ZHUANGZI A TranslationNew of the Sayings of Master Zhuang as byInterpretedGuoXiang RICHARD JOHN LYNN Translated by
CHAPTER 3 YANGSHENG ZHU [THE MASTERY OF NURTURING LIFE]
3.0 When life is preserved through nurturing, life so nurtured fulfills its lim its as ordained by principle [li]. But if it turns out that nurturing attempts to exceed these limits, injury to life will occur through such nurturing, which is not the mastery of nurturing life.
3.1.1 For our lives there is a limit, Each allotted capacity [fen] has its own limits [ji]. 3.1.2 but for knowledge [zhi]1 there are no limits. Whether one lifts heavy weights or carries light things around, if one’s spirit pneuma [shenqi], remains completely at ease [ziruo], one will stay within the bounds of one’s strength. By contrast, he who esteems fame and loves to win, although he continuously saps all his strength, never will he satisfy his desires. This is what it means to say that there are no limits to knowledge. Thus it is that as a term, “knowledge” is born in inappropriateness and dies with the arcane fulfillment of limits [mingji]. The arcane fulfillment of limits means that one acts within the ultimate reach of one’s allotted capacity without trying to increase it by the smallest amount. Therefore, although one might bear a myr iad catties on his back, if this is appropriate for his capabilities, in an instant, he won’t know of the heavy weight on his back. And although one might be responsible for the myriad affairs of state, as he perfectly identifies [minran] with them he will remain unaware that they depend on him. This is what “mas tery of nurturing life” means.
Forget about “good” and “evil” and stay the middle course [juzhong]. Allow everything spontaneous action [ziwei] and, keeping it all to yourself, become one with what is perfectly appropriate. Therefore, punishment and fame will stay far from you, while you fully realize principle [quanli] in your own person.
To pursue the limitless the limited, This is but danger.
In doing “good” don’t come within reach of fame. doing “evil” don’t come within reach of punishment.
Each
To seek knowledge that has no limits with a nature [xing] that has limits— how could anyone ever manage not to bring trouble on himself doing this!
Each
3.1.4
This
3.3 Lord Wenhui said, “Wow! Terrific! How could skill ever go so far as this?”
Already in trouble because of knowledge, yet one knows not to stop but brings ever more knowledge to bear in order to rescue himself from his pre dicament. This is how one injures life through attempting to nurture it, for this truly means great danger.
With
In
3.1.5
If one can attain the middle way and arcanely travel [mingdu] on it, nothing will prove impossible. The nurturing of life means not to try to exceed one’s allotted capacity [fen], for it is nothing more nor less than to realize fully prin ciple [quanli] and live out one’s natural span of years.
3.1.6 Follow the governor tract,2 making it your main path. Follow the middle path and make it your norm [chang]. 3.1.7 You can thereby protect your person, keep life whole, care for your parents, One cares for parents in order to please them. 3.1.8 and live out your natural span of years.
To be in such a state and yet keep on trying to know, is nothing but danger!
68 THE SAYINGS OF MASTER ZHUANG, THE INNER CHAPTERS
Each
3.2.1 Cook Ding3 was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui [King Hui of Liang]4 in such a way that with: stroke of the hand, thrust of the shoulder, stamp of the foot, jab of the knee, 3.2.2 Matched a sharp sound of rending, as he played his knife, swishing in and out, always in perfect tune, right in step for the Mulberry Grove Dance and in perfect rhythm with the Jingshou Melody. That is, he exercises his skill with the greatest of ease and never fails to make absolutely the right cut. Since he has perfectly grasped the principle involved, not only is he in perfect harmony with the principle of the ox, he also keeps in perfect rhythm with it.
Each
3.1.3
Yangsheng zhu [The Mastery of Nurturing Life] 69
3.4.7 I strike at the gaps. These are the places of juncture, which he follows to strike at the ox and so cause it to come apart.
3.4.9 I abide where inherent certainty leads me. The knife is not applied rashly. 3.4.10 It never happens that my plying encounters the joints, Such is the marvelousness of his technique that he always plies the knife edge in emptiness and never lets it come up against the slightest obstacle. 3.4.11 So how much the less likely am I to encounter a big bone! Gu [big bone] here means to encounter a big bone, which would defeat the knife edge.
Cook Ding put his knife down and replied, “What I am good at is the Dao, for I have advanced beyond skill. He simply lodged the principles of the Dao in his skill, so what he was good at was not the skill itself.
3.4.14 Now, my knife has lasted nineteen years, and the oxen I have cut up number in the thousands, yet the edge of my knife is as if it had just left the whetstone.
The ordinary cook has to change his knife once a month, this because he hacks. He hits bones and so breaks the knife.
3.4.12
3.4.4 And now, I encounter it with my spirit [shen] and don’t see it with my eyes. He arcanely fuses with its principle/natural configuration.
3.4.2 When I first began to cut up oxen, what I saw was nothing but the whole ox as such, He could not yet see the interstices in its natural configuration. 3.4.3 but, after three years, I no longer saw the whole ox as such. He only saw the interstices in its natural configuration.
3.4.13
3.4.1
Xing is a whetstone.
3.4.5 When sense and knowledge stop, the divine is ready to act. As the senses which govern scrutiny quit working, he loosens his mind and accords with principle/natural configuration.
3.4.6 In accord with the natural principle [configuration] [tianli], He does not cut arbitrarily.
A good cook has to change his knife once a year, this because he cuts through [the meat]. He fails to hit the interstices in the natural configuration.
3.4.8
Following the large openings, These are the empty places where the joints come apart, which he accord ingly follows to cause it to sever.
3.4.16 fearfully take warning, my look stopped, He no longer applies his eyes to anything else. 3.4.17 my action slowed, He slows down his hand. 3.4.18 I just have to move my knife the slightest amount, and, with a sharp rending sound, it’s already come apart, Since he gets it just right, he has to use very little effort. 3.4.19 as if it had been dirt clumped into earth.
3.6.1 When Gongwen Xuan saw the Commander of the Right [Youshi], he was startled to say: “What kind of man are you? How is it that you have one foot [jie]? Jie is a term for having one foot cut off.
The joints have spaces in them, but the knife edge has no thickness.
3.6.2 Was it Heaven’s doing or was it man’s?” If it is something that knowing can do nothing about, it would be Heaven’s doing, but if it is the result of going contrary to what one knows, it would be man’s doing. 3.6.3 He replied, “It was Heaven’s doing, not man’s. It was the way that Heaven begot me that caused me to be one-footed [du].
To have one foot cut off is called du. With all the intelligence he had, he still was incapable of preserving both feet, which means that it was something that his intelligence could not help. If, based on the intelligence he possessed, the Commander of the Right felt he had to seek to keep both his feet, his mind
70 THE SAYINGS OF MASTER ZHUANG, THE INNER CHAPTERS
To insert what has no thickness into what has a space means that it will be so spacious that there will be more than enough room to ply the knife. This is why even after nineteen years my knife edge is as if it had just left the whetstone. However, whenever I come to a grouping, I note that it presents difficulties, Where things intersect and come together is a “grouping.”
The natural configuration comes apart yet there’s no trace of the knife, as if it had been clumped earth. 3.4.20 Raising my knife and standing there, as a result I look all around and linger awhile filled with satisfaction because of what I have done. This indicates one self-fulfilled with all his sense of preeminence and feeling of pleasure. 3.4.21 I set my knife right and put it away.” He wipes his knife clean and places it in its sheath.
3.5 Lord Wenhui then said, “Excellent! I have heard Cook Ding’s words and learned how to nurture life from them.” Since one can do such nurturing with the knife, he realized that life too can so be nurtured.
3.4.15
To have two feet to walk on together is called youyu. One never doubts that the bodily form that includes having two feet is not the result of fate [ming]. 3.6.5 This is how I know that it is Heaven’s doing and not man’s doing.”
without—how
3.11 That being so, is it possible for you to mourn him like this?
3.10 He replied, “That is so [ran].”
The disciple was surprised that Qin Yi did not lean against the doorway and just observe Lao Dan’s transformation instead of going so far as to cry out three times.
One who starts in fitness [shi] and never fails to remain fit forgets all about fitness. The mind [xinshen] of the pheasant prospers [changwang] and its will [zhiqi] is fully satisfied [yingyu]. As soon as it lets itself go free in the wide open spaces, it suddenly no longer is aware that such goodness [shan] is good.6
Ran is the same as saying shi [it is so]. Qin Yi replies to the disciple, saying “Yes, I am a fellow other-worldly [fangwai] friend.”
3.7.2 Although its spirit [shen] prospers [wang], it does not think this good [shan].
Yangsheng zhu [The Mastery of Nurturing Life] 7 1 [xinshen] would have come to grief within and his body would have lost parts could this ever have stopped with the loss of just one foot!5
3.9 A disciple said, “Were you not the master’s friend?”
To have two feet is a matter of fate [ming]. Therefore, he knows that to be one-footed also is not a matter of his own doing. This is why one who under stands the conditions of life [sheng zhi qing] does not labor at what for life nothing can be done, and one who understands the conditions of fate [ming zhi qing] does not labor at what for fate nothing can be helped. He fully realizes his natural endowment [ziran] and does nothing more.
That is to say, “Here you are an other-worldly person performing worldly ritual [li], crying out and mourning like this—is this possible in terms of principle [li]?” Such a person still fails to understand what “merging with the brilliant” [he guang] means7 and so even goes so far as to ask this kind of question.
The bodily form of a man includes having two feet [youyu].
3.6.4
3.7.1
The wild pheasant takes a peck every ten steps, a drink every hundred steps, and it does not beg [qi] to be raised in a cage [fan]. Qi [beg] means seek, and fan [cage] is something in which to confine a pheasant. Starting and stopping anywhere in Heaven and Earth, enjoying spon taneous freedom [xiaoyao] in the open fields of self-fulfillment [zide], all this certainly indicates a marvelous situation for nurturing life, so why should it seek further to enter a cage and so submit to being raised!
3.8 When Lao Dan died, Qin Yi mourned him and giving three cries went out. As others mourned, so he mourned; as others cried out, so he cried out.
He dislikes the way they carry out acts of goodness in anticipating things [xian wu]. It is because they don’t set forth on the path of principle [li] that they arrive at this state of extreme devotion.
If we regard something with ties as “tied,” then that which has no ties is “ties untied.” With one’s ties untied, the innate true state [qing] of one’s naturally
At first, I thought that these were his people, but now I see that they are not. Before, when I had gone in to mourn for him, the old were there weep ing over him as if they were weeping for their children, and youngsters were there weeping over him as if they weeping for their mothers. The reason why they had made an assembly of it should have been to speak without being begged [qi] to speak and weep without being begged to weep.8
Grief and joy are born in loss and gain. Now, a master who arcanely iden tifies with things [xuantong] and stays in step with transformation [hebian] will never experience a time when he is not content, never have an occasion for compliance that he does not meet. Once he arcanely becomes one with the Creator [zaowuzhe], no path does he take but that it is his own path, so what gain, what loss does he ever have? What death or what life? Therefore, acting in accord with his received endowment, grief and joy find no place to intrude.
72 THE SAYINGS OF MASTER ZHUANG, THE INNER CHAPTERS
3.12.5 He came when it was just right, for the Master was timely.
3.12.7 Content with his time, he abided in compliance, so neither grief nor joy could intrude on him.
3.12.3 Such people try to escape from nature and multiply the scope of their innate tendencies/emotions [qing], which is to forget what they have been endowed with.
3.12.1
The inherent nature [tianxing] with which one is endowed has in each instance a fundamental allotted capacity [benfen] from which one can’t escape and to which one can’t add.
He replied, “That is so [ran].”
3.12.2
3.12.4 In ancient times this was called the “punishment of escaping from nature.”
To be so greatly and profoundly moved by things that one does not stop at what is right is what is meant by “escaping from nature.” If one is going to run amuck in the realm of grief and joy, though he does not yet have painful death inflicted on him, his innate personality [xingqing] will already be sorely trou bled, so how could this not be a punishment!
This Perfected one [zhiren] has no emotions [qing] and does nothing more than cry out along with everyone else. Therefore, it is possible to behave like this.
In step with the moment he underwent self-generation [zisheng]. 3.12.6 He departed when it was just right, for the Master was compliant. In step with principle [li] he died when it was right.
3.12.8 In ancient times this was called “ties untied by the Thearch.”9
5. Cheng Xuanying elaborates: “Whether a person’s intelligence [zhi] is bright or stupid, his body incomplete or whole, both are due to the natural endowment of Heaven and
Yangsheng zhu [The Mastery of Nurturing Life] 73 endowed life [xingming] are realized. This is the prime directive [yao] for nur turing life.10 3.13.1 That fingers are used completely in providing firewood is how fire is transmitted, Qiong [used completely] means jin [exhausted]; wei xin [provide firewood] is like saying qian xin [add firewood]. One adds firewood with the fingers, and the fingers exhaust [jin] the principle [li] of adding firewood. Therefore, fire is transmitted and so does not go out. Therefore, the mind [xin] manages to get just the right amount of nurturing so life continues and is not terminated. How clear it is that nurturing life is the means by which the living have life.11 3.13.2 but people don’t understand what such exhaustion [jin] means. A moment never comes again, and “now” does not stop for an instant. Therefore, the life of a man consists of nothing more than getting a bit of it with each breath. The breath taken before is not the breath taken now. There fore, it is by obtaining nurture that life continues. The fire before is not the fire later. Therefore, one provides firewood so that the fire is transmitted. That fire is transmitted and life continues is due to the fact that nurturing fulfills their limits—but how could the common run of mankind ever understand how such exhaustion occurs yet one keeps putting forth new life!12
1. “Knowledge” here seems to mean objective knowledge or self-conscious awareness, which is useful for nurturing life up to the capacity of natural endowment but danger ous when used to push beyond that capacity
2. “Governor tract” translates du (governor, supervisor), reading it as short for dumai, one of the qijing bamai (eight extraordinary tracts [channels, meridians]), which runs through the back of the human body from just below the navel, along the spine, through the neck and terminating in the brain. See Huangdi suwen: gukong lun (Basic questions of the Yellow Thearch: Discussion of bone orifices) (first century CE), cited in Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 117, and the remarks also quoted there by Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692): “The central tract along the back of the body is called the du (governor), and this governor dwells there in quietude, dependent on neither right nor left. Though it has the status of a tract [mai], it has no physical substance, so one who follows the governor has to do so with the most subtle and marvelous of pneumas [qi], which allows one to act while abiding in perfect emptiness. Since such a one halts when he should not act and acts only in terms of spontaneous compliance, he suitably manages to stay right in the center of it.”
3. Although it has been the convention to read Ding as a name and Pao as a title, paoding probably originally meant “a cook,” for ding is a male domestic servant: “male domestic servant in/in charge of the kitchen.”
Notes
4. Sima Biao first makes this identification, and later commentators take it as a given, although no hard evidence exists to support the claim. Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 118.
74 THE SAYINGS OF MASTER ZHUANG, THE INNER CHAPTERS
When one’s plans for one’s own preservation prove insufficient, he simply knows that mutilation suffered is due to others and does not realize that it is due to Heaven having darkened his intelligence. This is to know that whether one has both feet [youyu] or is one-footed [du] it can’t but be the result of fate.” Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 125.
11. Cheng Xuanying: “Qiong [used completely] means jin [exhausted]; xin [firewood] means chaiqiao [firewood]. Wei [provide] means qian [add]. This is to say that when someone makes a fire burn, he uses his hands to add to it. The way one is able to exhaust the principle [li] of making fire burn works this way: although firewood added earlier is fully consumed, firewood added later is used to make it continue. It is because of this continuity of firewood added earlier and firewood added later that the fire does not go out. In just the same way, one who is good at nurturing life stays in step with change and goes along with the transformation of things. Since such a one is always shifting from one state to another in step with things, neither the ‘old I’ nor the ‘new I’ ever gets involved in emotional attachments—while never failing to be ‘I.’ This is how one con tinues on and never ceases to be.” Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 130.
10. The Dao, of course, is the “prime directive.”
6. Both Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying gloss wang as changwang, literally “long” and “king,” which makes no sense. Lin Xiyi’s commentary glosses wang also as changwang, but he uses the characters changwang, which forms a compound meaning “prosper” or “thrive,” and this suggests that he read Guo’s and Cheng’s uses of the term changwang in the same way. That changwang is a compound stative verb is supported by the fact that it is parallel to the yingyu [fully satisfied] in the next phrase—in both Guo’s and Cheng’s commentary. Therefore, it seems obvious that Guo read wang [king] as wang [prosper] in the text of the Zhuangzi Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 126; Lin Xiyi, Zhuangzi Juanzhai kouyi, 53.
8. Cheng Xuanying: “When Qin Yi first went in to mourn, he referred to those who were weeping as other-worldly disciples, but when he saw that their grief and pain were excessive, he realized that they were not actually disciples of Lao Jun [Master Lao].” “Qi [beg] means ‘request,’ and bi [they] means ‘everyone there.’ The Sage’s [shengren] heart was empty and freely receptive [xuhuai] and so responded to things with perfect resonance [wugan siying]. He pitied the masses of millions and had sympathy for all the living, and so did not have to wait upon earnest requests before he made speeches on their behalf. Therefore, his death was such that everyone who gathered there cried out and wept with such grief and pain that it was as if they were his mother or his child. But this is to be stuck among the obstacles of common emotion and to look on life and death as fools do; they were so moved by his sagely mercy that they mourned with such an extreme of grief as this. As he plumbed the situation from this point of view, he real ized that these people were not the disciples of Lord Lao.” Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 128.
have nothing to do with the doings of men. If one violates the ruler’s laws, so that he incurs such mutilation as this, it too is the result of the stupidity begot in him by Heaven.
9. Di [Thearch] is glossed by Cheng Xuanying as tian [Heaven, nature]. Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 129. Cf. 21.29.6.
7. Cf. Laozi, section 4: “The vessel of the Dao. . . . merges with the brilliant, and becomes one with the very dust.” Wang Bi’s comment: “. . . it merges with the brilliant but does not soil its power to embody.” Laozi, section 56: “Merge with the brilliant.” Wang Bi’s comment: “If one has no particular eminence of his own, people will have no predilec tion to contend.” See Richard John Lynn, The Classic of the Way and Virtue, 57–58 and 157–58. Guo Xiang’s allusion to the Laozi implies that otherworldly sages should blend in with others, whether it means glorification or abasement, and that is why Qin Yi goes along with the conventions of mourning.
Yangsheng zhu [The Mastery of Nurturing Life] 75 12. Cheng Xuanying: “These deluded and forgetful disciples are firmly enslaved to their emotions [qing], so how could they ever understand that constant renewal never ceases as one’s mental state keeps shifting from one state to another. The ‘I’ of yes terday is all used up by today, and the ‘I’ of today will put forth new life after that.” Zhuangzi jishi, 1: 130.
RICHARD JOHN LYNN is professor emeritus of Chinese thought and literature at the University of Toronto. His previous Columbia University Press books are The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi (1994) and The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te Ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi (1999).
“Lynn’s much-anticipated translation of the Zhuangzi as interpreted by Guo Xiang is a monumental achievement of exceptional scope and depth. This magisterial rendering of the earliest wholly extant commentary and version of the Zhuangzi is presented with superb discussions of key issues and debates surrounding the text. Lynn’s brilliant work will be indispensable for the study of Chinese philosophy, intellectual history, and literature.”
“For far too long the Zhuangzi has been read through a Buddhist lens and Guo Xiang treated as an aberrant commentator who distorts the Zhuangzi by reading it in political ways. As both parts of this picture are flat wrong, Lynn’s translation, which reads the Zhuangzi through its first systematic commentary, restores the Zhuangzi to all its inherent political genius and original —Michaelpower.”Nylan, author of The Chinese Pleasure Book
—Wendy Swartz, author of Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China
—Martin Kern, coeditor of Confucius and the Analects Revisited: New Perspectives on Dating, Composition, and Authorship
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“Following his acclaimed Yijing and Laozi renderings, Lynn offers an authoritative translation of the Zhuangzi together with and through the lens of its formative commentary. Lynn’s unique scholarly approach brings the Zhuangzi alive as a complex, layered work of both ancient and early medieval Chinese philosophy.”
The Zhuangzi (Sayings of Master Zhuang) is one of the foundational texts of the Chinese philosophical tradition and the cornerstone of Daoist thought. The earliest and most influential commentary on the Zhuangzi is that of Guo Xiang (265–312). Richard John Lynn’s translation of the Zhuangzi is the first to follow Guo’s commentary in its interpretive choices. Its guiding principle is how Guo read the text, which allows for the full integration of the Zhuangzi with Guo’s commentary.
“As a major commentator, Guo Xiang not only illuminated the meaning of the Zhuangzi but also shaped a way to understand that great Daoist classic. Lynn’s excellent translation of Guo Xiang’s version of the Zhuangzi will be essential for the study of Daoism and Chinese philosophical tradition in general. This is a great contribution!”
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESSNEW YORK cup.columbia.edu Cover image: Ho Huai-shuo (He Huaishuo) (1941–)
—Zhang Longxi, author of Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West
