THE ZHUANGZI

Combined commentary on the "Inner Chapters" from many sources

"A raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment."--T. S. Eliot

"You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog--he's limited by the space he lives in. . . you can't discuss the Way with a cramped scholar--he's shackled by his doctrines" (Watson, 97).

"I'm going to try speaking some reckless words and I want you to listen to them recklessly" (Graham, 42).

Lang. skepticism is shared by both Laozi and Zhuangzi

Ivanhoe and Kjellberg, Skepticism and Relativism in Zhuangzi (SUNY Press, 1995).  Hereaster abbreviated as SREZ.

17: Xunzi's critique of Zhuangzi: he is "obsessed by nature and ignorant of the human (ren)"(21.22). The natural is not good; it must be supplemented and transformed by culture. Wei rather than wu wei. Culture will be better than the five sounds, the five colors, and the five flavors. Bent wood has to be made straight and dull metal has to be put to the grind stone.

Wei, for Xunzi, means to act contrary to one's natural inclinations. For Zhuangzi it means "false." It also had a negative connotation for Mencius.

23: Cook Ding (baoding) may simply mean "kitchen guy" to fit Zh"s idea of nameless sages (1.22). From a lowly cook the Lord Wenhui has learned how to care for life.

30: Great knowledge (da zhi) is free and easy, while petty knowledge (xiao zhi) picks holes. Great speech (da yan) has a mild taste, while petty speech (xiao yan) is all rant (2.9-10). (Kuang Ming Wu: "Huge Understanding widens, widens; small understanding picky, picky. Huge words burn, burn; small words chat, chat.") Great knowledge is related to illumination (ming) and Dao, while small knowledge is based on the language and practise of moral judgment.

Switzgebel, 74: Three reasons to take words less seriously

1. The ineffability of skill: Wheelright Bian. He cannot pass on his skill to his son. How can anyone think that a sage can pass anything on to future generations through words? Worth of skills: better living.

2. Limitation of Human Judgment: Intimately tied up with his skepticism.

3. Meaning of Words is not Fixed.

87: Butterfly dream cannot be lang. skepticism, but sense skepticism or something even more radical.

The search for a direct view of reality, either through the light of reason or perfect perception blocked by the fact that we are linguist beings.

Berkson, 108: Zh's illumination is like turning on the lights in a room where all the individuals have been shining flashlights on only parts of the room. Here is where he breaks company with Derrida. A Heaven-eye's view. The sage does not have to live there forever. No, she can reenter the world preaching this heavenly persepective. She can teach the "piping of Heaven"--blowing on the Ten Thousand Things so that "each can be itself" (Graham, 32). This is not absolute monism, a la Loy. Heaven does the blowing, but the sounds are all unique.

117: "Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him" (Graham, 140). We are not to be silent; we only have to see how we should view language.

The sage knows "how" rather than knowing "that." They have a knack for living--moving smoothly through the world. The Cook: what I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. I follow thing as they are, not as language or concepts take them to be. "Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants" (G, 47).

The guy who swims in the waterfall (G, 126). Woodcarver Qing who matches Heaven with Heaven (nature with nature). (G, 127).

Skillful living sages the same as the ones who fly? Walking without touching the ground (G, 54) Hyberbolic examples of skillful living. Actually, beyond skill.

Eno, 128: Pragmatism in China long before the West: the linkage of wisdom to habit and art. Practical knowing as superior in all major Chinese schools, except among the Mohists. (Mozi: "I cannot imagine how people can fully hear of this doctrine of universal love and yet deny its validity" [131]. Certainty could be reached by words alone.) Confucianism and Daoism are therefore linked.

Efficacious Arts or "Daos." Speech was a tool for action rather than understanding the structures of the physical world.

Early meanings of Dao: a path, an art (noun); guide on a path or to say (verb). A formula of speech and step. A major art here could have been the art(s) of Li. Confucius fusion of music and ren*.

The Analects is suspicious of speech, too. But in the Confucian response to Mohism, the former loses its grip on "dao-learning" and chooses a more discursive method of defending itself. But it is not lost: it could easily return to its former spontaneous practice.

Great translation of Chirping of Fledglings.

Some speech is OK--performative and figurative speech--and this is why Zh. uses so much of it.

"Reliance on assertion ends, and when it ends and you do not even know it is so--that is called Dao" (2.35-36).

No ontology in Zh. because there are no regularities. That's the point of the oversized birds, etc. But there must be natural grooves to follow. Exaggeration is just rhetorical: to open us up to a spontaneous appropriation of the world. Are these the visions of a shaman? Probably not. But why does Eno use the word shaman?

139: "This is a universe of emergent situations rather than a universe of entities located in time, space, and vector motion." It is a universe of events and processes. There is a ontology after all! If it were totally unstructured then, the Knack-Masters could not do their thing.

140: the milipede's natural (tian) mechanism are performed but not consciously mastered like Cook Ding. View of the prehuman world. The animals already lived spontaneously, but most of us have to acquire it and master it. The Daodejing supports just pure animal spontaneity?

Chap. 19: the Cicada catcher is not just clever, but he has a dao. He concentrates his shen and blends in with the landscape.

Confucius' Dao-learning has a moral end, while Zh's does not. No difference between butchering people and butchering oxen. Skills in Daoism tend to be non-social, except for the advise for understanding the personality fo the ruler as one would understand the carcas of an ox.

Eno, 143: Confucian skills are intersubjective while Daoist skills are primarily intrasubjective. As intersubjective Confucian skills become full-fledged grammars, embedded in language-games and a linguistic world.

For Confucians people are naturally social, so the social constraints are just as natural as the milipede's constraints. Zh. does not think that the social is natural. Therefore, Daoism is ethically limited.

Fish in the Yangze do not bump into one another and sages will not either.

Yearly, 154: three types of drives. The transcendent drive cause the self to disappear and allow the shen to manifest itself.

Daoist sage is not a child in the sense of gratifying dispositional drives, but a spontaneous child-like being who has used reflection to hone the necessary skills to reach the spiritual stage. Nietzsche's Ubermensh the same? How about RK's child-like stage? Dancing and singing.

175: a lucid, detached, impersonal calm must be part of this "child" stage.

The story of the old farmer and the stray horses. How do we know whether it is bad or whether it is good.

Yearly, 159: spiritual fulfillment is discontinuous, not continuous with ordinary life.

There is much at stake in the discontinuous view. It is like the fellow who went to Handan to learn their famous way of walking. He failed to learn the Handan way and forgot his own, so he had to crawl home.

Kupperman, 191: Zh. as anticipating Buddhism? But not the extreme forms of dialectical shunyata. Pluralistic chaos and spontaneity.

"Wherever desires and cravings are deep, the impulse which is from Heaven is shallow" (G, 84).

The true man "will not inwardly wound his person by likes and dislikes, that he constantly goes by the spontaneous and does not add anything to the process of life" (G, 82). Have no "preferences. . . no norms" (72).

This is accomplished by the fasting of the heart.

But does not his famous characters prefer some activities over others. Not really, because if Heaven in in charge, they are beyond preference? "Any contrary inclinatlions--lusts, desires, doubts--are equally natural, equally given by Heaven" (Hansen in Mair 1983, 40).

The demonic shaman Huzi: "names and substances have not found their way in, but the impulses are coming up from my heels" as he evens out his breath. (G, 97) In the end he realizes absolute emptiness.

Confucians and Daoists do not disagree on spontaneity. It is part of what yi contributes. Confucius' deliberate rudeness in Book 17 (Waley, 214). Mencius says that a great man does not lose his child's heart. 6b12.

Ivanhoe, Was Zh. a Relativist?

Hansen: a Dao is a single perspective on the whole. There are many of them and none of them add up to a comprehensive Dao. Daos are linguistic rather than metaphysical.

Even Zh's language skepticism is not total: "Saying is not blowing breath, saying says something" (G, 52).

Each of the Knack Masters are following their own Dao, not a unified Dao.

201: Even given the dominance of Heaven's role, we are not to give up our individuals roles; rather, we are to fit them with Heaven's Dao.

"To know what Heaven does and what human do , this is ultimate! Those who know what Heaven does live lives engendered by Heaven. Those who know what humans do use what their wits know to nuture what their wits do not know. Chap. 2:1

Not a strong relativism because Zh. makes it clear that some ways of living are contrary to the Dao.

The Dao is indeed a metaphysical concept about how the world really is.

"The Dao has an essence and can be relied upon, but it does not act and has no fixed form. . . "(6.23).

Therefore, just as the Big Dipper "never erred from its course" (Chan, 194), Cook Ding did not either. Both are a harmonious part of the great Dao.

King Wenwui, after all, connects the Cook's skill to the much larger art of living.

Human nature is benign because all the Knack Masters are benign? The evil Knack Master is impossible?

203: Wrong view of Zh. would better fit Mencius. Deep seated instincts for compassion below moral and rational conventions.

The character of ci--compasion--appears only four times, and never in the inner chapters. Human natures are benign, but not necessarily compassionate. In fact, Zh. sees better as living separately, not bumping in to one another. Zh. does support the idea of equal worth, extending even to nonhumans.

Ci is used this way in the Daodejing.

208: Our view of the moral life must range beyond moral pluralism to "ethical promiscuity."

Watson, Chap. 1: FREE AND EASY WANDERING

Little Understanding--one small perspective--the quail and the cicada

Great Understanding--the whole perspective--the Peng bird/fish. A creature that is able to transform itself. Lives in the Lake of Heaven.

Titan versus the land bound, earth bound. No, there is a definite judgment against the earth or perspective bound.

31: Where does he think he's going? I get along quite fine by going just a little bit.

Quail is just like the small man who has wisdom enough to fill an office and then puff himself up with self-pride. But of course we should just laugh at such a little man. Cosmic laughter--only proper response from the perspective of the Great to the Small.

32: Liezi is just like Peng. He could "ride the wind" for fifteen days. Not quite perfect because he still had something to depend on, even though he had "escaped the trouble of walking." He should have become even more independent: "mounted the truth of Heaven and Earth, ridden the changes of the six breaths, and thus wandered thorugh the boudnless, then what would he have had to depend on?"

32 (G, 45): "Therefore I say, the Perfect (G: "utmost") Man has no self; the Holy Man (G: "daemonic") has no merit; the Sage has no fame." Watson: all the same person. But distinction made between Perfect Man and Sage in Chap. 23 (G, 106; W, 259).

32: THE NAME IS ONLY THE GUEST OF REALITY. Critique of the Rectification of Names. Xu Yu said to Yao, who wanted him to take his throne: "Now if I take your place, will I be doing it for a name? But name is only the guest of reality--will I be doing it so I can play the part of a guest?" Your realm is well governed already.

33 (46): The Holy Man. He does eat grains, but "sucks the wind, drinks the dew, climbs up on the clouds and mist, rides a flying dragon, and wanders beyond the four seas. By concentrating his spirit, he can protect creatures from sickness and plague and make the harvest plentiful. I thought this was all insande and refused to believe it." The dangers of small understanding again. People of small understanding are like blind and deaf people. We are blind and deaf in the understaning, just as one can be crippled morally as well as physically.

The Holy Man is immune from any calamity. Why should he bother with any of the affairs of the world? He cannot be drowned, he cannot be burned.

34: From the holy man's dust one could mold a Yao or a Shun. He transcends the world totally.

34: The big gourd was useless, so the guy destroyed it. Great Understanding is the same way. Should have used the big gourd for a boat.

The gnarled tree is useless, but it leads a long life and you can take a good nap underneath it.

Chap. 2 DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL

For Chan Ziqi loses his "spirit" but Watson has "companion" (alternatively: wife or body). The Chinese word is ou not shen. Ziqi is obviously in a trance state. Watson has Tzu-ch'i for the man's name, while Chan has Tzu-chi. Watson is probably the accurate one. Graham agrees with him.

Ziqi has lost his self; so does that mean that he is a holy man? He also knows the music of Heaven and Earth.

Great Understanding is like the piping of Heaven, while little Understanding is like the piping of humans. Small understanding clings to his little position. They get narrower and narrower and darker and "nothing can restore them to light."

38: A true Lord (Di) is the source of all things. He has identity but no form. I would not be without these things and they would not be without me.

Which part of my body is the most important. Is there one ruler or are they all servants. Surely there must be a ruler, or do the parts trade off this duty? But settling this issue is of no particular consequence.

40 (54): "Therefore, the sage does not proceed in such a way [i.e., distinguishing right from wrong], but illuminates all in the light of Heaven. Does he synthesize right and wrong, or does he have neither right or wrong?

"A state in which "this" and "that" no longer find their opposites is called the hinge (Chan and Graham [53]: "axis"; Wu: "pivot") of the Way .

40-41: However you distinguish things the Dao is going to make them into one.

42: It was better when Mr. Chao did not play his lute did his music approach the music of Heaven. Their mistake is that he and his fellows tried to make clear what they liked. These theories were handed down to their sons and they, too, injured the way.

42-43 (G, 55): This passage here is a good example of apophantic ( from the greek apophanos meaning "denial") language. Zh. is warning us that what he is trying to say goes beyond language's capacity to say it right.

46: "The Perfect Man (zhen ren) is godlike (shen, Chan: "a spiritual being"; Cleary [77] "spiritual"; Graham [58] "daemonic"); Fung yulan [52]; "mysterious", which follows the predicate adjective meaning we found in the Mencius). Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great rivers freeze, they cannot chill him; though swift lightning splits the hills and howling gales shakie the sea, they cannot frighten him. A man like this rides the clouds and mist, straddles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the four seas."

47: An apophantic warning ("reckless words") and then exaggerated language about the sage: "The sage leans on the sun and moon, tucks the universe under his arm, merges himself with things, leaves the confusion and muddle as it is, and looks on slaves as exalted. Ordinary men strain and struggle; the sage is stupid and blockish. He takes part in then thousand ages and achieves simplicity in oneness." G, 59: "abandoned words" and listen with abandon.

47: "And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things. . . . And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too."

Chan's translation of how fast the sage can explain the Dao best fits with Confucius' saying that one can hear the Dao in the morning and die content in the evening.

48 (60): Harmonize all disagreements with Heavenly Equality (G: "the whetstone of Heaven"). Heaven will iron out all tension and opposition--even apparent contradiction. "If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument."

49: "Leap into the boundless and make it your home!"

Shadow and Shade shows interdependent existence. It's a stupid question to demand "independent action."

49 (61): The famous Butterfly Dream. Doesn't this show at least Ivanhoe's "sense" skepticism? The transformation of things.

Chapter Three: The Secret of Caring for Life

Knowledge has no limit. "If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger."

Graham adds material from Chap. 24 and 32 to fill out the mutilated portion of Chap. 3.

Heaven and the One is Yin, not Yang.

G, 63: "The sight of the eye is only something which it employs, it is the daemonic in us which tests. It is no new thing that the sight of the eye does not prevail over the daemonic; and is it not sad that fools should depend on what they see and confien themselves to what is of man, so that their achievements are external?"

W, 137: The Man of Virtue is "sad-faced, he's like a little child who has lost his way." Different from the Man of Spirit, who transcends the world, "dissolves" his bodily form. "This is called the Illumination of Vastness.

W, 358: "To escape both external and internal punishment--only the true Man is capable of this."

359: Of all the types of virtue, inner virtue is the most dangerous. "He who possesses inner virtue whill think himself always in the right, and denigrate those who do not do as he does."

360: "He who has mastered the true form of life is a giant; he who has mastered understanding is petty."

Cook Ding as a "Knack-Master." He is equivalent to the Perfect Person and Sage? Seems so, since he says that he cares about the Dao, and that goes beyond skill. The king says that learned how to care for life, not how to cut up an ox.

He cuts as if he is a dancer in the rain dance.

"Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit (shen) moves where it wants." See Plato's analogy of the dialectician as an expert butcher who knows the "face of the real" just as the butcher knows the joints in a carcase (Protagoras 333). Fung yulan: following the natural veins (tian li) as in a piece of jade. (G [64]: "Heaven's structuring.") This is not just arbitrary cutting. Can there be an analogy to adequate speech here? Only for Plato, who thought that true knowledge and a true logos (speech, logic) was possible.

52: pheasant's shen means the same as the cook's shen, viz. their respective souls, or life-forces.

First mention of Laozi and his disciples, but not in a very positive way. They were mourning their master's death like Confucians. Three cries are enough for a dead body!

Living without leaving a trace and walking without touching the ground.

Chapter Four: In the World of Men

54: The Dao is only one; it is not a mixture. "When it becomes a mixture, it becomes many ways; with many ways, there is a lot of bustle; and where there is a lot of bustle, there is trouble--trouble that has no remedy." Anti-pluralism. G, 66: "One doesn't want the Way to turn into a lot of odds and ends. If it does it becomes multiple, when it's multiple it gets you muddled, . . .

54 (66): "The perfect man of ancient times made sure that he had it [the Dao?] in himself before he tried to give it to others." "The utmost man of old established in other peole only what he had first established in himself."

Then follows a critique of the Confucian virtues. More important is to understand a person's shen and her xin. Confucius advises Yen Hui not to help the king of Wei. The Yen Hui of the Analects did not seem keen on intervening in anyone's life.

56: Even Yao and Yu were "seekers of fame or gain."

56-7: "By being inwardly direct, I can be the companion of Heaven. Being a companion of Heaven, I know that the Son of Heaven and I are equally the sons (Fung Yulan: "children" [67]) of Heaven. Then why would I use my words to try to get men to praise me, or try to get lthem not to praise me? A man like this, people call the Child."

Instead of "inwardly direct" Fung has "inwardly maintaining my uprightness." And instead of being "outwardly compliant," Fung has "outwardly being crooked."

G, 68: "Outwardly I shall bend." "In being 'inwardly straight,' I shall be of Heaven's party. One who is of Heaven's party knows that in the eyes of Heaven he is just as much as son as the Son of Heaven is, . . . Such a one is excused by others a childlike. It is this that I mean by 'being of Heaven's party.'"

Graham: shen will come from the outside and "the agent of his actions is no longer the man but Heaven working through him.

Confucius rejects both ways and tell Yen Hui to fast, something, ironically, he seems to know well from the Analects.

57: Fasting of the Mind. "Make your will one! Don't listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don't listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit." Empty your mind and spirit and the Dao will gather there.

58: "It is easy to keep from walking; the hard thing is to walk without touching the ground."

Even the gods and spirits will come a dwell in the person who has emptied her mind.

63-65: Stories of the unusable trees. "It is this unusableness that the Holy Man makes use of!" ("The spiritual man lives with this kind of worthlessness" [Fung, 75]).

66: Shamans contrasted with the spiritual man. The former consider pigs inauspicious, while the altter consider them highly auspicious.

G, 74: "They [things rejected by shaman and priests] are the very things which the daemonic man will deem supremely lucky."

66: The totally deformed man is compared to a perfect man by Fung, 76. He quotes Guo Xiang:

"The perfect man is useless to others, but everything is useful to itself. So the perfect man lets everything have it own achievement and name, while he himself is mingled with things without distinction. Therefore he is free from the harm of the human world, and always receives the real benefit. This is he who is awkward in his virtue."

G, 74: If you can make a cripple of your Power/Virtue then you will really have it made.

66-67: The madman makes fun of Confucius.

66: "Good fortune ( G [75]: "good luck"; Allinson [69]: "happiness"] is light as a feather but nobody know how to hold it up." Allinson in full: "Happiness is light as a feather, but nobody knows how to bear it." Fung's trans. of the next line is best: "Calamity is heavier than the earth, and yet no one knows how to avoid it."

The madman, just like Nietzsche crippled dwarf, walks a crooked way.

Song of the Madman in Analects 18:5.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE SIGN OF VIRTUE COMPLETE

Graham's Chapter Summary: the True Man lives solely by the Power that is in him, which is really the Power of Heaven/Nature.

The one footed sage has as many disciples as Confucius, but does not teach with words. Confucius will also take him as his teacher and the whole world will be converted to his teachings.

He has the same invincibility and immunity as the other strange sages. "He takes it as fate that things should change and he holds fast to the source." He sees all things as one and "regards the loss of a foot as a lump of earth thrown away."

69: Mirror yourself only in still water.

70-71: the other one footed one says that his Master has never recognized his deformity. Only his friend and many others make fun of him. Fung's translation of passage about "inner realm": "Now you and I are making excursion in the inner world, yet you always direct your attention to my external body" (84).

71: Another one-footed one came to Confucius, who chastized him for coming to him. Shu-shan however said that Heaven and Earth tolerate him, so why not Confucius? Confucius admits his error.

Confucius obviously has not reached the stage of Perfect Man.

Laozi (Lao Tan) says that Confucius should see that "life and death are the same story, that acceptable and unacceptable are on a single string." Why don't we set him free.

No-toes: "When Heaven has punished him, how can you set him free?" Fung has "natural penalty" in the first clause. Confucius has been deformed from birth (see G, 90). He is rotten wood that cannot be carved.

The ugly man to whom both men and women flocked. The Duke of Lu wanted to make him chief minister, but he ran off instead.

73: The ugly man "says nothing and is trusted, accomplishes nothing and is loved. . . . It must be that his powers are whole, though his virtue takes no form." Fung has "perfect character" and "unmanifest virtue."

G, 80: "To the extent then that Power stands out, we lose sight of the bodily shape."

Being of perfect character is never letting distinctions enter into your Spirit (G: "Magic") Storehouse.

Power remains whole in cripples, freaks, children, and madmen.

Two other deformed men, who were honored. "If virtue is preeminent, the body will be forgotten.

W, 75: The sage "has the form of a man but not the feelings of a man. Since he has the form of a man, he bands together with other men. Since he doesn't have the feelings of a man, right and wrong cannot get a him. Puny and small, he sticks with the rest of men. Massive and great, he perfects his Heaven (i.e., his own nature) alone." Fung: "Grand and great is he in his unique identification with nature" (87).

G, 82: "Having received his food from Heaven, what use has he for man? He has the shape of a man, is without what is essentially man. . . . Indiscernible small, that which attaches him to man! Unutterably vast, the Heaven within him which he perfects in solitude!" The isolation of the sage once again.

75: Zhuangzi explains that a person without feelings "doesn't allow likes or dislikes to get in and do him harm. He just lets things be the way they are and doesn't try to help life along."

G, 82: "He constantly goes by the spontaneous and does not add anything to the process of life."

W, 76: The Dao gives you face and form, so, yes, the sage is a human being. "You now--you treat your spirit like an outsider. You wear out your energy. . . ." Fung, for some reason, eliminates the all important character shen, but Graham seems to get it right.

G, 82: "Go on pushing our daemon outside, wearing your quintessence away." Still obscure, but stressing the transcendent nature of shen. Don't injure your spirit with likes and dislikes, but push it outside where it will be immune from daily cares and tribulations. This sort of fits with the passage in Chap. 6 (G, 87) where the child-like woman sage talks about "putting the world outside." In other words, we can either go deep inside to find the Dao or go completely outside to find it. And even when putting the world and life outside, the sage still "breaks through to the daylight."

You should sing the song of "chop logic" (G, 82) or "gibber about hard and white" (W, 76).

CHAPTER SIX: THE GREAT AND VENERABLE TEACHER

"He who knows what it is that Heaven does, and knows what it is that man does, has reached the peak. Knowing what it is that Heaven does, he lives with Heaven. Knowing what it is that man does, he uses the knowledge of what he knows to help out the knowledge of what he doesn't know, and lives out the years that Heaven gave thim without being cut off midway--this is the perfection of knowledge. . . . How, then, can I now that what I call Heaven is not really man, and what I call man is not really Heaven? There must first be a True Man before there can be true knowledge." Compare with Graham on p. 84.

P. J. Ivanhoe: "To know what Heaven does and what humans do, this is ultimate! Those who know what Heaven does live lives engendered by Heaven. Those who know what human do use what their wits know to nuture what their wits do not know. To live out the years Heaven has granted and not be cut off midway, this is the full flourishing of knowledge"(SREZ, 201).

Chan: "He who knows the activities of Nature and the activities of man is perfect. He who knows the activities of Nature lives according to Nature. He who knows the activities of man nourishes what he does not know with what he does know, thus completing his natural span of life and will not die prematurely half of the way. This is knowledge at its supreme greatness."

Fung's comments: "What is unknown to knowledge is the work of nature, such as the circulation of blood, th working of the bodily inner organs, etc. What is known to knowledge is the work of man, such as reading, writing, etc. . . . The true knowledge of the true man is the knowledge of what we call pure experience" (91).

76: Watson's description of the Zhen Ren, one with wu wei and the typical immunities. He could "climb all the way up to the Way like this." He slept without dreaming. Interesting, because psychologists believe that we dream in order to process the activities of the day. No efforts, then no dreams.

78: Yogic breathing. His breath comes from "deep inside. The True Man breathes with his heels; the mass of men breathe with their throats.

"This is what I call not using the mind to repel the Way, not using man to help out Heaven." Fung: "He did not prefer the conscious mind to Dao, or to supplement nature with man" (92).

The True man does not love life, nor does he hate death. He is supposed to have no affections, but "his joy and anger prevail through the four seasons." Fung: "his joy and anger occurred as naturally as the four seasons" (92).

G, 85: "Cautiously! holds in the Power which is his own."

The sage may go to war and he may overthrow nations, "but he will not lose the hearts of the people."

79: Legalist additions here? Supports the punishments and virtues of conventional leaders.

79 (85): His liking and disliking is reduced to one. "In being one, he was acting as a companion of Heaven. In not being one, he was acting as a companion of man. When man and Heaven do not defeat each other, then we may be said to have the True Man."

Fung: " He who knows the one is the follower of nature. He who knows not is the follower of man. Neither nature nor man should overthrow the other. This is the true man" (94).

Although Zh. is favoring Heaven, we should not therefore dichotomize it. The sage sees no distinction between Tian and his own nature.

What is greater than Heaven? Since Dao and Heaven are the same for Zhuangzi, there appears to be a problem here. Fung solves it by making Dao greater than Tian. Fung seems to be vindicated by the statement that the Dao came before Heaven and Earth, just as the Daodejing says as well.

Some of those who attained the Dao attained heavenly places. The heavenly bodies did not err after attaining the Dao. Some who attained the Dao also became great rulers. Old Peng got it and lived 2,000 years.

80: Only in a crisis to fish and other animals get close to one another and help one another. They live in solitude in normal times. Better to transform yourself rather than model yourself on Yao.

82: First woman figure--Woman Crookback (Nu Zhu)? And old woman with a child's face. The transformed child--from innocence through experience and back to an enlightened innocence.

(See G, 82, about putting the spirit outside). Woman Crookback was able to get her student to "put the world outside himself," and after seven more days, "he was able to put things outside himself." And then life outside himself. Then he achieved the brightness of dawn, and then "he could see his own aloneness." (Fung: he could "disregard his own existence" [97]; Graham: "he could see the Unique"[87]). Then beyond life and death. Then a state of peace-in-strife. "After the strife, it attains completion." Fung: "Tranquility in disturbance means perfection" (97). Graham: "At home where it intrudes" (87).

84: The four friends who agreed that nonbeing is the head, life is the back, and death is the rump. (Fung: "Whoever can make nothing the head of his existence" [98].) One of them falls ill with severe deformities, but he takes it with great equanimity. Then the same theme as before--the usefulness of the useless. Perhaps the Creator will make my arm in to a rooster, etc. Let us not disturb or complain about the great process of change.

85: "So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death." We should submit to Heaven in the same way that the molten metal submits to the smithy.

86: Three other friends associate with one another without associating and roam the heavens. One of them dies and his friends sing at his funeral. Zigong, Confucius' disciple, complains to the Master about this violation of li.

Zigong can "think of no name for them," failing to find a proper place for them in the Rectification of Names.

Confucius says that these are not normal humans--they are transcendent, wandering "beyond the realm" while we wander within it. The two can never meet.

87 (90): "The petty man of Heaven is a gentleman among men; the gentleman among men is the petty man of Heaven." Graham: "Heaven's knave is man's gentleman, man's gentleman is Heaven's knave."

87 (90): Confucius says that he is punished by Tian. To wander within the world rather than beyond it? "Fish forget each other in the rivers and lakes, and men forget each other in the arts of the Dao."

The "singular" (Fung: "abnormal") man "is singular only in comparison to other men, but a companion of Heaven" (but only in the sense that fish are companions?).

88: Mind/body split is assumed, because the mind will survive untouched when the body suffers.

89: The man who is mutilated by Yao and his tatoo of ren* and yi. It is just as if one is blind or deaf to the Dao.

90 (92): Yen Hui has forgotten ren* and yi and also music and li.

Again Chinese Yoga: "I smash up my limbs and body, drive out perception and intellect, cast off form, do away with understanding, and make myself identical with the Great Thoroughfare.

CHAPTER SEVEN: FIT FOR EMPERORS AND KINGS

(Fung: "The Philosopher-King")

Yuyu never made it into the realm of "not-man." ls this a violation of the principles of the Cosmic Triad?

But Tai was so sagely that he transcended all realms, including the realm of the nonhuman. He did not make any distinctions at all.

We learn the art of rulership from the madman Jieju. The ruler rules by wu wei.

The namesless sage cannot be bothered with questions of ruling. He prefers the typical sagely wandering and flying in the sky. Don't bother with personal views and the world will be governed.

95: Shaman is contrasted with the sage, even though the shaman is "daemonic" (G, 96) or "a shaman of the gods." The shaman mistakes the sage's trance state with death. (But good shamans get into these states, too.) The shaman saw the sage in the state of "Workings of Virtue [inner powers] Closed Off."

96: The magic power of the shaman is rejected, but the yogic power of breathing, coming up from the heels, is promoted. The shaman admits that he has no way of "physiognomizing" the sage. The sage of constant transformations.

97: Liezi modelled his behavior on Huzi, showing no preferences, and "in the midst of entanglement he remained sealed, and in this oneness he ended his life." Interesting point: he took over his wife's duties in the house.

97: "He got rid of the carving and polishing and returned to plainness, letting his body stand along like a clod." G, 98: "From the carved gem he returned to the unhewn block. Unique, in his own shape, he tooks his stand."

97: "The perfect man uses his mind like a mirror--going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore, he can win out over things and not hurt himself."

Last story: the mistake of thinking that Chaos (Hundun) needs the seven openings of perceptoin just as humans do. What is good for humans is not good for Chaos or other nonhuman things.

Chap. 23 (W, 259; G, 106): The Complete Man (G: "Perfect Man") is above the sage, who is skilled in the ways of Tian but clumsy with regard to the ways of man. The Complete Man is skilled in both, but he hates Heaven and hates the heavenly in man, but above all he hates the I that discriminates between Heaven and humans. Graham: "Is it in me from Heaven or from man?" G. notes that Zh. usually sides with Heaven, but here is sides with humans to balance out his account. In the skilled spontaneity of the Daoist there is no distinction between the two.

Chap. 24 (W, 276; G, 110): The Holy Man (G: "daemonic") hates a crowd. "Embracing virtue (G, "power"), infused with harmony, he follows along with the world--this is what is called the True Man."

More in Watson, 277: "The True Man of ancient times used Heaven to deal with man; he did not use man to work his way into Heaven."

W, 253: Laozi says: "Can you be rude and unwitting? Can you be a little baby? The baby howls all day, yet its throat never gets hoarse--harmony at its height! (Cf. Daodejing 60.) The baby makes fits all day, yet its fingers never get cramped--virtue [inner power?] is all it holds to. The baby stares all day without blinking its eyes--it has no preferences in the world of externals. [What about its mother?!] But the Perfect Man is higher than the baby, because he consciously joins with others but does not become entangled. But for the highest ever stage, we have to go back to infant qualities.

w, 137: The man of virtue is like a baby who has lost its mother.

W, 299: learn how to speak like the child, who has no teachers and yet speaks perfectly--"because it lives with those who know how to speak." See W, 57 for more on the child.

W, 151: The Perfect Man can put things outside himself, but clings to the source. He can even put Heaven and Earth and the ten thousand things outside himself, and "his spirit has no cause to be wearied."

W, 162: The Perfect Man used ren* and yi only as temporary means. "The men of old called this the wandering of the Truth-Picker."

W, 163: Laozi as the Perfect Man--a flying dragon "feeding on the yin and yang." He "can command corpse-like stillness and dragon vision."

W, 198: How does the Perfect Man become invulnerable? Because he guards "the pure breath--it has nothing to do with wisdom, skill, determination, or courage." "A man like this guards what belongs to Heaven and keeps it whole." A drunken man is not injured when falling from a carriage because "his spirit is whole."

199: "The sage hides himself in Heaven--hence there is nothing that can do him harm." Cicada catcher at the bottom.

214: "The Perfect Man wants no repute. When then do you [Confucius] delight in it so?" Confucius then retires to a great swamp and lives with nature and the animals.

225: Again a reversal of the qualities of Yin and Yang. Laozi says that the Perfect Man attains Perfect Beauty and Happiness. One can attain this by living at beasts in nature, adjusting to the minor things but keeping the major things constant.

226: Confucius, after meeting with Laozi: "I was a mere gnat in the vinegar jar! If the Master hadn't taken off the lide for me, I would never have understood the Great Integrity of Heaven and Earth."

236: "Thus it is the Perfect Man does not act, the Great Sage does not move--they have perceived [the Way of] Heaven and Earth." They under hundreds of transformations.

The rhetoric of exaggeration disappears in the outer chapters? Along with the monsters, cripples, etc.

W, 356: "The sage looks at the inevitable and decides that it is not inevitable--therefore he has no recourse to arms. The common man looks at what is not inevitable and decides that it is inevitable--therefore he has frequent recourse to arms. He who turns to arms is always seeking something. He who trusts to arms is lost."

W, 363: "He who does not depart from the Ancestor is called the Heavenly Man; he who does not depart from the Pure is called the Holy Man; he who does not deaprt from the True is called the Perfect Man."

All of Chapter Twelve is good on the sage, e.g., "being complete in Virtue, he is complete in body; being complete in body, he is complete in spirit; and to be complete in spirit is the Way of the sage."

Chap. 17 (W, 178): "Therefore, the Great Man (da ren) in his actions will not harm others, but he makes no show of benevolence or charity. . . . [typical wu wei stuff and dialectical reversals]. . . and "Great Man has no self."

Graham on the Great Man: G,149

Also Graham on Immortality, separate chapter.