Series on the History of Chinese Philosophy, Pt. 15
Footloose in the Dao with Zhuangzi
or, The Happiness of Minnows
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Welcome to Part 15 of the series! If you’ve missed earlier entries, you can find them with the link below.
In this installment we’ll take a look at how the Daoist text known as the Zhuangzi (named for Master Zhuang Zhou) plays with language, challenges perspectives, and allows meaning to “carefreely wander afar” — or, Xiāo Yáo Yóu [逍遙逌] — which is the title of the first chapter of the text.
According to Zhuangzi scholar Kuang-ming Wu, the phrase Xiāo Yáo Yóu expresses the Daoist sentiment that: “To go far and wide creatively is life’s joy — of growing into oneself in the world.” (p. 85)
In fact, the first two characters [逍遙] of the title are also part of an idiom that’s still common in China — xiāo yáo zì dé — which is pretty close in meaning to our expression “foot-loose and fancy-free.”
Transforming Perspectives
Right from the start, one sees how Zhuangzi’s book will differ from the sober moralizing of the Confucians and the transcendent poetry of the Dàodéjīng, as it introduces a giant fish called Kūn, who transforms into a bird called Péng and travels “ninety thousand li (an ancient Chinese “mile”) to the south.”
Names are important in the Zhuangzi, and the ones presented here are already playing with language.
Kūn [鯤] is a pictophonetic character that combines the symbol for fish-egg with the one for elder brother. Basically, it’s like saying this ENORMOUS fish is named “Tiny” — and even though he’s way down in the depths below, his rank places him above you!
Péng [鵬] is also a pictophonetic character combining the radical for bird with the symbol for friend… this bird may be soaring the heights above you, but you’re still just equals on a level playing field!
So, as “Big Brother Roe” transforms into “Friendly Phoenix” and flies ninety-thousand li, smaller creatures like the turtle dove and cicada mock him for his efforts and ask, “What’s the use of going ninety thousand li to the south?”
The text suggests it’s a matter of perspective:
You can sojourn into the deep-dark woods nearby with food for three meals and still return with your belly full. You can go one hundred li if you prepare grain the night before. And you can go a thousand li if you gather grain for three months. What do these two critters know! Small mindedness can’t compare to large mindedness. The short-lived can’t compare to the long-lived. How do I know this is so? [Ch. 1]
So, small creatures are limited by their small perspectives.
This, by itself, wouldn’t be much of a philosophical insight… after all, philosophers have considered the limitation of perspective for ages — as the Dàodéjīng puts it: “When the lowest scholars hear of dao, they laugh out loud.” [Ch. 41]
But, the last line — “How do I know this is so?” — adds an interesting wrinkle, since it suggests that EVERYONE in this parable, even the speaker, may be limited by their particular perspective.
That interpretation is supported by what’s said about the view of Friendly Phoenix:
He beats the whirlwind and rises ninety thousand li, setting off on the sixth month gale. Wavering heat, bits of dust, living things blowing each other about — the sky looks very blue. Is that its real color, or is it because it is so far away and has no end? When the bird looks down, all he sees is blue too. [Ch. 1, Watson tr.]
By taking a broad perspective the giant bird loses some detail in his view. Just as mountain top views provide a good lay of the land but can’t help you navigate through the deep thickets of the valley floor, broader perspectives appear useless to those who occupy themselves with the day-to-day. The Zhuangzi acknowledges this:
Thus, the man who is savvy enough to be effective in one office, competent enough for a single village, virtuous enough to join one lord, and to be recruited by one state; his is the same self-regard as these little creatures. [Ch. 1]
But, just as the transformation of the giant fish into a bird should be viewed as cyclical insofar as it is said to give rise to the seasons… the GREATEST sort of understanding should be able to harmonize both the narrow and the broad.
In other words, the Phoenix isn’t NECESSARILY any better off than those tiny creatures.
So, Zhuangzi isn’t advocating for some kind of esoteric enlightenment, in a grand overarching perspective, so much as he’s reminding us not to rest on our intellectual laurels. Great knowledge doesn’t come to an end, doesn’t stagnate, but instead care-freely wanders afar in a realm not constrained by dogmatic parameters — where any situation can be evaluated on its own terms and growth is always possible.
Simply put, ANY perspective always comes with limitations on how and what we can know… so we should always be willing to do more inquiry and never take ourselves too seriously.
The Zhuangzi even makes reference to the unconventional wu-forms seen in the Daodejing (Part 13) as a method for attaining this sort of mutability in perspective:
Therefore I say, the superior man has no self; (wu-ji)
the spiritual man has no utility; (wu-gong)
the sage has no renown. (wu-ming)
Breaking with Convention and the Crooked Tree
This all reminds me of a friend who used to teach the 4th grade.
Each year before school began, she’d turn all of the maps in the classroom upside down. When her students complained about the maps being “wrong” she’d ask who told them north was supposed to be on top!
Of course, they had no answer and she’d remind them never to confuse the way they’re accustomed to seeing the world with the way the world ACTUALLY is… or even SHOULD be.
Breaking the crust of convention is a major theme in the Zhuangzi. For example, at the end of the first chapter, we find a thinker from the “School of Names” called Hui Shi who’s complaining about the worthlessness of a gourd given to him by the king of Wei.
Zhuangzi explains to his friend that the problem lies not in the gourd, but rather in the conventional uses to which Hui Shi has put it, by relating it to a story of a floss-washer who sold an ointment for chapped hands to a stranger. Once the stranger had obtained the formula, he used the ointment to protect the hands of sailors and win the favor of the emperor, gain an estate for himself, and, thus, the freedom to live as he pleased. Zhuangzi states,
The capacity to protect hands was one and the same. In one instance it could not save someone from having to bleach silk, yet, when used differently… Now you have a fifty-peck gourd; why not use it as a big tub and float around on the rivers and lakes instead of being worried about its inability to hold things? Conventional bookworm, it’s as if you have brambles for brains! [Ch. 1]
Yet, at the same time, Zhuangzi doesn’t advocate unqualified innovation. Unreflective innovation can sometimes be more dangerous than the most stifling conventionality.
Hui Shi replies to his friend’s criticism:
I have a big tree. People call it useless. Its roots and trunk are such a gnarled mess that no ink line could be drawn on its surface, its smaller branches are swept up and crooked and no ruler could be applied to it. Stand it upon the roadside and paint it and still no carpenter would give heed to it. It is just like your words, big and of no use, and should likewise be discarded by everyone. [Ch. 1]
Zhuangzi responds,
Have you never seen the wildcat or stoat. It lies low in ambush, waiting for passers-by. It leaps about east and west, not avoiding high or low — but, in the middle is the open trap and it dies, snared in the net. Then there’s the yak; he’s as big as a cloud in the sky. This one can be big, all right, but he can’t catch mice. Now you, sir, have a big tree and you worry because it’s useless. Why don’t you plant it in Never-Never Land, or the field of the Broad and Boundless, relax and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it? Axes will never shorten its life; the affairs of the world will never harm it. If there’s no office suited for its use, it may rest comfortably in that office far from distress and hardship! [Ch. 1]
Zhuangzi pokes fun at the notion of gaining an “office” in some ruler’s court. It’s not simply that the kind of narrow perspective which values becoming a cog in someone else’s wheel is wrong — after all, wildcats and stoats CAN catch mice — but it ensures one is always be locked into a particular point of view… and it MIGHT even be a dangerous recipe for shortening one’s life.
What he’s trying to show his friend is that even an apparent uselessness can be INCREDIBLY useful, if one breaks free from narrow, conventional points of view and finally thinks for oneself.
Perspective & Natural Spontaneity
Like Heraclitus or Friedrich Nietzsche, Zhuangzi sought to smash the icons of his time and called for the re-evaluation of all values. He thought the best way to break free from small understanding is to act in a manner that mirrors the constant transformation [wùhuà] of the things of nature — for which Zhuangzi adopted the Daodejing’s concept of wúwéi [無為].
Wúwéi, which is often mistranslated as “non-action,” is a type of effortless doing that requires “spontaneity,” or zìrán [自然].
In order to get there, Zhuangzi thought people needed to be disabused from the conventional views gripping their minds, and that’s why he advocated a kind of “forgetting,” or wàng [忘]. But, Zhuangzi’s type of forgetting isn’t absent-mindedness, but rather made of equal parts flow-state and mental reprogramming. Good swimmers forget about the water. The most skilled thinkers forget doctrines and ideologies.
A passage from the Outer Chapters sums it up nicely:
You forget your feet when the shoes are comfortable. You forget your waist when the belt is comfortable. Understanding forgets right and wrong when the mind is comfortable. There is no change in what is inside, no following what is outside, when the adjustment to events is comfortable. You begin with what is comfortable and never experience what is uncomfortable when you know the comfort of forgetting what is comfortable. [Ch. 19, Watson tr.]
The text seems to acknowledge how people cling to the comforts of their pet beliefs. After all, doubt can be incredibly uncomfortable. But, the Zhuangzi assures us that there’s a higher sort of comfort to be found when one is unfettered by dogma.
Accordingly, spontaneity means forgetting external pressures and goals, which can limit one’s perspective like a “frog in a well” — an idiom still used in China today…
You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog — he’s limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect — he’s bound to a single season. You can’t discuss the Way with a cramped scholar — he’s shackled by his doctrines. Now you have come out beyond your banks and borders and have seen the great sea — so you realize your own pettiness. [Ch. 17, Watson tr.]
The Usefulness of Uselessness
Fish, birds, gourds, trees, and frogs… are you starting to get a sense of how important it was to Zhuangzi that we take our cues from nature? Here’s another example that reinforces that point about not being used by others for their own ends:
Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River with his bamboo pole. The prince of Chu sent two vice-chancellors with a formal document: “We hereby appoint you prime minister.” Zhuangzi held his bamboo pole still. Watching the Pu river, he said: “I am told there is a sacred tortoise sacrificed and canonized three thousand years ago, venerated by the prince, wrapped in silk, in a precious shrine on an altar in the temple.
What do you think? Is it better to give up one’s life and leave a sacred shell as a relic in a cloud of incense for three thousand years, or to live as a plain turtle dragging its tail in the mud?”
“For the turtle”, said the vice-chancellor, “better to live and drag its tail in the mud!”
“Then, go home!” said Zhuangzi. “Leave me here to drag my tail in the mud.” [Chpt. 17, Watson tr.]
Making oneself useful to the whims of others is not only dangerous — especially in fraught times like Warring States China — but it’s also a kind of self-imposed narrow-mindedness.
The Zhuangzi’s advice in those kinds of scenarios is to get out of one’s own way:
I walk a crooked way — don’t step on my feet! The axes made from mountain tree branches do themselves harm; the grease in the torch burns itself up. The cinnamon can be eaten and so it gets cut down; the lacquer tree can be used and so it gets hacked apart. All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless! [Chpt. 4, Watson tr.]
Later chapters in the Zhuangzi,— written by thinkers from various offshoots of Daoist thought — bring yinyang philosophy, Confucian orthodoxy, and Yangist internal alchemy concepts into contact with this “crooked way” of Zhuangzi.
Several passages from those chapters show this sort of syncretism. Here’s one my favorites:
Crooked or straight, pursue to the limit the Nature [tian] in you. Turn your face to the four directions, ebb and flow with the seasons. Right or wrong, hold fast to the round center upon which all turns, in solitude bring your will to completion, ramble in the company of the Way. Do not strive to make your conduct consistent, do not try to perfect your righteousness, or you will lose what you already have. Do not race after riches, do not risk your life for success, or you will let slip the Nature within you. [Chpt. 29, Watson tr.]
There’s also a strong current of criticism aimed at Confucianism throughout the text. In these two passages we see Zhuangzi take direct aim at Confucian “carving and polishing” by turning his favorite disciple, Yan Hui, into a Zhuangzian Daoist!
Yan Hui said, “I’ve improved!” “What do you mean?” asked Confucius. “I have forgotten ritual and music!” “That’s fine,” said Confucius,” but still not enough.”
Another day, Yan Hui came again and said, “I’ve improved!” “What do you mean?” asked Confucius. “I have forgotten ren and yi!” “That’s fine,” said Confucius,” but still not enough.”
Another day, Yan Hui came again and said, “I’ve improved!” “What do you mean?” asked Confucius. “I sit and forget.” Confucius frowned and said, “What do you mean by ‘sit and forget?’”
Yan Hui said, “I smash my limbs and drive out sight and hearing; I leave my form behind and flee intelligence. I join as one in the Great Breakthrough. That’s what I mean by ‘sit and forget.’”
“If you join all as one then you have no preferences among things,” said Confucius, “and being in this state of transformation you have no constancy. You are worthy after all — I beg to follow as your disciple!” [Ch. 6, Watson tr.]
Happy Fish & Perspective
A parable that helps tie all these themes together can be found in one of those Outer Chapters. It reads:
Zhuangzi and Huizi were wandering about over the bridge of the Hao River when Zhuangzi said, “See how the minnows wander and dart about where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”
Huizi said, “You’re not a fish — so wherefrom [ān] do you know what they enjoy?!”
Zhuangzi said, “You’re not me, so wherefrom [ān] do you know that I don’t know what I/fish [yú] enjoy?”
Huizi said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish — so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!”
Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to your original question. You asked me where [ān] I get my knowledge of what fish enjoy — so you already knew I knew it definitively when you asked the question. I know it from here, on the bridge, over the Hao.” [Ch. 17]
This is a three-ring circus of a passage! So much is going on simultaneously!
First of all, it shows the enjoyment of these friends wandering above, swimming in a philosophical discussion that’s mirrored in the enjoyment of the minnows wandering below, swimming in the river currents.
It also puns on the word for fish, which is a homophone for an archaic form of ‘I’ or ‘me.’ So, Zhuangzi’s question could just as easily read: “You’re not me, so how do you know what ‘I’ enjoy?!”
More importantly, this passage situates knowledge in a particular perspective by riffing on the word ān, which connotes a ‘where’ as much as it denotes a ‘how’ but also suggests a kind of tranquility present in the whole scene. This is a friendly battle of wits from which both Huizi and Zhuangzi are deriving a calm, untroubled enjoyment… and their enjoyment is just as much there, on the bridge between them, as it is down in the river amongst the minnows.
In Part 16 we’ll take a closer look at the remaining “Inner Chapters” of the Zhuangzi.
Hope to see you there!
