Chuang Tzu
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Chuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu (Master Chuang; personal name Chuang Chou; fl. 4th century BCE, traditionally c. 369–286 BCE) was a Chinese philosopher of the Warring States period, a native of Meng in the minor state of Sung, where he once served as a minor "official in the lacquer garden."[1] Where the other great schools of ancient China — the Confucians, the Mo-ists, the Legalists — were practical and political, offering concrete plans for social, ethical, and governmental reform, Chuang Tzu's answer to the chaos and suffering of the world was that of a mystic: not the reform of the world, but inner freedom from it through union with the Tao (the Way).[2]
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The Mystical Core of Chuang Tzu's Teaching
Burton Watson sums up the central theme of the Chuang Tzu in a single word: freedom. Nearly all the philosophers of ancient China addressed the same problem — how is man to live in a world dominated by chaos, suffering, and absurdity? — and nearly all answered with concrete programs to reform the individual and society. Chuang Tzu's answer is radically different: free yourself from the world.[3]
A teaching for the spiritual elite. Most ancient Chinese philosophies were addressed to the political or intellectual elite; Chuang Tzu's, Watson notes, "is addressed to the spiritual elite." Like most mystical philosophies, it has seldom been fully understood or embraced in its pure form by more than a small minority.[3]
The baggage of conventional values. Man, in Chuang Tzu's eyes, is the author of his own suffering and bondage; his fears spring from the web of values he has created himself — the conventional distinctions of right and wrong, good and bad, life and death. Before one can be free, this "baggage of old ideas" must be discarded. Watson illustrates this with the story of Nan-jung Chu, who visits the sage Lao Tzu seeking a solution to his worries and is asked, "Why did you come with all this crowd of people?" The "crowd" is the baggage of conventional concepts he lugs about with him (sec. 23).[3]
Wu-wei and union with the Way. The man who has freed himself from conventional standards of judgment can no longer be made to suffer, for he refuses to rank poverty below affluence or death below life. He does not literally withdraw from the world — that would itself be a judgment upon it — but remains in society while ceasing to act from motives of wealth, fame, success, or safety. He maintains wu-wei, "inaction": not forced quietude but action without purposeful striving, so that "all human actions become as spontaneous and mindless as those of the natural world. Man becomes one with Nature, or Heaven... and merges himself with Tao, or the Way, the underlying unity that embraces man, Nature, and all that is in the universe."[4] In Lightning Path terms, this is a classic description of Connection — the dissolution of the bounded, striving ego into identity with the underlying unity of existence.
The skill and wandering metaphors. To describe this purposeless mode of life, Chuang Tzu turns to the skilled craftsman — the woodcarver, the butcher, the swimmer — who does not deliberate but acts instinctively and spontaneously, "and, without knowing why, achieves success." He also uses the word yu (to wander): the enlightened man takes "a totally free and purposeless journey," wandering through all of creation, "enjoying its delights without ever becoming attached to any one part of it."[5]
Fasting of the mind. In section 4, Chuang Tzu (putting the words, characteristically, in Confucius's mouth) describes the contemplative emptying that makes union with the Way possible:
"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. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind."[6]
Sitting in forgetfulness. The same theme appears in section 6, where Yen Hui reports his progress: "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. This is what I mean by sitting down and forgetting everything."[7] This is one of the earliest clear descriptions in world literature of a deliberate Connection Practice aimed at a Connection Experience.
The Transformation of Things. The celebrated butterfly dream closes section 2: "Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things."[8] The boundary between self and other, dream and waking, is not absolute — a mystical claim about the fluidity of identity.
The inadequacy of language. Like all mystics, Chuang Tzu insists that language is "grievously inadequate" to describe the true Way or the freedom of the man who has realized his identity with it. He warns repeatedly that he is giving only a "rough" or "reckless" account, and his wildest, most paradoxical passages in fact "convey little more than the essential ineffability of such a state of being."[9] His chief literary devices — the paradoxical anecdote that jolts the mind past ordinary logic (a technique later central to Zen), the mock-rational debate that dissolves into "gibbering inanity," and above all humor, "that deadliest of weapons against all that is pompous, staid, and holy" — are all aimed at breaking the reader's confidence in conventional assumptions.[3]
The sage with "magical powers." Chuang Tzu often describes the enlightened man as impervious to harm, moving in a trancelike state, perhaps even immortal — language probably drawn from ancient Chinese religion and magic. Watson suggests the profoundest parts of the book intend these descriptions metaphorically, though later Taoist tradition frequently took them literally; the best approach, following Arthur Waley, is "not to attempt to draw any sharp line between rationalism and superstition, between philosophy and magic, but to be prepared to find them mingled and overlapping."[10]
Historical note. Chuang Tzu has long been revered, with Lao Tzu, as a co-founder of the Taoist school, though his brand of Taoism differs in many respects from that of the Tao-te-ching, and the two are best considered separately. Watson cautions that almost nothing reliable is known of the historical Chuang Chou; "Chuang Tzu" is best understood as "the mind, or group of minds, revealed in the text," particularly its first seven "inner chapters."[11]
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Footnotes
- ↑ Watson, Burton, trans. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Introduction, p. 1. All we know of his identity comes from the brief notice in Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih chi (Records of the Historian, ch. 63).
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Introduction, p. 3: "Chuang Tzu's answer, however, the answer of one branch of the Taoist school, is radically different from these... It is the answer of a mystic."
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Introduction, pp. 1–5.
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Introduction, p. 6.
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Introduction, pp. 6–7.
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, sec. 4, "In the World of Men."
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, sec. 6, "The Great and Venerable Teacher."
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, sec. 2, "Discussion on Making All Things Equal."
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Introduction, p. 7.
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Introduction, pp. 7–8.
- ↑ Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Introduction, pp. 2, 8–9.