholars to equate the two as they occur in the passage.

1. Of the state of Ch’i, the first of the five hegemons who imposed their will on the other feudal states.

2. Prime minister of Duke Huan and the ostensible author of the book entitled Master Kuan (Kuan Tzu, see selection 5).