by Chuang Tzu
The sound of bells and drums, the attention to feathers and hangings, these are the irrelevant aspects of music.
The attributes of official mourning are the irrelevant aspects of grief.
These five unimportant aspects await the movement of the spirit and the liveliness of the heart’s skills before they can be of service.
The ancient ones were aware of all these aspects but did not give them any importance.
The ruler precedes and the minister follows;
the father precedes and the son follows;
the elder brother precedes and the younger brother follows;
the senior one precedes and the junior follows;
the man precedes and the woman follows;
the husband precedes and the wife follows.
This progression of the greater followed by the lesser mirrors that of Heaven and Earth. The sages take their example from this. Heaven is elevated, Earth lowly, and this reflects their spiritual illumination. Spring and summer precede and autumn and winter follow: this is the pattern of the four seasons. In the growth of all life, their roots and buds have their appointed place and distinct shape, and from this comes maturation and then decay, the constant stream of transformation and change. If Heaven and Earth, the most perfect in spirit, have their hierarchy of precedence and sequence, then how much more should this be so with the people!
In the ancestor shrine it is kinship which brings honour;
in the court it is nobility;
in the local areas it is age;
in the governing of things it is wisdom.
This is the pattern of the great Tao. To speak about the Tao but not about its pattern of sequence goes against the Tao itself. If we speak about the Tao that has no Tao, then there is no Tao to guide!
Thus it was that the ancient ones clearly grasped the great Tao, seeking first the meaning of Heaven and then the meaning of its Tao and Virtue.
When they clearly understood the Tao and Virtue,
they then understood benevolence and righteousness.
When they clearly grasped benevolence and righteousness,
they could see how to perform their duties,
When they grasped how to perform their duties,
they came to understand form and fame.
When they comprehended form and fame,
they were able to make appointments.
When they had made appointments,
they went on to examining people and their efforts.
When they had examined people’s efforts,
they moved to judgements of good or bad.
When they had made judgements of good and bad,
they went on to punishments and rewards.
Following this, the foolish and the wise knew what they should do and the elevated and the lowly went to their appropriate places. The good and the worthy as well as those below them found in their own selves that all had assignments adapted to their skills, appropriate to their rank. Thus did they serve those above them and encourage those below; external matters were governed and their own selves developed. Knowledge and plotting were never used and they relied upon Heaven.
This is known as the great peace and perfect government.
The Book says, ‘There is form and there is title.’ Form and title were known to the ancient ones, but they gave it no importance. In the olden days, when they talked of the great Tao, they spoke of the five steps which brought them to ‘form and fame’, or they went to nine steps and debated ‘rewards and punishments’. If they had just gone straight to discussing ‘form and fame’ they would have shown up their ignorance of the origin; or if they had plunged straight into ‘rewards and punishments’ they would have shown their ignorance of the correct beginning. Those who turn the Tao upside down before talking of it, who in fact oppose the Tao before speaking of it, will be governed by other people, for they could not rule others! Those who plunge straight in, gabbling on about ‘form and fame’ or ‘rewards and punishments’, may have some understanding of the means of governing but do not understand the Tao of governing. They may be of use to the world, but they cannot use the world. They are typical pompous scholars, just stuck in their little corner. Rituals, laws, weights and measures, all the point-scoring of correct forms and titles: the ancient ones had all this, but they were the tools of those below to serve those above. Those above did not use this to rule those below.
In days gone by Shun spoke to Yao, saying, ‘Being Heaven’s king, how do you use your heart?’
‘I do not abuse those who are defenceless,’ said Yao, ‘nor do I ignore the poor. I mourn for those who die, caring for the orphaned child and for the widow. This is how I use my heart.’
‘Righteous as far as righteousness goes, but not that great,’ commented Shun.
‘What ought I to do, then?’ said Yao.
‘When Heaven’s Virtue is found, the hills rejoice, the sun and moon shine and the four seasons are in line. The regular pattern of each day and night follows properly and the rain clouds are moved accordingly.’
Yao said, ‘So all I’ve really been doing is getting worked up and bothered! You seek compliance with Heaven, whereas I have sought compliance with humanity.’
Since earliest times Heaven and Earth have been known as great. The Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun have all praised them. The ancient kings who ruled all under Heaven, did they need to act? Heaven and Earth were sufficient for them.
Confucius travelled west to place his books in the archives of Chou. Tzu Lu offered advice, saying, ‘I have heard that the official in charge of the Royal Archives is Lao Tzu. But he has resigned and lives at home. Sir, if you want to place your books there, go and see him and ask his assistance.’
‘Splendid,’ said Confucius. So off he went to see Lao Tzu, but Lao Tzu refused to help. So Confucius took out his Twelve Classics,55 and started to preach.
When he was halfway through, Lao Tzu said, ‘This is too much. Put it briefly.’
Confucius said, ‘In essence, it is benevolence and righteousness.’
‘May I ask,’ said Lao Tzu, ‘are benevolence and righteousness of the very essence of humanity?’
‘Certainly,’ said Confucius. ‘If the nobleman is without benevolence, he has no purpose; if without righteousness, he has no life. Benevolence and righteousness, these are truly of the innate nature of humanity. How else could it be?’
‘May I ask, what are benevolence and righteousness?’
‘To be at one, centred in one’s heart, in love with all, without selfishness, this is what benevolence and righteousness are,’ replied Confucius.
‘Really! Your words reveal misunderstanding,’ said Lao Tzu. ‘ “Love of all”, that’s both vague and an exaggeration! “Without selfishness”, isn’t that rather selfish? Sir, if you want people to remain simple, shouldn’t you look to the ways of Heaven and Earth?
‘Heaven and Earth have their boundaries which are constant;
the sun and moon hold their courses in their brightness;
the stars and planets proceed in the boundaries of their order;
the birds and creatures find their confines within their herds and flocks.
Think of the trees which stand within their own boundaries in order.
‘So Sir, walk with Virtue and travel with the Tao, and you will reach the perfect end. Why bother with all this benevolence and righteousness, prancing along as if you were beating a drum and looking for a lost child? Sir, you will just confuse people’s true nature!’
Shih Cheng Chi came to see Lao Tzu and asked him, ‘I have heard tell that you, Sir, are a sage, so I came to see you, regardless of the length of the journey. Over the hundred nights of the journey my feet became blistered, but I did not stop nor rest. Now I find, Sir, that you are not a sage. Even though you were wealthy enough for even the rat holes of your house to be full of left-over rice, you nevertheless kicked your poor little sister out of the house. What an unkind action! When your food is place
d before you, even if you cannot eat it all, you hoard it, whether it is raw or cooked.’
Lao Tzu showed no emotion and made no reply. The next day Shih Cheng Chi came to see him again and said, ‘Yesterday I was rude to you, Sir. Today I have no heart for it. Why is this?’
Lao Tzu said, ‘I think I have freed myself from knowledge, from the spiritual and from being a sage. If you had called me an ox yesterday, Sir, then I would have said I was an ox. If you had called me a horse, I would have said I was a horse. If people name a reality, but someone won’t have it, then he just makes life more problematic. I am always like this, I don’t just put it on for certain occasions.’
Shih Cheng Chi shrank back so as not to be even near Lao Tzu’s shadow, then he came forward once more in a humble way and asked how he could cultivate himself. Lao Tzu said, ‘Your face is unpleasant; your eyes glare; your forehead is broad; your mouth hangs open; your style is pompous; you are like a tethered horse waiting to bolt, ready to go like an arrow from a crossbow; you examine everything in too much detail; you are cunning in your use of knowledge, yet you lounge around. All this makes me distrust you. Out on the frontier someone like you would be called a bandit.’
The Master said,
‘The Tao does not hesitate before that which is vast, nor does it abandon the small.
Thus it is that all life is enlivened by it.
So immense, so immense there is nothing which is not held by it;
so deep, so unfathomable beyond any reckoning.
The form of its Virtue is in benevolence and righteousness, though this is a minor aspect of its spirit.
Who but the perfect man could comprehend all this?
The perfect man has charge of this age, a somewhat daunting task!
However, this does not fool him or trap him.
He holds the reins of power over the whole world but it is of little consequence to him.
His discernment unearths all falsehood
but he gives no thought to personal gain.
He gets to the heart of issues and knows how to protect the foundation of truth.
Thus Heaven and Earth are outside him, he ignores all life and his spirit is never wearied.
He travels with the Tao,
is in agreement with Virtue,
bids farewell to benevolence and righteousness
and ignores ritual and music,
because the perfect man has set his heart upon what is right.’
This generation believes that the value of the Tao is to be found in books. But books are nothing more than words, and words have value but only in terms of their meaning. Meaning is constantly seeking to express what cannot be said in words and thus passed on. This generation values words and puts them into books, yet what it values is perhaps mistaken, because what it values is not really all that valuable. So we look at things and see things, but it is only an outward form and colour, and what can be heard is just the name and sound. How sad that this generation imagines that the form, colour, name and sound are enough to capture the essence of something! The form, colour, name and sound are in no way sufficient to capture or convey the truth, which is why it is said that the knowledgeable do not speak and those who speak are not knowledgeable. But how can this generation understand this?
Duke Huan was sitting up in his hall reading a book. The wheelwright Pien was down below in the courtyard making a wheel. He put down his chisel and hammer, went up to the hall and asked Duke Huan, ‘May I ask you, Sir, what words you are reading?’
Duke Huan replied, ‘The words of the sages.’
‘Are these sages still living?’
‘They are long dead,’ said Duke Huan.
‘Then, Sir, what you are reading is nothing but rubbish left over from these ancient men!’
‘How dare you, a wheelwright, comment on what I read! If you can explain this, fine, if not you shall die!’ thundered Duke Huan.
The wheelwright Pien replied, ‘Your Lordship’s servant looks at it from the perspective of his own work. When I work on a wheel, if I hit too softly, pleasant as this is, it doesn’t make for a good wheel. If I hit furiously, I get tired and the thing doesn’t work! So, not too soft, not too vigorous, I grasp it in my hand and hold it in my heart. I cannot express this by word of mouth, I just know it. I cannot teach this to my son, nor can my son learn it from me. So for seventy years I have gone along this path and here I am still making wheels. The ancient ones, when they died, took their words with them. Which is why I can state that what Your Lordship is reading is nothing more than rubbish left over from these ancient ones!’
CHAPTER 14
Does Heaven Move?
Does Heaven move?
Does the Earth stand still?
Do the sun and moon argue about where to go?
Who is lord over all this?
Who binds and controls it?
Who, doing nothing, makes all of this be?
Is there some hidden cause that makes things as they are, whether they wish or not?
Or is it just that everything moves and turns because it has no choice?
Do the clouds come before the rain, or does the rain cause the clouds?
What causes them to be?
Who, doing nothing, brings all this joyful excess into being?
The winds come from the north,
going first to west then to east,
swirling up on high, to go who knows where?
Whose breath are they?
Who, doing nothing, creates all this activity?
Shaman Hsien said, ‘Come, I will tell you. Heaven has six directions and five cardinal elements.56 Emperors and kings follow them and there is good government. If they act against them, there is bad government. Consider the Nine Lo, whereby harmony can rule and Virtue can be established. The scholar will illuminate all below and the whole world will be with him. This is what life is like under the August Rulers.’
Tang, the Prime Minister of Shang, asked Chuang Tzu about benevolence. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Tigers and wolves are benevolent.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The father cares for his children,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘Is this not benevolence?’
‘But it is perfect benevolence that I am interested in.’
‘Perfect benevolence has nothing to do with affection,’ said Chuang Tzu.
But the Prime Minister replied, ‘I have heard that where there is no affection, there is no love; where there is no love, there is no filial piety. Do you mean to say that perfect benevolence is without filial piety?’
‘Certainly not. Perfect benevolence is of the highest order, and words such as “filial piety” cannot describe it. What you want to say is not that filial piety is surpassed, but that nothing even comes close to it. When a traveller goes south and then turns to face north when he has reached Ying, he cannot see Ming mountain. Why is this? Because it is far away. There is the saying: filial piety arising from respect is easy, filial piety arising from love is hard. If filial piety from love is easy, then to forget your parents is hard. It is easy to forget your parents, but it is hard to make my parents forget me. It is easy to make my parents forget me, but it is hard to make me forget the whole world. It is easy to forget the whole world, but it is hard for the whole world to forget me.
‘Virtue ignores Yao and Shun and dwells in actionless action. Its benefits embrace every generation, though no one in the world understands this. Despite your protestations, how can you talk of benevolence and filial piety? Filial piety, mutual respect, benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, integrity, resoluteness and purity, all of these can be of service to Virtue. But they are not worthy in themselves. So it is said,
‘ “Perfect nobility disregards the honours of state;
Perfect richness ignores the wealth of the country;
Perfect fulfilment ignores fame and glory.
Alone of all, the Tao never alters.” ’
Cheng of the North Gate asked the Yellow Emperor, ‘My Lo
rd, when you had the Hsien Chih music performed in the area around Lake Tung Ting, I listened and at first I was afraid; I listened again and I was weary; I listened to the end and I was bewildered. I became upset and incapable of coherent speech and finally I lost my self assurance.’
The Yellow Emperor said, ‘That is what I would expect! I had it performed by the people, I attuned it to Heaven, I proceeded according to the principles of ritual and I rooted it in great purity. Perfect music must first of all find its response in the world of the people. It must conform to the principles of Heaven and walk with the five Virtues. It should merge with spontaneity; as a result of which it can order the sequence of the four seasons, bring great harmony to all life. This will be seen in the procession of the four seasons, bringing all life to birth. At one moment swelling, at one declining, constrained by both martial and civil boundaries. At one moment clear, at one obscure, the yin and yang are in harmony, the sounds pour forth. It is as if I were an insect awaking from hibernation or a crash of thunder; without end, without beginning, at one, death, at one, life, at one, finished, at one, surging forth. It is constant but there is no dependable pattern, this is what alarmed you.
‘Next I played it with the harmony of yin and yang, and illuminated it by the light of the sun and moon. The notes changed from short to long, from gentle to harsh. They all hung upon a single harmony but were not determined by anything. The notes filled the valleys and the gorges, and it was useless for you to try to block them out or protect your spirit, for such notes move as they wish. The notes are measured and are clear and sharp. So the ghosts and the spirits hide in the dark, and the sun, moon and stars follow their own courses. I stopped when the music stopped but the sounds flowed on. This worried you; you could not understand it; you looked for them, but could not see them; you went after them, but could not find them. You were stunned and so you stood before the universal witness of the Tao or leaned against an old tree and groaned. Your eyes could not understand and so failed you; your strength collapsed beneath you. I could not catch it. Your body dissolved into emptiness and you lost control and so achieved release. It was this which wore you out.