The Book of Chuang Tzu (Penguin)

by Chuang Tzu

  ‘To be involved with affairs that are not yours is to be overbearing.

  ‘To draw attention to yourself when no one wants you is to be intrusive.

  ‘To suck up to someone with speeches designed to please is to be sycophantic.

  ‘Not to distinguish between good and evil in what others say is to be a flatterer.

  ‘To gossip about other’s failings is to be slanderous.

  ‘To separate friends and families is to be malevolent.

  ‘To give false praise in order to hurt others is to be wicked.

  ‘Having no concern for right or wrong, but to be two-faced in order to find out what others know, is to be treacherous.

  ‘These eight defects cause disorder to others and harm to the perpetrator. A nobleman will not befriend one who has them, nor will an enlightened ruler appoint such a person to be a minister.

  ‘With regard to the four evils of which I spoke, they are:

  ‘Ambition – To be fond of taking on vast enterprises, altering and changing the old traditions, thus hoping that you can increase your fame and standing.

  ‘Greediness – To be a know-all and to try and get everything done your way, seizing what others do and claiming it as your own.

  ‘Obstinacy – To see your errors without doing anything to change them and to persist in doing things the wrong way.

  ‘Bigotry – To smile upon someone who agrees with you but when that person disagrees, to disown and despise them.

  ‘These are the four evils. If you can cast aside the eight defects and avoid the four evils, then you are at a point where it is possible to be taught.’

  Confucius looked sad and sighed, bowed twice, stood up and said, ‘Lu has exiled me twice, I have fled from Wei, they have felled a tree on me in Sung and laid siege to me between Chen and Tsai. I have no idea what I did to be so misunderstood. Why was I subject to these four forms of trouble?’

  The stranger looked distressed, then his expression changed and he said, ‘It is very difficult, Sir, to make you understand! There was once a man who was frightened by his own shadow and scared of his own footprints, so he tried to escape them by running away. But every time he lifted his foot and brought it down, he made more footprints, and no matter how fast he ran, his shadow never left him. Thinking he was running too slowly, he ran faster, never ceasing until finally he exhausted himself and collapsed and died. He had no idea that by simply sitting in the shade he would have lost his shadow, nor that by resting quietly he would cease making footprints. He really was a great fool!

  ‘You, Sir, try to distinguish the spheres of benevolence and righteousness, to explore the boundaries between agreement and disagreement, to study changes between rest and movement, to pontificate on giving and receiving, to order what is to be approved of and what disapproved of, to unify the limits of joy and anger, and yet you have barely escaped calamity. If you were to be serious in your cultivation of your own self, careful to guard the truth and willing to allow others to be as they are, then you could have avoided such problems. However, here you are, unable to cultivate yourself yet determined to improve others. Are you not obsessed with external things?’

  Confucius, really cast down, said, ‘Can I ask you about truth?’

  ‘True truth is simple purity at its most perfect,’ replied the stranger. ‘To be without purity, to be without sincerity means you cannot move other people. So if you fake mourning and weeping, then no matter how thoroughly you do this, it’s not real grief. If you make yourself act angry, even if you sound very fierce, this won’t inspire awe. If you force yourself to be affectionate, no matter how much you smile, you cannot create harmony. True grief may make no sound but is really sorrowful; true anger, even if there is no manifestation of it, creates awe; true affection doesn’t even need to smile but creates harmony. When someone has truth within, it affects his external spirit, which is why truth is so important. In terms of human relationship it works thus:

  ‘in service of parents, it is affection and filial piety;

  in service of rulers, it is loyalty and integrity;

  in celebrations, it is enjoyable pleasures;

  in conducting the mourning rituals, it is sadness and grief.

  ‘For in loyalty and integrity, service is all-important; in celebration, enjoyment is all-important; in mourning, grief is all-important; in service of parents, making them content is all-important.

  ‘The splendour of service doesn’t mean just doing the same thing every time. When making your parents content, you don’t worry about what to do. In getting jolly at a festival, you don’t get worked up about the crockery. In mourning at times of death, you don’t get het up over the precision of the rituals. Rituals have emerged from the common needs of the ordinary people. Truth itself comes to us from Heaven: this is how it is and it never changes. So the sage models himself upon Heaven, values truth but does not kowtow to convention. The fool does the opposite. He cannot take his model from Heaven and so is swayed by the mundane. He simply doesn’t know the value of truth, but is under the domination of the ordinary people and so is affected by this common crowd and is never at peace. Sadly for you, Sir, you started early in such nonsense and have only recently heard of the great Tao!’

  Confucius yet again bowed twice, stood up and said, ‘Now that I have had the opportunity to meet you, I feel as if I have been blessed by Heaven. Master, if you wouldn’t be embarrassed by this, will you allow me to join those who serve you and to be taught by you, and therefore tell me where I might find your house? I want to go there to hear your teachings from you and to complete my study of the great Tao.’

  The stranger replied, ‘I have heard it said that if you find someone with whom you can walk, then go with him to the deepest mysteries of the Tao. However, if it is someone you cannot walk with, and he doesn’t know the Tao, do not link yourself with him, and then you cannot be blamed. Do what you must, Sir! I will now depart from you, Sir, I will depart from you!’ With this he pushed off with his pole and went away through the reeds.

  Yen Yuan returned with the carriage and Tzu Lu held out the strap for Confucius to pull himself up and in, but Confucius did not look their way. He waited till the last ripples had died away and he could no longer hear the sound of the pole and then he returned and climbed into his seat.

  ‘I have been your servant for many years, Master,’ said Tzu Lu, running alongside the carriage, ‘but I have never before seen you behave with such awe towards another. The rulers of ten thousand chariots, of a thousand chariots, when they see you, Sir, they never put you in another room or treat you with anything less than the respect due to an equal, while you yourself always conduct yourself with an air of rigid politeness. Now this old fisherman stood tall before you with his pole, while you bent double like a musical chime bar, and you always bowed twice before speaking to him. Wasn’t this going a bit too far? We are all wondering about this. Why did this fisherman command such respect from you?’

  Confucius leaned upon the crossbar of his carriage, sighed and said, ‘Oh, Yu, it’s very hard to change you! You have studied ritual and order for so long, yet your base and mean heart has not yet been changed. Come here and I will explain! If you meet someone who is older than you and are not respectful, then this is a failure of etiquette. If you meet a worthy person and fail to offer respect, this is a lack of benevolence. If the fisherman was not a perfect man, he would not have the power to make others humble before him. If people do not humble themselves before him, they are lacking in sincerity and thus are unable to obtain the truth, so they harm themselves. Sadly, there is nothing worse that can befall us than the lack of such benevolence, but you alone, O Yu, risk such a calamity!

  ‘Furthermore, the Tao is that by which all the forms of life have life. All that lose it die. All that obtain it live. To struggle against it in practice is to face ruin. To flow with it is to succeed. So it is that where the Tao is, the sage will honour it. Now the old fisherman most certainly has the
Tao, so how could I risk not showing respect to him?’

  CHAPTER 32

  Lieh Yu Kou

  Lieh Yu Kou119 was on his way to Chi but he returned before he got halfway down the road. He encountered Po Hun Wu Jen, who said, ‘Why have you come back?’

  ‘I was frightened.’

  ‘What scared you?’

  ‘I went into ten soup shops en route,’ said Lieh Yu Kou, ‘and in five of them I was served before anyone else.’

  ‘Really? But what exactly alarmed you?’ said Po Hun Wu Jen.

  ‘Even if you try to hide the inner true nature of someone, the body gives it away like a traitor and shines out. Once this is external, it overpowers the hearts of people and makes them treat you, for petty reasons, like someone who is a noble or venerable. From such actions all sorts of problems arise. Now, soup sellers don’t make much in the way of profit and have only their soup to sell. If such people, with so little to offer and so little power, treat me thus, imagine what would happen were I to meet the lord of ten thousand chariots! With his body worn out by the concerns of state, and his wisdom stretched by its governance, he would offer all this to me and ask me to solve his problems! That is what alarmed me.’

  ‘How very perceptive of you!’ said Po Hun Wu Jen. ‘However, given who you are, people will still come to you!’

  Shortly after this, Po Hun Wu Jen went to see Lieh Tzu’s home and found the doorway full of the shoes of his many visitors. Po Hun Wu Jen stood facing north, with his staff upright in his hand and his chin resting upon it, until his chin became creased. He stood there some time, then he went away without a word.

  The porter at the gate went in to Lieh Tzu and told him about this. Lieh Tzu grabbed his shoes and ran barefooted after Po Hun Wu Jen, catching up with him at the outer gate, where he said, ‘Sire, having come here, are you now going to go away without giving me some medicine?’

  ‘It is pointless,’ he replied. ‘I said to you that people would crowd round you, and so they have. It is not your fault that they come, but you cannot keep them away, so what use was my warning? It is the way your extraordinary attributes shine forth which attracts people to you and makes them happy. But if you so move others, this in turn disturbs you to the very roots of your being. But there is nothing more to be said about this. The sort of people who gather round you will never tell you this. The silly words they speak actually poison a person. There is no comprehension and no conception of this among them, so who can make this clear to you? The clever person labours on and the wise person is distressed. However, someone without skills looks for nothing. He eats what he wants and wanders around, drifting like an empty boat, aimlessly, vacuously.’

  A man of Cheng called Huan studied texts at a place called Chiu Shih. After three years Huan had become one of the Literati and just as the Yellow River spreads its blessing over nine miles on either side, so did he bestow blessings upon the three levels of his family relations. He helped his younger brother study the teachings of Mo, and he and his brother debated, though his father always took the brother’s side. Ten years later Huan committed suicide. He appeared to his father in a dream saying, ‘It was I who had your son trained as a Mohist. Why don’t you acknowledge this by taking a look at my grave where I have become the berries on the cypress?’

  When Creation blesses someone, it blesses not that which is human in the person, but that which is from Heaven. In the same way was Huan’s brother guided to be a Mohist. When Huan thought he was the one who made his brother a Mohist, he despised his own family and was like the people of Chi who try to prevent others from also drinking from the well. It is said that nowadays, in this generation, we have only people like Huan. They act as if only they are right.

  However, note that people who have Virtue do not even know this, and imagine how much more this is true of those who have the Tao! In the past people like Huan were known as those who have escaped Heaven’s retribution.

  The sage rests where there is true rest and does not rest when there is no real rest. The bulk of humanity rests when there is no real rest and does not know how to truly rest.

  Chuang Tzu said, ‘To know the Tao is easy, not to speak about it is hard. Knowing and not saying, this is to aspire to the Heavenly. Knowing and saying, this is to be subject to the human element. In the past people paid attention to the Heavenly, not to the human.’

  Chu Ping Man studied how to slay the dragons120 under Cripple Yi and it cost a thousand pieces of gold, which was all his family had. Three years later he had mastered the art but he could never use it.

  The sage sees what is thought to be necessary as unnecessary, so there is no call for warfare. The ordinary person sees what is not necessary as necessary, with the result that there is frequent warfare. The one who looks to warfare always resorts to it in any situation. But relying upon warfare leads to destruction.

  The comprehension of the petty person does not go beyond the external wrappings and the ephemera of gifts, business cards and letterheads. He exhausts his spirit on that which is insignificant and vacuous, but wants to be seen as leading others to the Tao and as bringing all things into the great Oneness. Someone like this will most certainly get lost in time and space. His body is trapped and can never know the great beginning. The perfect man, in contrast, concentrates his spirit upon that which was before the beginning and rests in the strangeness of being in the fields of nothingness. Like water he flows without form, or pours out into the great purity. How pathetic you are! Those of you whose understanding is no greater than the tip of a hair, and who do not understand the great peacefulness!

  A man from Sung, called Tsao Shang, was sent by the King of Sung as an ambassador to the state of Chin. When he left Sung he was given only a few carriages. However, the King of Chin was so delighted with him that he gave him a hundred more. On returning to Sung he met Chuang Tzu and said, ‘Living in poor streets of an impoverished village, making sandals and starving, with a shrivelled neck and a sickly face, this I cannot stand! But being in the confidence of a ruler of ten thousand chariots and being given a hundred of them, this I enjoy and am good at.’

  Chuang Tzu said, ‘Well now. When the King of Chin falls ill, he summons his doctor who lances die ulcer or squeezes the boil and as a reward receives one carriage. The doctor who applies a suppository gets five carriages. The lower down the service, the more carriages given. So, Sir, I assume you must at least have been licking his piles to have been given so many carriages? Be gone, Sir!’

  The Duke Ai of Lu asked Yen Ho, ‘If I were to take Confucius as the main prop of my government, would the problems of the country be resolved?’

  ‘To take on Confucius would be dangerous!’ replied Yen Ho. ‘He likes to decorate feathers and to use flowery language in his work and cannot differentiate the trunk of issues from the mere branches. He is willing to distort true nature in order to convince the people, and yet he has no understanding of what he is doing. He draws inspiration from his own heart and judges according to his own lights, so how could you put such a person in charge? Do you approve of him? Could you entrust things to him? If you do so, it is a mistake. Surely a person who makes the people turn away from reality and learn what is hypocritical is no fit model for the people. If you care about the future, you should forget this idea.’

  It is hard to govern people and not to forget yourself, for this is not Heaven’s model. Merchants and traders won’t want to be associated with someone like this. Their lowly position might make you think they are the same, but such a charge rankles with them.

  Punishments on the outside are inflicted with metal and wood instruments. Punishments to the inner person are inflicted by agitation and excess. When minor people encounter external punishments, the instruments of metal and wood deal with them. When they encounter internal punishments, it is the yin and the yang that consume them. Only the true man can avoid both external and internal punishments.

  Confucius said, ‘The human heart is more dangerous
than mountains or rivers, more difficult to know than Heaven. Heaven has its seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and its times for sunrise and sunset. But humanity has a thickly cloaked exterior and its true nature is hidden deep within. So it is that someone can have an honest face but be miserly; can be truly gifted but be without skills; seem featherbrained but actually have a very clear plan; appear firm but be bent; look slow but be fast. Thus, those who gather around righteousness as if it were there to slake their thirst will later flee from righteousness as if it were a fire.

  ‘So it is that the nobleman observes those working for him at a distance and considers their loyalty, and observes them close at hand to consider their respect. He tests their skills by confronting them with difficult issues and tests their knowledge by suddenly asking a question. He tests their faithfulness by getting their commitment and he tests their benevolence by giving them wealth, while he tests their fortitude and resolve by informing them of coming dangers. By getting them drunk he tests their ability to take care of themselves and by mixing them with all manner of people, he tests their chastity. By these nine tests, it is possible to uncover the unworthy ones.’

  When Cheng Kao Fu121 received the first grade of office, he bowed his head. When he received the second grade, he bent his back. On receiving the third grade, he doubled over and ran along the wall, hugging it. Who would not have him as a model! But a common fellow, on receiving his first grade, puts on airs. On receiving his second grade, dances on top of his carriage. On his third grade, dares to address his uncles by their personal names! How far removed this is from Hsu in the time of Tang!

  There is nothing more dangerous than for Virtue to have a heart, but for that heart to have eyelashes that obscure vision. For if they have such eyelashes, then they can only look within and this leads to ruin. There are five evil Virtues, of which the central one is worst. What am I talking about when I say the central Virtue? The central Virtue is that which makes people think well of what they say but despise what others say.