by An Liu
Yet if you eschew the dust [of daily living] and relinquish attachments, you will be as calm as if you had never left your Ancestor and thereupon will become grandly pervasive.49
Purify your eyes and do not look with them;
still your ears and do not listen with them;
close your mouth and do not speak with it;
relax your mind and do not think with it.
Cast aside clever brilliance and return to Vast Simplicity;
Rest your Quintessential Spirit and cast aside wisdom and precedent.50
Then,
you will be awakened but seem to be obscured;
you will be alive but seem to be dead.
In the end, you will return to the foundation of the time before your birth and form one body with transformations. Then, to you, death and life will be one body. [7/59/16–23]
7.13
Now take the example of corvée laborers: they work with shovels and hoes and carry dirt in baskets on their backs until the sweat pours off them and their breathing becomes halting and their throats dry. If they are able to rest for a while beneath a shady tree, they will become relaxed and happy. Yet the profound shade deep within a mountain cave is incomparably better than that found beneath this shady tree.
Take the example of people afflicted with intestinal tumors: they pound their chests, scrunch up their stomachs, hit their heads on their knees, curl up into a ball, and moan all night long without being able to sleep. During this time, if they can get even a moment’s rest, then their parents and brothers will be pleased and happy. Yet the repose of a long night [’s sleep] is incomparably better than this momentary joy.
Thus, if you know the immensity of the cosmos, you will not be concerned about life and death.
If you know the harmony of nourishing vitality, you will not be attached to the world.
If you know the happiness of not yet being born, you will not be afraid of dying.
If you know that to be Xu You is more valuable than Shun, you will not covet things.
A standing wall is better once it topples; how much better if it had never been built.
Ice is better once it melts; how much better if it had never been frozen.51
From Nothing treading into Something; from Something treading into Nothing; from beginning to end there are no traces; and no one knows from whence it springs. Without penetrating the exteriority and the interiority [of the Way], who is able to be without likes and dislikes?
The exterior that has no exterior:
that is supremely grand.
The interior that has no interior:
that is supremely precious.52
If you are able to know the grand and the precious,
where will you go and not reach the end?53 [7/59/25–7/60/4]
7.14
Shallow scholars in this declining age do not understand how to get to the origins of their minds and return to their root. They merely sculpt and polish their natures and adorn and stifle their genuine responses in order to interact with their age. Thus,
when their eyes desire something, they forbid it with measures;
when their minds delight in something, they restrict it with rites.
They hasten forth in circles and formally scrape and bow
while the meat goes bad and becomes inedible
and the wine goes sour and becomes undrinkable.
Externally they restrict their bodies;
internally they belabor their minds.
They damage the harmony of yin and yang
and constrain the genuine responses of their nature to fate.
Thus throughout their lives, they are sorrowful people.
Those who penetrate through to the Way are not like this.
They regulate the genuine responses of their natures,
cultivate the techniques of the mind,
nourish these with harmony,
take hold of these through suitability.
They delight in the Way and forget what is lowly;
They find repose in Potency and forget what is base.
Since their natures desire nothing, they attain whatever they desire.
Since their minds delight in nothing, there are no delights in which they do not partake.
Those who do not exceed their genuine responses do not allow them to tie down their Potency.
Those who find ease in their natures do not allow them to injure their inner harmony.
Thus with
their relaxed bodies and untrammeled awareness,
their standards and regulations,
they can become models for the empire. [7/60/6–11]
7.15
Nowadays the Confucian literati
do not get to the foundations of why they have desires but instead prohibit what they desire;
do not get to the source of why they delight in things but instead restrict what they enjoy.
This is like breaking open the source of rivers and streams and then damming them up with your hands.
Shepherding the people is like taking care of wild beasts. If you do not lock them up in enclosed pens, they will have savage hearts, but if you bind up their feet in order to prohibit their movement and still wish to raise them through a long life, how is this possible? Now Yan Hui, Ji Lu, Zixia, and Ran Boniu were Confucius’s most brilliant students.54 Still,
Yan Yuan died young;
Ji Lu was pickled in Wey;
Zixia lost his eyesight;
and Ran Boniu became a leper.
These disciples all constrained their natures and stifled their genuine responses and did not attain harmony in their lives. Thus when Zixia met Zengzi,55 sometimes he was thin and sometimes he was fat. Zengzi asked him the reason for this. Zixia replied: “When I went out and saw the delights of wealth and honor, I desired them. But when I returned and saw the Way of the former kings and took pleasure in that, the two feelings fought each other in my mind, and I became thin. But when the Way of the former kings won out, I got fat.”
Based on this, it is not that his will was able to not covet positions of wealth and honor and not appreciate the delights of excess; it was merely that by constraining his nature and restricting his desires [that] he used Rightness to guard against them.
Although their emotions and minds were depressed and gloomy and their bodies and natures were constricted and exhausted, they [i.e., the individuals just named] had no choice but to force themselves [to follow the Confucian Way]. Thus none was able to live out his allotted years.
Contrast these with the Perfected:
They eat exactly what suits their bellies
They wear precisely what fits their forms.
They roam by relaxing their bodies.
They act by matching their genuine responses [to the situation].
If left the empire, they do not covet it,
If entrusted with the myriad things, they do not profit from it.
They rest in the vast universe, roam in the country of the Limitless, ascend Tai Huang, [and] ride Tai Yi.56 They play with Heaven and Earth in the palms of their hands: how is it possible that people like them would grow fat or thin by coveting wealth?
Thus, because the Confucians
are unable to prevent people from desiring, they can only try to stop them from being fulfilled;
because they are unable to prevent people from delighting in things, they can only try to forbid those delights.
They cause the world to fear punishments and not dare to steal, but how can they cause people not to have the intention to steal? [7/60/13–23]
7.16
When the people of Yue catch a python, they take it to be quite a [valuable] rarity, but when [the people of] the Middle Kingdom get hold of one, they discard it as useless. Thus,
if he knew something was useless, even a greedy person would be able to give it away.
If he did not know something was useless, even an incorruptible person would not be able to relinquish i
t to someone else.
Now, the reason that rulers of people
ruin and destroy their states and families,
abandon and renounce their altars to the soil and grain,
lose their lives at the hands of others,
and become the laughingstocks of the world is that they have never not acted selfishly and not desired [for themselves].
The Qiu You tribe coveted the gift of a great bell and lost their state.57
The prince of Yu was obsessed with the jade disk of Chuiji and was captured.58
Duke Xian was bewitched by the beauty of Lady Li and created chaos for four generations.59
Duke Huan was besotted by the harmonious flavors of chef Yi Ya and was not buried in a timely fashion.60
The king of the Hu tribe was debauched by the pleasures of female musicians and so lost his best territories.61
If these five princes62 had matched their genuine responses to the situation and relinquished what they did not really need, if they had taken their inner selves as their standard and not run after external things, how could they have possibly arrived at such disasters?
Thus,
in archery, it is not the arrow that fails to hit the center of the target; it is the one who studies archery who does not guide the arrow.
In charioteering, it is not the reins that fail to make the chariot go; it is the one who studies charioteering who does not use the reins well.63
If you know that a fan in winter and fur clothes in summer have no use to you, then the alterations of the myriad things will be like dust in the wind to you. Thus, if you use hot water to stop something from boiling, the boiling will never stop. But if you really know its root, then all you need to do is put out the fire. [7/60/25–7/61/2]
Translated by Harold D. Roth
1. Laozi 42.
2. The five “orbs” (zang ) are the spheres of vital energy in the human body.
3. The paired footprints of a person standing in a comfortable stance form approximately a square.
4. Wei generally means “make,” but here it has the more technical meaning of “is the same as, in parallel systems.”
5. The sun bird is called a cun wu , “hopping crow,” conventionally depicted as having three legs. There are illustrations of these two mythical animals on the funerary banners found at Mawangdui Tombs 1 and 3.
6. Laozi 47. This line also is quoted in 12.46.
7. We follow the interpretation of Kusuyama Haruki, Enanji, in Shinshaku kanbun taikei (Tokyo: Meiji shōin, 1979–1988), 54:328. This is a paraphrase of Laozi 12.
8. This is a paraphrase of Laozi 47.
9. This paragraph is a musing on ZZ 4/9/8ff.
10. This is similar to but more succinct than ZZ 6/17/27–6/18/8.
11. This is similar to ZZ 2/6/28.
12. A Han “foot” (chi ) was approximately nine English inches long, so “seven feet” here means about five feet, three inches. In 3.31, the “height of an average man” is defined as eight feet (chi ).
13. This parallels ZZ 15/42/3.
14. This poem is also found in ZZ 13/34/27–28 and 15/41/26–27.
15. This is similar to ZZ 15/42/5.
16. The jade half-disk (huang ) of the Xiahou clan was a fabulous jewel that supposedly formed part of the regalia of the ducal house of Lu. See Zuozhuan, Ding 4; and 13.15, 16.90, and 17.2. There is a similar passage in ZZ 15/42/7–8.
17. The temporal nodes (jie ) are twenty-four divisions of the solar year, each consisting of fifteen days. See 3.18 and app. B. The implication is that sages intuitively understand the right moment to act and the right moment to be still and thus they adapt to the seasons (yinshi ).
18. These two lines are found in a similar context in ZZ 15/41/27.
19. That is, the hun and po souls. In Han belief, living humans had two souls: (a) the po, a substantive, earthy, corporeal soul associated with yin that was buried with the body after death and consumed funerary offerings, and (b) the hun, an ethereal soul associated with yang that left the body at the time of death.
20. The locus classicus of these two terms is Laozi 19 and 28, in which they signify conditions of undifferentiated selflessness and desirelessness.
21. This line and the previous six are found almost verbatim in ZZ 12/32/21–22.
22. This parallels ZZ 6/18/21–22 and 19/52/20–21.
23. This parallels ZZ 5/13/12–13.
24. For “obsession and fear,” the text reads literally “negates liver and gall,” but this actually refers to the negative mental states associated with the hepatic and choleric orbs. In the Chinese medical literature, these states are said to be obsession, for the hepatic, and fear, for the choleric. See Grand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise, 7 vols. (Paris: Institut Ricci, 2001), 6:621. The corresponding phrase in the parallel line, “sensory perceptions,” literally reads “ears and eyes.”
25. The locus classicus for this vivid description of a profound state of tranquillity attained through meditation is ZZ 2/3/14.
26. These three lines parallel ZZ 15/41/26–27.
27. As Lau (HNZ, 57n.10) noted, the text is corrupt here, missing several characters, so this translation is conjectural.
28. These lines parallel ZZ 2/6/17–18.
29. Mao Qiang and Xi Shi were famed beauties of Yue, credited with having helped bring about the destruction of the state of Wu by distracting King Fuchai (r. 495–477 B.C.E.) with their charms. Their names became emblematic of perfect feminine beauty.
30. The idea that the Perfected sleep without dreaming is found in ZZ 6/16/2 and 15/41/29.
31. According to ancient beliefs, at death the po eventually sank into the ground, and the hun eventually rose into the sky. This text maintains that it is not the case for perfected human beings.
32. This alludes to Laozi 43: “The most flexible in the world can gallop through the most rigid: that which has no substance enters that which has no space.”
33. Following the emendation of Wang Shu-min of wu-jian , “the Dimensionless,” to wu-yu , “the Nonexistent.” See Lau, HNZ, 58n.1.
34. Following the emendation of Yu Yue to drop “therefore” (gu ) as an erroneous insertion. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:758.
35. ZZ 15/41/19–20. Some of these positions may be depicted in the chart of the qi cultivation exercises known as “guiding and pulling” (daoyin ) found at Mawangdui Tomb 3.
36. “When, day and night, without injury, they bring the spring to external things” is quoted almost verbatim from ZZ 5/15/3. The idea seems to be that the Perfected become such powerful generators of vital energies that they can infuse the external world with the vitality of springtime.
37. Reading as , following the suggestion of Yang Shuda. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:761.
38. There is an identical line in ZZ 6/17/15.
39. Liezi (also known as Lie Yukou [fourth century B.C.E.]) was a Daoist thinker frequently mentioned in the Zhuangzi and other early texts. An extant text bears his name but is widely considered a later forgery. A longer version of this story is found starting at ZZ 7/20/25. In that version, the shaman is made to be the fool, but not here.
40. This passage seems to be alluding to the rising and falling of the breath that is discussed in the earliest source of breath cultivation in China, the “twelve-sided jade cylinder,” dated to the fourth century B.C.E. For details, see Roth 1999, 161–64. Zhuangzi 6 (ZZ 6/16/2–3) also contains the idea that the Perfected breathe from their heels and that in them, the “heavenly dynamism” is deep.
41. This is a shortened and paraphrased version of the story in ZZ 6/17/25–31.
42. Yanzi (also known as Yan Ying [d. 500 B.C.E.]) was a celebrated minister who served three successive dukes of Qi with great loyalty and dedication. His exploits are chronicled in a text known as the Yanzi chunqiu. Cui Shu murdered Duke Zhuang of Qi and tried to force the Qi feudal lords to make a covenant with him. Yanzi resisted.
43. These are Ji Zhi and Hua Huan , two grandees
of Qi. They fought a suicidal rearguard action to cover the retreat of Duke Zhuang of Qi from his failed attack on Ju . The lord of Ju offered them money to surrender, but they refused. This incident occurred in 550 B.C.E. See Zuozhuan, Xiang 23.
44. Gongzi Zha was a prince of Wu, the youngest son of King Shoumeng (r. 585–561 B.C.E.). He is celebrated for having refused to displace his elder brother as heir.
45. Zihan was an official of the state of Song during the sixth century B.C.E. renowned for his incorruptibility.
46. Wu Guang was a righteous hermit who, according to legend, when King Tang (founder of the Shang dynasty) offered to abdicate to him, drowned himself rather than bear the insult.
47. The “Metal-Bound Coffer” (Jin deng) is a chapter in the Documents. The “Leopardskin Quiver” (Bao dao) is a chapter in the Liu Tao.
48. Jizi of Yanling is another name of Gongzi Zha. The suing peasants were affected by the example of his detachment from wealth and power.
49. This alludes to the Zhuangzi ’s famous “sitting and forgetting” passage in chap. 6 (ZZ 6/19/21), in which Yan Hui asserts that he “merges with the Great Pervader” (tong yu datong ).
50. To “cast aside wisdom and precedent” (qi zhigu ) is a phrase frequently found in syncretic Daoist works. It means that one does not rely on the past wisdom of sages or on the precedents they set (as recorded in such works as the Documents and Spring and Autumn Annals), but on direct experience. This is intended as a contrast with the Confucians. For a discussion of this phrase in early Daoist syncretism, see Harold D. Roth, “Who Compiled the Chuang Tzu?” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, ed. Henry Rosemont Jr. (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1991), 93–98.
51. This pair of parallel lines emphasizes the value of the pure potential of the Way.
52. When you are merged with the Dao, nothing is outside you: the apparently external is part of your own subjectivity. In addition, your own subjectivity is no longer “inside” you: both subject and object are part of one whole.
53. After having once merged with the Way, when you return to the phenomenal world, you are aware of its “presence” wherever you go.
54. Yan Hui (also known as Yan Yuan ) was Confucius’s most gifted disciple, and his early death deeply saddened the Master.