Five Stories from the Zhuangzi

The Zhuangzi was written in China in the fourth century BCE. Zhuangzi locates knowing in skilled doing. It tells stories and leaves before explaining them. To honour the wisdom buried within them, this post gives a plain narrative of a few stories.

The wheelwright and the duke. At the top of the hall, a duke is reading. At the foot of it, a wheelwright is cutting a wheel. The wheelwright puts down his mallet and chisel, climbs the steps, and asks his ruler what he is reading. The words of the sages, says the duke. Are they alive? Long dead. Then what you are reading, says the wheelwright, is the leavings of dead men. The duke demands an explanation or his life, and the craftsman stakes it on his workbench. A wheel must be cut neither too slow nor too hurried. His hands know the point exactly; his mouth cannot say it. He has not been able to give it to his own son, which is why he is seventy and still cutting wheels. Whatever the sages truly knew, he says, went with them the same way. The duke lets him live.

The cook and the ox. A lord is watching his cook carve an ox, and cannot look away. The knife keeps time like a dancer; the carcass falls open as if it wanted to. Can skill really go this far? The cook lays down his knife. What he cares for, he says, is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When he began, he saw the whole ox. After three years, he no longer saw the ox. Now perception and analysis have fallen away, and something he calls spirit moves the knife through the spaces that were always there in the joints. An ordinary cook hacks, and changes his knife every month. A good cook cuts, and changes it every year. This knife is nineteen years old, and its edge is fresh from the whetstone. Only at the complicated tangles does he slow down, take stock, and proceed with care — then the work falls apart like a clod of earth, and he stands, looks around, and wipes the blade. Excellent, says the lord: from the words of a cook, I have learned how to nourish life.

The turtle in the mud. The king of Chu sent two officials to offer Zhuangzi the government. They found him fishing on the Pu river. He kept hold of his rod and did not turn his head. I hear, he said, that your king keeps a sacred tortoise in his shrine — dead three thousand years, venerated in a box of silk. Would it rather be so honoured, or alive and dragging its tail in the mud? Alive, the officials admitted. Then go away, said Zhuangzi. I mean to keep dragging mine.

The fish trap. A fish trap matters because of the fish, Zhuangzi says; once the fish is caught, the trap can be forgotten. A rabbit snare matters because of the rabbit; once the rabbit is caught, the snare can be forgotten. Words matter because of their meaning; once the meaning is grasped, the words can be forgotten. Where can I find someone who has forgotten words, so I can have a word with them?

The grave of Huizi. Huizi the logician was Zhuangzi’s opponent for thirty chapters — the friend he ridiculed, argued down, answered and could not do without. Passing his tomb years later, Zhuangzi turned to his followers and told them of a plasterer who could let a friend swing an axe at a speck of mud on his nose and take off the speck without breaking skin — a trick the plasterer could perform for that one partner and no other, and never again after he died. Since Huizi’s death, said Zhuangzi, I have had no one to work against. There is no one left worth talking to.

For me these stories don’t just touch the mysterious side of cognition, but are a poignant expression of the subject values of belonging, privacy and creativity.

This post is part of the conversations series. See also the reference entry on Zhuangzi.

Photo: Theo Crazzolara / Unsplash