ZhuangziTaoismScholarly ReconstructionClassical ChineseShareZhuangzi 2Giles - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 availableGilesLanguageEnglishEspañol‹Zhuangzi 1Zhuangzi 2Zhuangzi 3Zhuangzi 4Zhuangzi 5Zhuangzi 6Zhuangzi 7Zhuangzi 8Zhuangzi 9Zhuangzi 10Zhuangzi 11Zhuangzi 12Zhuangzi 13Zhuangzi 14Zhuangzi 15Zhuangzi 16Zhuangzi 17Zhuangzi 18Zhuangzi 19Zhuangzi 20Zhuangzi 21Zhuangzi 22Zhuangzi 23Zhuangzi 24Zhuangzi 25Zhuangzi 26Zhuangzi 27Zhuangzi 28Zhuangzi 29Zhuangzi 30Zhuangzi 31Zhuangzi 32Zhuangzi 33Zhuangzi 34Zhuangzi 35Zhuangzi 36Zhuangzi 37Zhuangzi 38Zhuangzi 39Zhuangzi 40›The Identity Of Contraries.Zhuangzi 2ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1Argument:--Contraries spring from our subjective individuality--Identity of subjective and objective--The centre where all distinctions are merged in ONE--How to reach this point--Speech an obstacle--The negative state--Light out of darkness--Illustrations. 2Tzŭ Ch'i of Nan-kuo sat leaning on a table. Looking up to heaven, he sighed and became absent, as though soul and body had parted. 3Yen Ch'êng Tzŭ Yu, who was standing by him, exclaimed, "What are you thinking about that your body should become thus like dry wood, your mind like dead ashes? Surely the man now leaning on the table is not he who was here just now." 4"My friend," replied Tzŭ Ch'i, "your question is apposite. To-day I have buried myself.... Do you understand?... Ah! perhaps you only know the music of Man, and not that of Earth. Or even if you have heard the music of Earth, you have not heard the music of Heaven." 5"The breath of the universe," continued Tzŭ Ch'i, "is called wind. At times, it is inactive. But when active, every aperture resounds to the blast. Have you never listened to its growing roar? 6"Caves and dells of hill and forest, hollows in huge trees of many a span in girth;--these are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like beam-sockets, like goblets, like mortars, like ditches, like bogs. And the wind goes rushing through them, sniffing, snoring, singing, soughing, puffing, purling, whistling, whirring, now shrilly treble, now deeply bass, now soft, now loud; until, with a lull, silence reigns supreme. Have you never witnessed among the trees such a disturbance as this?" 7"Well, then," enquired Tzŭ Yu, "since the music of earth consists of nothing more than holes, and the music of man of pipes and flutes,--of what consists the music of Heaven?" 8"The effect of the wind upon these various apertures," replied Tzŭ Ch'i, "is not uniform. But what is it that gives to each the individuality, to all the potentiality, of sound? 9"Great knowledge embraces the whole: 10Sees both "the upper and under side of the medal of Jove" at once. 11small knowledge, a part only. Great speech is universal: 12Speech, according to Chuang Tzŭ's ideal, always covers the whole ground in question, leaving no room for positive and negative to appear in antagonism. 13"For whether when the mind is locked in sleep or whether when in waking hours the body is released, we are subject to daily mental perturbations,--indecision, want of penetration, concealment, fretting fear, and trembling terror. Now like a javelin the mind flies forth, the arbiter of right and wrong. 14Now like a solemn covenanter it remains firm, the guardian of rights secured. 15Then, as under autumn and winter's blight, comes gradual decay, a passing away, like the flow of water, never to return. Finally, the block when all is choked up like an old drain,--the failing mind which shall not see light again. 16"Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, caution and remorse, come upon us by turns, with ever-changing mood. They come like music from hollowness, like mushrooms from damp. Daily and nightly they alternate within us, but we cannot tell whence they spring. Can we then hope in a moment to lay our finger upon their very Cause? 17"But for these emotions I should not be. But for me, they would have no scope. So far we can go; but we do not know what it is that brings them into play. 'Twould seem to be a soul; but the clue to its existence is wanting. That such a Power operates, is credible enough, though we cannot see its form. It has functions without form. 18As will be gathered later on, Chuang Tzŭ conceives of the soul as an emanation from God, passing to and from this earth through the portals of Life and Death. 19"Take the human body with all its manifold divisions. Which part of it does a man love best? Does he not cherish all equally, or has he a preference? Do not all equally serve him? And do these servitors then govern themselves, or are they subdivided into rulers and subjects? Surely there is some soul which sways them all. 20"But whether or not we ascertain what are the functions of this soul, it matters but little to the soul itself. For coming into existence with this mortal coil of mine, with the exhaustion of this mortal coil its mandate will also be exhausted. To be harassed by the wear and tear of life, and to pass rapidly through it without possibility of arresting one's course,--is not this pitiful indeed? To labour without ceasing, and then, without living to enjoy the fruit, worn out, to depart, suddenly, one knows not whither,--is not that a just cause for grief? 21"What advantage is there in what men call not dying? The body decomposes, and the mind goes with it. This is our real cause for sorrow. Can the world be so dull as not to see this? Or is it I alone who am dull, and others not so? 22"If we are to be guided by the criteria of our own minds, who shall be without a guide? 23The mind should be a tabula rasa, free from all judgments or opinions of its own as to the external world, and ready only to accept things as they are, not as they appear to be. 24What need to know of the alternations of passion, 25when the mind thus affords scope to itself?--verily even the minds of fools! Whereas, for a mind without criteria 26to admit the idea of contraries, is like saying, I went to Yüeh to-day, and got there yesterday. 27One of Hui Tzŭ's paradoxes. See ch. xxxiii. 28Or, like placing nowhere somewhere,--topography which even the Great Yü 29The famous engineer of antiquity (B.C. 2205), who drained the empire of a vast body of water and arranged its subdivision into nine provinces. 30would fail to understand; how much more I? 31"Speech is not mere breath. It is differentiated by meaning. Take away that, and you cannot say whether it is speech or not. Can you even distinguish it from the chirping of young birds? 32"But how can TAO be so obscured that we speak of it as true and false? And how can speech be so obscured that it admits the idea of contraries? How can TAO go away and yet not remain? 33How can speech exist and yet be impossible? 34"TAO is obscured by our want of grasp. Speech is obscured by the gloss of this world. 35I.e. by the one-sided meanings attached to words and phrases. 36Hence the affirmatives and negatives of the Confucian and Mihist schools, 37Mih Tzŭ was a philosopher of the fourth century B.C., who propounded various theories which were vigorously attacked by the Confucianists under Mencius. We shall hear more of him by-and-by. 38each denying what the other affirmed and affirming what the other denied. But he who would reconcile affirmative with negative and negative with affirmative, 39The "union of impossibilities," which Emerson credits to Plato alone. 40I.e. Have no established mental criteria, and thus see all things as ‹Previous chapterZhuangzi 1Next chapterZhuangzi 3›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the United States via Project Gutenberg