The Book of Chuang Tzu (Penguin) Read online

  the great disagreement is unspoken,

  great benevolence is not benevolent,

  great modesty is not humble,

  great courage is not violent.

  The Tao that is clear is not the Tao,

  speech which enables argument is not worthy,

  benevolence which is ever present does not achieve its goal,

  modesty if flouted, fails,

  courage that is violent is pointless.

  I want to move on now from this glance at some of the key threads in Chuang Tzu’s writings, to his place within ‘Taoist’ thought and belief. What was his relationship to the book we now know as the Tao Te Ching? Traditionally, the chronology of the three ‘classics’ of Taoism has been, first Lao Tzu with the Tao Te Ching, second Chuang Tzu, third Lieh Tzu.

  Lao Tzu has been ascribed to the sixth to fifth centuries BC, while Chuang Tzu has always been known to be around the 330–290 BC era. It would thus seem that Chuang Tzu must have known of the book by Lao Tzu. However, as I have mentioned earlier, it is highly unlikely, even if such a person as Lao Tzu existed, that he wrote more than a few of the chapters of the Tao Te Ching. This book dates from around 300 BC at the earliest, though it uses much much older material.

  When Jay Ramsay and I with our colleague Man Ho Kwok produced our translation and exploration of the Tao Te Ching, we discovered that each chapter consists of two very different strata, clearly discernible in the original Chinese. The first layer is a proverb, wisdom saying or oracle which has been passed down through generations and has become rounded and smooth as a result of re-telling. In quatrains which each have an identical number of characters, the saying is preserved in the midst or at the start of each chapter. Around it, written in a totally different style of Chinese, is a commentary, which indicates the fourth– to third-century BC world of China.

  In Chuang Tzu we can see a similar process at work. At no point is there a direct quote from the Tao Te Ching. This is hardly surprising if the dates given above are accurate. The Tao Te Ching was not written down when Chuang Tzu was writing, or if it was, it was being compiled at roughly the same time. But it is clear that both books relied upon the same stock of folk wisdom, wisdom sayings and oracles. What is distinctive is the different ways each book handled the same common material. For example, compare how they each use a series of sayings about babies.

  In chapter 55 of the Tao Te Ching we have:

  ‘Those who have true te

  Are like a newborn baby.’

  – and if they seem like this, they will not be stung by wasps or snakes, or pounced on by animals in the wild or birds of prey.

  A baby is weak and supple, but his hand can grasp your finger.

  He has no desire as yet, and yet he can be erect –

  he can cry day and night without even getting hoarse

  such is the depth of his harmony.

  It’s stupid to rush around.

  When you fight against yourself, it shows in your face.

  But if you draw your sap from your heart

  then you will be truly strong.

  You will be great.3

  Chuang Tzu handles the same proverbial wisdom in a characteristically different way in chapter 23. Lao Tzu has been asked by Nan Jung Chu how one can protect one’s life. Lao Tzu replies:

  ‘The basic way of protecting life – can you embrace the One?’ said Lao Tzu. ‘Can you hold it fast?… Can you be a little baby? The baby cries all day long but its throat never becomes hoarse: that indeed is perfect harmony. The baby clenches its fists all day long but never gets cramp, it holds fast to Virtue. The baby stares all day long but it is not affected by what is outside it. It moves without knowing where, it sits without knowing where it is sitting, it is quietly placid and rides the flow of events. This is how to protect life.’

  … ‘Just now I asked you, “Can you become a little baby?” The baby acts without knowing why and moves without knowing where. Its body is like a rotting branch and its heart is like cold ashes. Being like this, neither bad fortune will affect it nor good fortune draw near. Having neither bad nor good fortune, it is not affected by the misfortune that comes to most others!’

  So a common source in this instance is even cited as having been used in discourse by Lao Tzu, but it is used in very different ways. This is no rigid adherence to a fixed text – for no such fixed Tao Te Ching text existed. It is the use of a common source which later solidified into sacred texts – both the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu.

  So what was the religious background out of which these two great texts arose? We have to rid ourselves of any notion that they arose from a Taoist world. As I have said, there was no Taoism until much later. Indeed the philosopher Hsun Tzu, who lived from c. 312 to 221 BC, thus overlapping in his earlier years with Chuang Tzu, puts Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu into altogether different schools of philosophy in his list of such schools. By the time of Ssu Ma Chien, Chuang Tzu is being spoken of as a pupil of Lao Tzu’s thought. It is obvious from Chuang Tzu himself that he holds Lao Tzu in very high esteem, even if he then goes off on his own path.

  Perhaps it is more important in Chuang Tzu’s case to see who he was not in favour of, for this gives us a clue to the religious thought from which he comes. He is an implacable enemy of the bureaucrats, the petty officials, the sages who teach benevolence and righteousness. He is opposed to all those who seek to tame or harness the innate nature of all aspects of creation, of nature – most especially that of the people. Ssu Ma Chien’s inclusion of the story of Chuang Tzu rejecting outright any offer of a position of authority highlights this. But it is deeper than this. Chuang Tzu has a profound hatred of all that enslaves or controls the human spirit. In this he is against the state cult of Confucians, the cruel, almost fascist teachings of the Legalists and Mohists, who felt that human nature was evil and therefore had to be brutally ruled, and yet he is also against the sentimentality of those who believe that everyone is really good.

  Chuang Tzu is fed by shamanism, the earliest stream of Chinese spirituality, but is also in touch with the latest thinking in fourth-century BC cosmology. He draws his inspiration for the flow of nature from the shamanistic role of acting as an intermediary between the spiritual and physical worlds, where the Way of Heaven is the superior Way and the material world just a pale reflection of the true reality of the Heavenly world. This comes out time and time again when he compares the natural way of Heaven and Earth with the unnatural way of the rulers, sages and Emperors. But he is also a man who is teasing out the depths in new terms and models which were beginning to percolate into general Chinese thought. Most important amongst these is the role and significance of the individual as a being in his or her own right within the cosmos. There is no place here for the subsuming of the individual within the needs of the state. In contrast to the State Cult of China, where the ruler is the intermediary between the rest of humanity and Heaven, Chuang Tzu sees the rulers as the problem, and turns to the right of individuals to strike out for their own salvation, their own sense of place in a world which they are encouraged to deconstruct and then to re-assemble by turning to their innate nature.

  This is quite the most radical aspect of his religio-social thought and lays the seeds for the later rise of Taoism as a specific religious expression where individual salvation, purpose and meaning became the central tenet of the new religion. For in elevating the free individual against the incorporation and subsuming of the individual within the corporate, he is moving in a much more radical direction than the Tao Te Ching does and is challenging the whole superstructure of conventional Chinese religious and social life.

  So where does he get this idea from? Heaven knows! But I would conjecture that much of it is from pure speculation and from his own logical developments from the contextual nature of all knowledge, which lead him to see all previous attempts to impose order and meaning on the universe as just so much wordy wind in the air. Because his critique of language and knowledge is so ruthl
ess, he is left with nothing fixed, nothing ‘given’. In such circumstances the human spirit can make great leaps forward. I believe that Chuang Tzu is one of the great innovators of human thought – a man whose time, maybe, has yet to come. Certainly the remarkable thing about him, to someone writing in the final days of the second millennium after Christ, is how modern he sounds, and yet how in his modern-ness he actually undermines that modern-ness’s notion of its own modernity!

  So I would claim that, while one can to some extent unravel the context of Chuang Tzu’s arguments and the nature of his opponents, while one can see some antecedents of his thought in the shamanistic culture which these bureaucratic opponents were busy destroying, while one can see elements of what he was saying reflected in Lao Tzu, ultimately in Chuang Tzu we meet an original man. A thinker who broke through all the conventions of his time and entered new fields of thought. That he could do so with such humour, through such wonderful stories and with such amazing characters, puts him on a level with the most truly original and enjoyable thinkers the world has ever seen.

  CHAPTER 1

  Wandering Where You Will

  In the darkness of the north there is a fish, whose name is Vast. This fish is enormous, I don’t know how many thousand miles long. It also changes into a bird, whose name is Roc, and the roc’s back is I don’t know how many thousand miles across. When it rises in the air, its wings are like the clouds of Heaven. When the seas move, this bird too travels to the south darkness, the darkness known as the Pool of Heaven.

  The Book of Wonders records a variety of marvels. It tells how ‘when the roc flies to the southern darkness, the waters are stirred up for three thousand miles, and he rises up in a whirlwind, soaring ninety thousand miles, not ceasing for six months’. It is like the swirling of the dust in the heat, blowing around below the deep blue of Heaven. Is this its true colour? Or is it because it is so far away that it appears like this? To one flying above looking down, the pattern is indeed the same.

  If the waters are not great enough, they will not have the ability to carry a large boat. Spill a cupful of water into a small hollow and even a scrap will look like a boat. However, if you try and float the cup upon it, it will just sit there, for the water is not sufficient to carry such a boat. And if there is not enough wind, it will not have enough strength to bear up the great wings. The roc needs ninety thousand miles and the strength of the wind below him, so that he can rest upon the wind. Thus, with the light of Heaven on his back and with nothing to restrain him, the great bird can follow his course to the south.

  A cicada taught a young dove, saying with a laugh, ‘I try to fly, with considerable effort, into an elm or sandalwood tree, but I find that, before I can reach it, I am pulled back down to earth. So what chance does this creature have of rising to ninety thousand miles and heading south?’

  Someone who goes into the countryside with his lunch, and returns in time for the evening meal will be as full as when he left. Someone travelling a hundred miles needs to take enough food to see him through. And someone who travels a thousand miles needs to carry food for three months. What do these two understand?

  The understanding of the small cannot be compared to the understanding of the great. A few years cannot be compared to many years. How do we know this? The morning mushroom does not know of the waxing and waning of the moon. The cicada does not know of spring and autumn, for theirs are but short lives. To the south of Chu there is a vast creature for whom five hundred years is but a spring, and five hundred years is but an autumn. In ancient antiquity there was a giant tree called Chun, for whom spring was eight thousand years and for whom autumn was eight thousand years. Yet Peng Tsu4 is the only man renowned for his great age, something envied by many people, which is rather pathetic!

  When the Emperor Tang debated with Chi, a similar issue arose, for he said:

  ‘In the barren north there is a dark sea called Heaven’s Pool. Here there is a fish, several thousand miles wide and goodness knows how long. This creature is called Vast. There is also a bird, whose name is Roc, and whose back is like Mount Tai5 and whose wings cover the heavens. He rises up on a whirlwind, ninety thousand miles high, soaring through the clouds and breaking through the clear blue sky, then turns to plot his course south, travelling to the southern darkness. A quail laughs at him, saying, “Where are you travelling to? I leap up high but come down again after just a few feet, falling to earth amongst the bushes. And frankly that is the best you can expect from flying! So where is that creature going?” This is what distinguishes the small from the great.’

  Someone who can fulfil the duties of one office, or behaves well enough to please one district, or has enough virtue to please one leader and is used to rule one country, views himself in the same way as these creatures. However, Sung Jung Tzu6 would laugh at such a person. The whole world might praise him but he would not do more as a result. The whole world might condemn him, but he would not be affected. He knew the difference between the inner and the outer and the boundaries between honour and disgrace, but he went no further. He did not care about the world’s opinion, but there were boundaries he did not manage to overcome. The great Lieh Tzu7 could ride the wind, going to the edges without concern, but returning after fifteen days. In the search for good fortune he knew no boundaries. Although he never had to bother with walking, nevertheless he needed some way of getting around. If instead he had risen through the naturalness of Heaven and Earth, travelled on the six elemental forces and voyaged into the unknown and unlimited, he would have had to depend upon nothing! As the saying goes

  The perfect man has no self;

  The spiritual man has no merit;

  The holy man has no fame.

  Yao,8 giving up rule of the earth to Hsu Yu,9 said, ‘When the sun and moon have risen, there is no point in keeping the torches lit, because it’s a waste of light! When the rainy season comes, there is little point in continuing to water the ground! If you, great Master, were to take over the rule of everything under Heaven, then all would be well, whereas if I continue, all I am aware of is my failures. Please, take over ruling the earth.’

  Hsu Yu said, ‘Sir, you rule everything below Heaven, and everything below Heaven is well ruled. If I take over from you, Sir, won’t people think I’m doing it just for the fame? But fame is nothing compared to reality. I would be like a guest, wouldn’t I? The tailor bird makes its nest deep in the forest, but only uses one branch. The tapir drinks from the river Ho, but only takes what it needs. Return home, my noble Lord, for I have no interest in ruling the kingdom. The cook may not run his kitchen well, but the shaman does not jump up and take over.’

  Chien Wu said to Lien Shu, ‘I was listening to the words of Chieh Yu10 – his words sounded fine, but there was no substance, going on and on but coming to no conclusion. I was considerably astonished by his words, for they seemed endless like the Milky Way; vast overstatements and not related to the world of humanity.’

  Lien Shu said, ‘What was he talking about?’

  ‘He said, “Far away on a mountain called Ku She, there lives a holy man whose skin is like ice and pure snow, and his manner is like a shy virgin. He does not eat the five grains, but lives off the wind and dew. He climbs the clouds and rides the dragons, and travels beyond the boundaries of the known world. He has distilled holiness and uses this to heal all and to bring full harvests.” Now I think this is nonsense and don’t believe such words.’

  Lien Shu said, ‘Obviously. You wouldn’t ask a blind man to appreciate a scene of beauty, nor a deaf man to enjoy the sounds of drums and bells. But it is possible to be blind and deaf in one’s deep understanding, as well as physically. Your very words show this, for you spoke like a young woman waiting for her appointed time!

  ‘This man with such virtue can hold all existence and roll it into one. Reform is called for, so you, you fool, would just ask such a one to take over the empire! Such a man as this, nothing harms him, not even great floods pouring from th
e sky can drown him, nor the great drought which melts gold and stone and burns mountains and hills. One like him could make a Yao or Shun11 just from his dust and debris, but he is not bothered by such things! A man from Sung who traded in official ceremonial hats travelled to Yueh, but the people of Yueh, who cut their hair and tattoo themselves, have no use for such things. Yao brought peace to the people of the earth and within the boundaries of the seas. But he went to visit the four masters of distant Ku She mountain, north of the river Fen, and he became aware that his rule was meaningless.’

  Hui Tzu spoke to Chuang Tzu, saying, ‘The King of Wei gave me the seeds of an enormous gourd, which I planted and it produced a fruit big enough to hold five bushels of anything, so I used it to hold water, but it was then too heavy to pick up. I cut it into two to make scoops, but they were too awkward to use. It was not that they weren’t big, I just found I could not make use of them, so I destroyed them.’

  Chuang Tzu said, ‘Dear Sir, surely the problem is that you don’t know how to use big things. There is a man in Sung who could make a cream which prevented the hands from getting chapped, and generation after generation of his family have made a living by bleaching silk. A pilgrim heard this and offered to buy the secret for a hundred pieces of gold. All the family came together to respond and said, “For generation after generation we have bleached silk, yet we have never made more than a few pieces of gold; now in just one morning we can earn a hundred pieces of gold! Let’s do it.” So the pilgrim got the secret and went to see the King of Wu. He was struggling with the state of Yueh. The King of Wu gave the pilgrim command of the army and in the depths of winter they fought the men of Yueh on the water, inflicting a crushing blow on the forces of Yueh, and the traveller was rewarded by the gift of a vast estate from the conquered territory. The cream had stopped the hands chapping in both cases: one gained an estate, but the others had never got further than bleaching silk, because they used this secret in such different ways. Now, Sir, you have a gourd big enough to hold five bushels, so why didn’t you use it to make big bottles which could help you float down the rivers and lakes, instead of dismissing it as being useless? Because, dear Sir, your head is full of straw!’