by Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi’s five big ideas, one story and one toy at a time: your standard is not the world’s; the use of the useless; effort without strain; you and others; and change. A handscroll of ink on silk, in Burton Watson’s translation.
tags: zhuangzi, taoism, philosophy, classic, china, humour, translation
Zhuangzi
The Butterfly Scroll
Five ideas for living lightly
Zhuang Zhou of Meng · c. 369 – 286 BC
in Burton Watson’s translation
Five ideas from a man who laughed at almost everything, each told as a story you can play with.
Nobody knows much about him, and that would have suited him. His name was Zhou; he lived in the fourth century BC in the small, much-mocked state of Song; he once worked as “an official in the lacquer garden”; and he wrote a book “mostly in the nature of fable.”Sima Qian That is nearly all the historian Sima Qian, writing two centuries later, could find to say about him, in chapter 63 of the Records of the Historian. The rest of what we know is in the book, where Master Zhuang turns up as a character in his own stories, and none of it is safe as history. He was poor, he turned down a kingdom, he had one great friend he argued with all his life, and he laughed at almost everything, including himself.
He never argues for any of this. He tells stories and jokes, because you can push back against an argument, but you simply find yourself agreeing with a story. Watson says he made humour “the very core of his style,” knowing “that one good laugh would do more than ten pages of harangue.”
Each toy has a little dial, the hinge. Turn it and you see the story from the other side: the tree judges the carpenter, the fish answer the logician, the butterfly dreams the man. He called it “the hinge of the Way.”
I
Who says?
Right and wrong depend on where you stand, so stand there lightly.
A student asks his teacher what all things agree is right, and gets the same answer three times: how would I know? Then the teacher asks some questions of his own. A man who sleeps in the damp wakes with a bad back; does the eel-like loach? A man up a tree shakes with fright; does the monkey? People call two famous women the most beautiful in the world, and the fish who see them dive to the bottom.
None of the animals is confused. Each knows exactly what is good, for itself. The lesson is not that nothing matters; it is that your sure sense of what is right was formed by where you happen to live, and somebody living in the mud has an equally sure sense of something else.
一 Chapter 2 · Discussion on Making All Things Equal
Which of the Four Knows?
Your standard is not the world’s
“Of these four, which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world?”Zhuangzi, ch. 2, trans. Burton Watson
If a man sleeps in a damp place, his back aches and he ends up half paralyzed
. So: a dry floor, a good roof. Obviously.the man’s standard
ask a question
For your lifeBefore calling it right, ask: right for whom?
The loach loves the mud, the monkey the treetop, the deer the open field. Each is right for itself; nobody is right for everyone.
The next story is the most practical thing in the book. A monkey trainer tells his monkeys they will get three acorns in the morning and four at night, and they are furious. Fine, he says: four in the morning and three at night. They are delighted.
Seven acorns either way. The trainer could have explained the arithmetic and been right, with a cage full of angry monkeys. Instead he saw that nothing real was at stake and gave them the order they wanted. Letting both sides have their way, Zhuangzi says, “is called walking two roads.” It settles more quarrels than any amount of being right.
二 Chapter 2 · Discussion on Making All Things Equal
Three in the Morning
Most quarrels are about framing, not facts
“There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger.”Zhuangzi, ch. 2, trans. Burton Watson
朝 morning 3+暮 night 4=七 seven
You get three in the morning and four at night.
This made all the monkeys furious.
tap a bowl to pass an acorn across
For your lifeIf the total is the same, let them have the order they want.
Seven acorns either way. The trainer didn’t win the argument; he saw there was nothing to win, and let the monkeys be happy.
Now meet the friend. Huizi, Master Hui, was a logician, a famous debater, for a while a prime minister, and the only person in the book who argues back. Whenever they meet, Huizi has a problem and Zhuangzi has a better one. Their friendship ran on argument the way other friendships run on wine.
Their best one is a stroll. Walking above the Hao River, Zhuangzi watches the minnows dart about and says that is what fish enjoy. Huizi pounces: “You’re not a fish—how do you know what fish enjoy?”Note Watson puts them on the dam of the Hao; the usual English is a bridge. The Chinese word can mean either. Wherever they stood, it was above the water and beside the fish. It is a perfectly good question. Zhuangzi’s answer is that some things you know by being there, by standing in the afternoon and looking, and that kind of knowing does not have to win a debate to be true.
三 Chapter 17 · Autumn Floods
The Happiness of Fish
Some things you know by being there
“I know it by standing here beside the Hao.”Zhuangzi, ch. 17, trans. Burton Watson
- ZhuangziLook at the minnows, out and darting wherever they like. That is the happiness of fish.
Two friends on the bridge over the Hao. The minnows are out.
lay the argument down, slip by slip
For your lifeNot everything true can be won in an argument.
Huizi had the better logic. Zhuangzi had the river, the afternoon, and the fish right in front of him.
II
The use of the useless
What the world can use, it uses up. Not everything has to be for something.
The king once gave Huizi some gourd seeds, and they grew into gourds so huge they were no good for carrying water or for dippers, so Huizi smashed them. Zhuangzi is appalled. Why not make one into a tub and go floating about the rivers and lakes? “Obviously you still have a lot of underbrush in your head!” The gourd was only useless for the use Huizi had in mind.
Then the tree. A master carpenter walks straight past an enormous oak at a village shrine, because its wood is good for nothing. That night the oak comes to him in a dream. The fruit trees, it says, are stripped and broken every year for being useful. The oak has spent a long time trying to be useless, and it nearly died learning how, and look how large it grew.Note A village shrine, Watson adds, always stood in a grove of fine trees. So the useless oak was being useful after all, lending the place its holiness. The apprentice noticed this, and was told to hush. A madman of the same chapter puts it in a line: “All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless!”
It is not a recommendation to be lazy. It is permission to have parts of your life that nobody can harvest: the walk with no destination, the friendship with no angle, the hour under the tree.Wander off: Wilde reads the tree
四 Chapter 4 · In the World of Men
The Useless Tree
Usefulness is what gets you cut down
“If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large?”Zhuangzi, ch. 4, trans. Burton Watson
A sightseer’s fair round its trunk. The carpenter does not even glance at it.
try to make something of it
For your lifeNot everything you are has to be for something.
The fruit trees are stripped and broken every year. The oak nobody wanted is the one that lived to shade a whole village.
Zhuangzi lived what he wrote. He was fishing in the Pu River one day when two officials arrived from the king of Chu, with the offer of the whole government of the realm. He didn’t turn his head. Chu, he said, keeps a sacred tortoise, dead three thousand years, wrapped in silk and kept in a box in the temple. Would it rather be honoured bones, or alive and dragging its tail in the mud? Alive, the officials admitted. Then off they could go.Sima Qian The historian tells the offer with a different animal: the sacrificial ox, fattened for years and dressed in embroidery for the day it is led into the temple. Zhuangzi would rather amuse himself in a muddy ditch, he said, than be harnessed by a king.
Huizi, meanwhile, had become prime minister of Liang, and when somebody told him his old friend was coming to take the job, he panicked and had the country searched for three days. Zhuangzi turned up anyway and told him about a noble bird that rests only on one kind of tree, and an owl clutching a rotten rat who looks up as it passes and screeches at it to keep off. Now that Huizi had Liang, he asked, “are you trying to shoo me?”
The job you are terrified of losing may be the rat. The honour that takes your days may be the box.
五 Chapter 17 · Autumn Floods
The Tortoise in the Mud
A gilded box is still a box
“Go away! I’ll drag my tail in the mud!”Zhuangzi, ch. 17, trans. Burton Watson
The king of Chu sends two officials to the river with his realm. Zhuangzi keeps hold of his rod, and asks them about a tortoise.
A bird that eats only lian fruit flies over; an owl with a dead rat looks up and says, “Shoo!” Now that you have this Liang state of yours, are you trying to shoo me?
Zhuangzi to Huizi, minister of Liang, who had searched the state three days and nights for him, afraid for his post
choose for the tortoise
For your lifeTurn down the honour that costs you your days.
He was offered a kingdom and chose the mud. A small, free, muddy life beats an honoured one in a box.
He could refuse kings because he had nothing to lose, and he said so. He called on the king of Wei in a patched robe, his shoes tied on with string, and the king was sorry to see him in such distress. Not distress, said Zhuangzi: “I am poor, but I am not in distress!” Then he explained himself with a monkey.
In the tall trees a monkey swings from branch to branch like a king, and the best archer alive could not draw a bead on it. Put the same monkey in a thicket of brambles and thorns and it creeps, glances about and trembles. Its muscles have not changed. Only the place has. A good man at a bad court, he said, is that monkey.
六 Chapter 20 · The Mountain Tree
The Monkey among Thorns
You may not be failing; you may be in the wrong trees
“It is not that their bones and sinews have suddenly become stiff and lost their suppleness.”Zhuangzi, ch. 20, trans. Burton Watson
High in the catalpas and camphors, the monkey is lord of the branches.tap the trees: it swings
tap the trees or the thicket
For your lifeBefore you blame yourself, look at where you’re standing.
The king saw a sorry man in a patched robe. Zhuangzi saw a good monkey among thorns: nothing wrong with its arms, it just needed taller trees.
Out of grain, he asked a marquis for a loan and was promised a fortune as soon as the taxes came in. So he told the marquis about a fish stranded in a cart rut, begging for a cup of water, to whom he had kindly promised a whole river, quite soon. Then look for me, said the fish, in the dried-fish shop.Watson The fish introduces itself, grandly, as a Wave Official of the Eastern Sea.
III
Effort without strain
The best work happens when you stop forcing it.
Cook Ding is cutting up an ox for his lord, and it sounds like music: every move in time, as if he were dancing. The lord is thrilled. Imagine skill like that! The cook puts down his knife and corrects him: it isn’t skill, it’s the Way. When he started, all he could see was the ox. Now he doesn’t look at all. He feels for the spaces that are already there, between the joints, and the knife slides through them.
A good cook changes his knife once a year, because he cuts. An ordinary cook changes it once a month, because he hacks. His has lasted nineteen years and is still as sharp as new. Whenever a job feels like hacking, that is the sign: you are pushing against the grain, and somewhere there is a joint.Wander off: the wheelwright and the dregs
七 Chapter 3 · The Secret of Caring for Life
Cook Ding Cuts Up an Ox
Don’t force it: find the gaps
“There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness.”Zhuangzi, ch. 3, trans. Burton Watson
When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself.
Cook Ding · five hollows run through it, faintly
drag the knife along the pale hollows
For your lifeWhen it’s hard work, you’re hacking; look for the joint.
Ordinary cooks hack, and need a new knife every month. His has lasted nineteen years, because it only goes where there is already room.
The archer’s story is about why we choke. Shoot for a few clay tiles and your aim is perfect. Shoot for a fancy belt buckle and you start to worry. Shoot for gold and you go to pieces. Your skill is exactly the same all three times. What has changed is how much you care about the prize, and the caring gets into your hands.
八 Chapter 19 · Mastering Life
The Archer
The more you need to win, the worse you aim
“He who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside.”Zhuangzi, ch. 19, trans. Burton Watson
An archery match on the green. Pick what’s riding on it, then shoot.
pick a stake, then shoot, or tap the target
For your lifeWhen it matters, watch the target, not the prize.
Same archer, same bow, three prizes. His hands only shook when his eye went to the gold; take the gold out of his eye and the arrows come home.
At Lüliang the river falls thirty fathoms into a gorge so wild that no fish can live in it. Confucius sees a man dive in and sends his students running to pull out the body. A few hundred paces downstream the man climbs out, shakes his hair and strolls along the bank, singing.
How did he do it? He has no method, he says. He goes down with the whirlpools and comes up with the currents, moving the way the water moves and never once thinking about himself. He doesn’t fight the river. He has stopped being a separate thing from it.
九 Chapter 19 · Mastering Life
The Swimmer at Lüliang
Go with the water, not against it
“I go under with the swirls and come out with the eddies, following along the way the water goes and never thinking about myself.”Zhuangzi, ch. 19, trans. Burton Watson
Lüliang. The water falls thirty fathoms and boils on for forty li; not even a fish can live in it. A man stands on the rock.
send him in: fight the current, or go with it
For your lifeLearn the current you’re in instead of fighting it.
Confucius saw a torrent that kills. The swimmer saw swirls and eddies he had known since boyhood. It was the same water; only one of them knew its ways.
The swimmer stopped fighting the water. Near the end of the book an old fisherman tells Confucius about a man who never stopped fighting anything.Note The Old Fisherman is chapter 31, one of the late Miscellaneous Chapters that hardly anyone thinks Zhuangzi wrote himself. The story is too good to leave out.
He was afraid of his own shadow and hated his footprints, so he ran to get away from them. The faster he ran, the more footprints he left, and his shadow kept up with him the whole way. Too slow, he decided, and ran harder, until he dropped. It never occurred to him to sit down under a tree.
十 Chapter 31 · The Old Fisherman
The Man Who Ran from His Shadow
What you run from runs with you
“He didn’t understand that by lolling in the shade he could have gotten rid of his shadow and that by resting in quietude he could have put an end to his footprints.”Zhuangzi, ch. 31, trans. Burton Watson
A man who can’t stand his own shadow, or his footprints. Hold run and help him get away from them.
hold run, or press and hold the plain; let go to stop
For your lifeSome things only leave when you stop running.
He ran himself into the ground trying to lose his shadow and his tracks. A few steps into the shade would have done it: sit down, and both are gone.
IV
You and others
Take yourself out of the way, and most trouble with others goes with you.
Picture a man crossing a river on a raft when another boat drifts into him. If the boat is empty, he doesn’t get angry, however short his temper; he just pushes it off. If there is someone in it, he shouts, and shouts again, and by the third time he is cursing.
The bump was the same. The anger came from finding a person to aim it at. Zhuangzi turns this round in the last line: if you could empty your own boat, so that there was nobody in it to take offence or to be offended at, who could ever harm you? Most of what hurts us is a bump from an empty boat.
十一 Chapter 20 · The Mountain Tree
The Empty Boat
Anger needs someone to aim at
“If a man could succeed in making himself empty and, in that way, wander through the world, then who could do him harm?”Zhuangzi, ch. 20, trans. Burton Watson
Crossing the river on two hulls lashed together. Upstream, the mist.
boats come down out of the mist; tap the river for another
For your lifeBefore you take offence, ask whether anyone was steering.
The bump is the same either way; the anger only comes when he sees someone in the boat. Take yourself out of yours, and there is nothing to hit.
The second story is the shortest in the book, and the saddest. Two emperors, Shu and Hu, often visit a third, Hundun, which means Chaos, and Hundun is a wonderful host. They want to repay his kindness. Everyone has seven openings, to see and hear and eat and breathe, and poor Hundun has none. So they set to work, one hole a day, with the very best intentions.Note Watson glosses the names as Brief and Sudden. Put together, shu hu is an ordinary Chinese word for all of a sudden: two hurried moments, improving the timeless.
They gave him what they had themselves, and they never asked whether he needed it. It is a story for every time we are sure a friend, a partner, a child would be better off more like us.Wander off: Laozi and the Tao Te Ching
十二 Chapter 7 · Fit for Emperors and Kings
Hundun
Don’t improve people into your shape
“Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day Hundun died.”Zhuangzi, ch. 7, trans. Burton Watson
Shu (Brief) of the South Sea and Hu (Sudden) of the North Sea want to repay their host. Everyone else, they note, has seven openings, so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe.
Hundun has none · they would like to help
one opening a day, out of kindness
For your lifeBefore you fix someone, ask whether they were whole without it.
Shu and Hu meant nothing but kindness. They gave their friend what they had themselves, seven holes, and never asked whether he needed them.
Zhuangzi is seldom the fool in his own stories, but when he is, he does it properly. Wandering in a chestnut park with a crossbow, he sees a huge, strange magpie and takes aim. Then he notices what the magpie is looking at: a mantis, about to snatch a cicada, which is resting happily in the shade. Each of them is so intent on its prize that it has forgotten what is behind it.
He throws down the crossbow and runs, and the park keeper chases him out as a poacher. He went home and was unhappy for three months. He had been, he said, staring into muddy water and taking it for a clear pool.
十三 Chapter 20 · The Mountain Tree
The Park at Diaoling
Chasing a prize, you become one
“The peculiar magpie was close behind, ready to make off with the praying mantis, forgetting its own true self as it fixed its eyes on the prospect of gain.”Zhuangzi, ch. 20, trans. Burton Watson
First, he spied a cicada that had found a lovely spot of shade
singing, and forgetting it has a body
drag the scroll to the right: it unrolls from right to left
For your lifeWhen you’re most absorbed in getting, look behind you.
Cicada, mantis, magpie, man, and behind the man the park keeper. Each was so busy with what it wanted that it forgot who was watching.
V
Change
Everything turns into something else, you included, and that is not a tragedy.
Four friends once agreed that anyone who could look on nothing as his head, on life as his back and on death as his rump would be their friend. Before long one of them, Master Yu, fell ill. His back bent double, his shoulders rose above his head, his chin sank into his belly button and his pigtail pointed at the sky. He hobbled to the well, looked at his reflection and was delighted. Look what the Creator is making of me!
His friend asked whether he resented it. Not at all, he said, and began to plan what he would do with the new parts.
十四 Chapter 6 · The Great and Venerable Teacher
Master Yu Falls Ill
Whatever you become, use it
“Be content with this time and dwell in this order, and then neither sorrow nor joy can touch you.”Zhuangzi, ch. 6, trans. Burton Watson
Bent double, Yu drags himself to the well and looks in. My, my! So the Creator is making me all crookedy like this!
Master Si has come to visit
tap a part of Master Yu, then turn the hinge
For your lifeWhen life bends you, ask what the new shape is good for.
Master Si saw a sick friend bent double. Master Yu saw an alarm clock, a hunting bow and a carriage, and went for a ride.
It is harder when the change comes close to home. When his wife died, Huizi came to offer condolences and found him sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. This, said Huizi, was going too far.
Zhuangzi said he had grieved like anyone. Then he had looked back past her birth, past her body, to a time before there was anything at all, and watched her changes come round like the seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Now she was lying down peacefully in a vast room. To follow her with wailing would be to understand nothing about how things go. “So I stopped.” It is not coldness. It is grief that has seen the whole circle.
十五 Chapter 18 · Supreme Happiness
Drumming on a Tub
Death is a season, not a scandal
“It’s just like the progression of the four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter.”Zhuangzi, ch. 18, trans. Burton Watson
His wife has died. Huizi comes through the gate to console him, and finds him on the ground, legs flung out, beating a tub and singing.
tap the tub to drum
For your lifeGrieve fully; then see the whole year a life belongs to.
He wept for her first, like anyone. Then he looked back past her birth and saw one change after another, the way a year goes round. The drumming was never a scandal: it keeps time.
There was a shaman in the state of Zheng who could tell a man the year, the month, the week and the day of his death, and was never wrong. People who saw him coming “dropped everything and ran out of his way.” A young disciple named Liezi went to see him and came back dazzled: he had found someone greater than his own teacher. His teacher, Master Huzi, said only: bring him round.
So the shaman came four times, and each time Huzi showed him a different face. The first time the shaman read death in it. The second time, a recovery. The third time he could read nothing at all, and asked the master to hold still. The fourth time he took one look and ran, and Liezi could not catch him. Huzi had shown him nothing to read, only what he was before anything had a name. Liezi went home, cooked for his wife, fed the pigs as if they were people, and for three years did not go out.
十六 Chapter 7 · Fit for Emperors and Kings
The Shaman and the Four Faces
You are not as readable as people think
“You take what you know of the Way and wave it in the face of the world, expecting to be believed! This is the reason men can see right through you.”Zhuangzi, ch. 7, trans. Burton Watson
- I···
- II···
- III···
- IV···
Huzi sits on his mat. Liezi has told him about a shaman who reads faces and is never wrong.bring the shaman in to read him
bring the shaman four times, then turn the hinge
For your lifeWhen someone reads your fate in your face, show them a new one.
The shaman could read any face that held still. Huzi never held still, and the man who knew the day of everyone’s death ran from a man sitting on a mat.
Huizi died first of the two friends. Years later Zhuangzi passed his grave in a funeral procession and told the people with him a story. A plasterer once got a speck of mud on the tip of his nose, thin as a fly’s wing, and his friend the carpenter whirled his axe and sliced it off, while the plasterer stood perfectly still. Asked to do the trick again for a lord, the carpenter said he couldn’t: his partner was dead. Then Zhuangzi spoke to the grave. “Since you died, Master Hui, I have had no material to work on. There’s no one I can talk to any more.”
When his own time came, his students wanted to give him a splendid funeral. He already had one, he said: heaven and earth for his coffin, the sun and moon and stars for jewels, the whole world to see him off. But the crows and kites will eat you, Master! “Above ground, I’ll be eaten by crows and kites; below ground, I’ll be eaten by mole crickets and ants.” Why rob one lot to feed the other?
That leaves the dream, the most famous lines he wrote. Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering about, happy with himself, with no idea he was Zhuang Zhou. Then he woke up, and there he was, solid and unmistakable. Only, which one was dreaming? He calls it the Transformation of Things. You are less fixed than you think, and a self held lightly can change without being lost. And the last words of the scroll are about words themselves: once you have the meaning, you can let them go.
十七 Chapter 2 · Discussion on Making All Things Equal
The Butterfly, and the Fish Trap
You are less fixed than you think
“But he didn’t know if he were Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou.”Zhuangzi, ch. 2, trans. Burton Watson
Zhuang Zhou asleep under the willow, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou
.the man is dreaming
drag across the painting, and keep going
Chapter 26 · External Things 外物
The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap.
The snare is there for the rabbit. With the rabbit in hand, let the snare go.
And words are there for the meaning. Once you have the meaning, the words can go too.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?
For your lifeHold who you are a little loosely: you can change without being lost.
Man or butterfly, he was happy being either. Hold who you are a little more loosely, and change stops looking like loss.
So the scroll rolls up again, the trap set down, the fish kept.
Before it rolls shut, take one of his lines with you: the bamboo slips, the way books were kept in his day. Pull any one.
Wilde ended his review with advice Zhuangzi would have liked, though he would have put it in a fable: “But let them only read him. Let them not talk about him.”Wilde The review closes on Giles’s version of a line from chapter one: “The perfect man ignores self; the divine man ignores action; the true sage ignores reputation.” Watson has it: “the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame.” We have done nothing here but talk about him. Go and lie down under a useless tree.