This lecture on the ancient Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi, was given by Professor Wang Bo, Professor of Philosophy at Beijing University as part of Imperial Tours sponsored research into Chinese philosophy and ideas.

 

The Spirit of Zhuangzi

By Professor Wang Bo

 

Good evening everybody. My name is Professor Wang Bo and I have been at Peking University (PKU) for about 24 years since 1982. My major is philosophy, especially Chinese philosophy.

Zhuangzi is my favorite philosopher. Generally speaking philosophers should not like things, you know, they should not be anyone’s fan. Well, Zhuangzi is really very special, very cool. So I am just Zhuangzi’s fan, and not anyone else’s.

Tonight we are going to talk about Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi did not like theories – he liked to relax. I hope both you and I feel relaxed. So, let’s begin.

Zhuangzi was a person; however, I have always suspected that he was not human. In Chinese if you say that someone is not human, you are insulting them. However, there is a story about the famous poet, Su Dongpo, during the Song dynasty. Once, when he wanted to praise a girl he started as though he was going to insult her. He said that the girl was not a human. But he went on to say “but rather a fairy descended to the mortal world”. Thus, he created a very strong contrast. Imitating him, I say that Zhuangzi is from heaven. The reason why I say so is because he is too different. Many, including he himself, considered him crazy. Of course this was not due to any mental disorder but because of his understanding of the world and life.

Zhuangzi lived about two thousand three hundred years ago. It is very far from us, especially, from you. To us Chinese he is far in time, while for you there are many other kinds of distances also. However, I believe human beings can share many things. Thus, not only I but I believe also you can comprehend him as well.

During his lifetime, Zhuangzi did many strange things. I’ll give you two examples. The first is that he refused official positions. We know that Zhuangzi was a great scholar. My name is Wang Bo. Bo means abundant. But compared with Zhuangzi, I am like a grain of rice measured against a granary. So you can imagine the extent of his knowledge. Because of his knowledge many people wanted Zhuangzi to become an official in their government, particularly in the Kingdom of Chu. Zhuangzi was offered the position of Prime Minister, like China’s Mr. Wen Jianbao today.

Generally speaking, Chinese intellectuals are convinced that ‘he who excels in study can follow an official career’. So many people seek a position in government. However, when Zhuangzi was invited by the King of Chu he resolutely refused. He told the emissary the story of two animals, a pig and an ox.

The ox had often been used as a sacrificial offering in ancient China. Prior to the sacrifice it would receive very good treatment. It would be placed in a nice pen where it could enjoy good food, hot baths and even wonderful music. However, its destiny was to be butchered. By contrast, although the pig is housed in mud in a poor environment, it lived a longer life.

For Zhuangzi, entering government was like becoming a sacrificial ox. The destiny is very different for the pig: he might live in a bad environment but he leads an unconstrained life. Zhuangzi asked the emissary whether he would prefer to be the sacrificial ox or a pig. For him, the answer was obvious. He preferred to be a pig.

From the story of The Bull and the Pig we can see Zhuangzi’s attitude towards power. He considers power the dirtiest, ugliest and cruelest thing in the world. In Chinese we can describe someone as a ‘Renwu’ – literally a human object. In my opinion, and I believe that Zhuangzi would agree with me, this means a person is turned into an object. In other words, power is so corrupting that it can turn a person into an object.

The second example of Zhuangzi’s peculiarity is related to his wife’s death. In China – I believe this is universal – you should demonstrate sorrow in such circumstances.

Prof. Wu reads out the following excerpt by Zhuangzi:

“When Zhuangzi’s wife died, Hui Shi went to console him. He found the widower sitting on the ground, singing, with his legs spread out at a right angle, beating time on a bowl.
‘To live with your wife’, exclaimed Hui Shi, ‘and see your eldest son grow up to be a man, and then not to shed a tear over her corpse, this would be bad enough. But to drum on a bowl, and sing; surely this is going too far.’
‘Not at all’, replied Zhuangzi. ‘When she died, I could not help being affected by her death. Soon, however, I remembered that she had already existed in a previous state before birth, without form or even substance; that while in that unconditioned condition, substance was added to spirit; that this substance then assumed form; and that the next stage was birth. And now, by virtue of a further change, she is dead, passing from one phase to another like the sequence of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. And while she is thus lying asleep in Eternity, for me to go about weeping and wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant of these natural laws. Therefore I refrain from it.”

As you can see, Zhuangzi is indeed a very unusual person. It is exactly this peculiarity which makes Zhuangzi so enchanting. He is liked by both friend and foe. Most of the time, it is his wisdom they like. I’ve always felt that Zhuangzi is the most intelligent person in Chinese history. In his book there are many passages which indicate this wisdom.

Have you heard the parable in which he debates fish’s happiness with his friend? This parable is very popular. One day Zhuangzi and his friend Hui Shi, a logician, took a walk along a river. They stopped at a stone bridge and saw fish swimming in the river. Zhuangzi said, “look at how happy the fish are.” His best friend, maybe his only friend, the logician said “you are not a fish so how do you know if the fish are happy or not?” But Zhuangzi answered, “You are not me, so how do you know that I do not know that fish are happy?” I think from this parable the ancient wisdom of Zhuangzi is clear. Maybe we can glimpse a different kind of logic to that of Aristotle.

I also like very much another idea of Zhuangzi, which is about the nature of debate. It goes like this: suppose I am going to have a debate with this lady sitting in the front row of this lecture hall. If I win and she loses, have I really won? And conversely, if she wins and I lose, has she really won? Zhuangzi said, “Maybe we can find an arbiter, but if this arbiter shares my opinion then he is not qualified to be an arbiter. However, if he shares the opinion of this lady, he is not qualified to act as one either. And if he holds views that are different from either of ours, he is even less qualified to act as an arbiter.”

This story leads us to question if there is an arbiter in the world. We often see in sports events that the umpires frequently make mistakes. The same goes for judges of the court of law. So I have always felt that there is no justice in this world. There is only the fairness of a person.

This is the first impression I would like to give you of Zhuangzi, to draw your attention to Zhuangzi as being very different from others. A person like this of course has a very different way of thinking.

In the second part of our talk tonight, I’d like to introduce how Zhuangzi understands ‘love’. I believe this is a question we, even philosophers, are all interested in. We will first discuss the Confucianist concept of ‘love’. One thinks of Confucius and Mencius as soon as we think of Confucianism. The teachings of the Confucianists are rich in compassion. One should love one’s parents, brothers, friends, neighbors, compatriots and the world. Of course the extent of love is different. One should love one’s wife more than others’ wives. We can find a lot of statements concerning the concrete course of action in Confucianism. The most important is “Dui ji ji ren’ -“Do as you would be done by”.

The Confucianist ‘dui ji ji ren’ seeks to project one’s own aspiration onto others. The underlying conviction is that one and others are similar and that the whole human race shares the same inherent nature. Because of this we can understand each other. From this, the Confucianists advocate many concepts which are familiar to the Chinese people, such as “Do not do to others what you do not want to be done”, or “Establish others just as you wish to establish yourself”, and “Enable others just as how you seek to distinguish yourself”. In other words, if I want to be a billionaire, I’ll help you to become a billionaire. If I want to be a high official I’ll help you to become one. This is the “Do to others what you want to be done” way of thinking of the Confucianists.

Zhuangzi raised doubts about this. He would wonder “am I going to like what you like”? “Would I dislike what you like?” Can this be a true relationship, for example, between President Bush of the USA and President Saddam of Iraq? So the simple deduction of others from oneself can not be established. In other words, this kind of love can bring disaster, even if the starting point comes from good intentions.

Let’s take another parable from the works of Zhuangzi. A bird suddenly made its appearance in the capital of the Kingdom of Lu. The King was very pleased and tried all he could to entertain the bird. Just like the treatment received by heads of states, the bird enjoyed 21 salutes of the cannon, a state banquet, was entertained by the Central Orchestra, and was indulged in all the activities and fashions of which that the King was fond. Three days later the bird died of fright.

Why? Zhuangzi said there are two ways of loving the bird, one is what you like and the other is what the bird likes. For Zhuangzi, the Confucianist type of love offers what you like. The King loved the bird but his love killed the bird.

This also makes us think about romantic love. How should two people passionately in love treat one another? I have seen too many cases where one of the parties tries hard to change the other after their own fashion. They give honorable reasons for this, such as, “I am only doing this because I love you” or “I care for you and this is for your own good”. There can be two outcomes. One is that this effort brings about the rupture of the relationship. The other is that the person you fell in love with has completely disappeared and has been transformed into someone else.

When the Confucianists talk about love and to “do to others what you want to be done” they use a very good term, ‘jiaohua”- to educate and bring about change. It sounds nice as it is a very gentle and soft method. However, in my opinion it is a very terrible method. When someone waves a knife at you, you can feel the intent to subjugate you. But when someone sweet talks you to change you are not even aware of the threat before you are dead. 

Martial arts novels are very popular in China. A female killer in one of the novels is called ‘Wenrou” – gentleness. She always acts very gentle and warm with her adversaries leading them to lower their guard before she gives the fateful stab. I sometimes refer to this as killing by subtle means which is more frightening than killing in a battle field.

There is a very popular song in China which is called “Qiaci nide wenrou” – just like your gentleness. In Chinese, qiaci – just like – and strangle to death have the same pronunciation.

Seeing problems in the theories of Confucianists, Zhuangzi took a different course. The basic spirit of this kind of love is to believe that every person is an individual and independent entity. In other words, every person is unique. No one qualified to be the teacher of the other, and no one should be the disciple of the other. The best is for every person to choose his or her own way.

A famous saying of Zhuangzi goes like this: “When the springs dry out, the fish are left high and dry. They splutter and shake to keep it each other wet, but it would be best for them to forget each other in the rivers and lakes.” Their act of moistening one another is the description of the kind of love preached by the Confucianist. The idea that it would be best for them to forget one another in the rivers and lakes is an understanding of love by Zhuangzi. Certainly, it does not mean that a couple should totally forget one another. It implies rather that although we are married, we are different entities and each should have his or her own life style. For Zhuangzi this would be genuine love. As compared with the Confucianista, Zhuangzi appears to have a ‘cool’ tone. In reading Confucianist works such as the Analects, Mengzi or Xunzi you can feel some ‘heat’. I compare reading the Analects to spring, with Mengzi you are in the summer and Xunzi in autumn: although there are seasonal differences the heat is there. When reading Zhuangzi, you cannot feel any heat. However, you do not feel wintry. Zhuangzi is not that grim. You feel the breeze of cool air.

For Chinese intellectuals a combination of the Confucianist and Daoist philosophies strikes a good balance.

I like to bathe in hot springs. I do not know of a very good one in China, but when I go to Taiwan or Korea I always visit their hot springs. There are usually hot and cold pools in the hot spring. And it is nice to go from one to the other. You do not stay in one for a long time as it is not comfortable; Confucianism is like the hot pool and Zhuangzi is like the cold pool. The best is a combination of the two, like at the hot springs. The best is to place the hot springs in your heart. In my case, each semester I teach two courses, generally one on Confucianism and one on Daoism. That’s the way I like it so that my heart can enjoy this equilibrium.

Let’s read a poem written by the most famous Chinese poet Li Bai. He lived in the Tang dynasty and was also a crazy person. In many ways he resembles Zhuangzi. Indeed he liked Zhuangzi very much.

DRINKING ALONE WITH
THE MOON

By Li Bai (701-762)

From a pot of wine among the flowers I drank alone. 
There was no one with me –

Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon 
to bring me my shadow and make us three.

Alas, the moon was unable to drink 
and my shadow tagged me vacantly;

But still for a while I had these friends 
to cheer me through the end of spring….

I sang. The moon encouraged me. 
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.

As long as I knew, we were boon companions. 
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.

…Shall goodwill ever be secure? 
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.

Generally speaking, Chinese drink in one of two circumstances. When we are very happy or when we feel lonely and sad. Here it is the latter. Li Bai is drinking in a very beautiful place where there are lots of flowers. However, he emphasizes the fact that he was alone without a single companion. You can imagine that it would have been very easy for him to find someone to drink with. But he wants to stress the loneliness of human beings. Then he mentions that there are three of them, the moon, his shadow and he. Again, it is not true there are three drinking together. In the same way, for Zhuangzi, the collective does not exist. The collective of a multitude is artificial. So in the poem, after mentioning that there are three, the poet Li Bai goes on to say that the other two do not understand me at all. It is the same for Zhuangzi – the people around Zhuangzi can be friends or strangers but either way they can not take away the feeling of loneliness.

The poem goes on to say that we seem to be together while we are drinking but we disperse when we become intoxicated. I think Li Bai means that when you are drunk you have the illusion that you are with people. But as soon as you get sober you realize that you are alone. In ending, Li Bai implies that if we are in any case lonely why should we become attached but instead wonder freely “on the river of stars”.

Let’s turn to Zhuangzi’s paradoxes on deformity and the usefulness of the useless. Some students have asked me if Zhuangzi was in some way deformed himself, “otherwise why refer to all those deformed people?” For me this question is ridiculous for it misunderstands Zhuangzi. There are two questions on the issue of deformity. The first is its relationship to uselessness. The second issue is that, according to him, we are all deformed in some way. In other words, there is no perfect person in the world.

People assume that a deformity makes someone useless as compared with a normal person. By contrast, Zhuangzi reminds us of the advantages of being deformed. In ancient China, military service and corvee were mandatory.

You may have heard the story of Menjiangnu. Her husband was drafted thousands of years ago to help construct a portion of the Great Wall. When he failed to return, Menjiangnu set out to find her husband. Her wail upon learning of his death toppled the Great Wall. Although this is only a popular myth, it is possible to relate to the pain of losing a loved one through corvee.

In the time of Zhuangzi, the situation was different for crippled people. They could swagger downtown without fear of being conscripted or being drafted for corvee labor. And yet, in times of bounty, when the government was giving hand-outs, they were the first to benefit. Consideration for handicapped is much better in the USA and in Europe. When I went swimming in the States five years ago I noticed the swimming lane reserved for the handicapped.

Zhuangzi also uses the symbol of the deformed tree in his parables to make this point. He and his disciples used to walk in the mountains. There they usually found the straight, handsome trees felled and the twisted, ugly trees unharmed. If there were two water wells, one sweet and the other astringent, the former well would be exhausted first. This is the harm of the useful and the usefulness of the useless.

But even this paradox is not straightforward. One day, after crossing a tall mountain Zhuangzi and his disciples arrived at a friend’s place. The host was happy to see them, and so decided to kill one of his chickens to entertain the guests. His servant asked the host to choose between butchering the rooster which crowed in the morning or the one which did not. The host chose the one which did not. At this, Zhuangzi’s students were completely confused. They asked Zhuangzi what they should think as the uselessness of the trees enabled them to survive whilst the uselessness of the chicken got it killed. Zhuangzi responded by saying that one should remain in a state of equilibrium between usefulness and uselessness, which is of course easier said than done.

The Chinese employ Zhuangzi’s wisdom in life and can navigate between usefulness and uselessness according to circumstance. For instance, when one’s boss invites you to drink alcohol, you should drink. But when the boss does not invite you to drink alcohol, you should not. In other words, you have to have a firm grip of the proper limits.

Lao Zi lived before Zhuang Zi and exercised a profound influence on Chinese peoples’ ways of thinking. His thinking on this matter shows parallels. Lao Zi said ‘guang er bu yao’ – to be light but refrain from shining, literally that if someone is too brilliant, he or she might make it impossible for others to shut their eyes. In other words, the brilliant person makes others uncomfortable. It is as though a very pretty girl would draw the jealousy of other girls. So it is important that you try to hide your own talent and conceal your beauty.

The second implication of usefulness versus uselessness is that no man is perfect. The Confucianists want to mold us into becoming the perfect person – the sage. Actually, it is very tiring to be a sage. I believe that there are two circumstances where the world can produce such a ‘perfect person’. One is in death. In all the commemorations in China one gives the most praise to the deceased. The second circumstance is through hypocrisy. We used to believe that Chinese leaders were perfect people. But clearly they were not.

So, there is no perfect person. In this case, why don’t we bravely and truthfully recognize our own deformity? For Zhuangzi, as long as you have a body you are deformed. For instance, if you are a man then you can not be a woman. Even someone as tall as Yao Ming (the basket ball player) might for example envy my height, especially if he found himself enclosed in a small space. So as long as we have a shape and structure we are doomed to be deformed.

Furthermore, due to the fact that we have a form or structure we have to live in a group. And we have to consider the other forms and structures. For example, when I sit on this chair others cannot sit on the same chair. In other words, we face conflict with other forms and structure. So we should constantly control, restrain, and keep ourselves within bounds.

All around us there are many hunchbacks: when we restrain ourselves we are in some sense hunching our backs. When I meet someone in a higher position to me, I should bow. In ancient China, a person was expected to kowtow. Zhuangzi probably understood this action as a deformation of the body. Indeed, I consider it a necessary deformity. So, we should all be brave enough to accept the fact that we are deformed. Sometimes deformity is a technique for survival. For instance, hiding your talents is a deformity or a technique. But this is negative and passive, whereas Zhuangzi incorporates deformity in the way of life that he seeks.

Zhuangzi calls the kind of person he likes as ‘zhen ren’ – a true person. The most important thing is to be authentic, which is loveable. So the ‘true person’ is one with defects. Which is more loveable, a perfect person or a person with blemishes? Obviously, the one with blemishes is loveable because of his defects. Too much perfection will make us stay at a respectful distance from that person.

So this is Zhuangzi, that’s the way he is telling us to live. There is much more to him, and if you are interested you could get a book on him. I believe you will fall in love with him, but of course in his way of loving.

 

Questions and Answers

Question: With Zhuangzi is there any particular purpose or aim? 
Answer: I believe that Zhuangzi has no sense of mission or responsibility. Maybe he feels that he has too little power to change things. The only thing he can do is to change his way of thinking. He realizes that when he changes his way of thinking, the world changes as well. The philosophy of Zhuangzi is a biography of how he lived, telling us how and why he lived his life. But he does not force others to lead lives like his. He encourages us to lead our own individual life.

Question: I came across a quotation which criticized Zhuangzi for raising peoples’ interests in a philosophical goal but not providing the means to reach it. The quotation compares Zhuangzi to a travel brochure that offers lovely destinations with no information on getting to them. From what Professor Wang has said he seems to disagree fundamentally with that quotation, as he says that Zhuangzi is prescriptive in offering his own life as an example of the path to follow. When I read Zhuangzi it seems to me that he is saying that it is a good thing to be a sage and that the secret to it is to lose the concept of oneself, to lose the ego.

It seems to me that the best place to go for practical guidance in how to attain is Zen Buddhism for three reasons. The first reason is that Zen suggests attaining happiness by losing the concept of oneself just like the narrative of Zhuangzi. Secondly, that Zen Buddhism is strongly influenced by Zhuangzi. The third reason is that Zen Buddhism has practical methods for achieving this, such as meditation. The professor might disagree with the quotation, but what does he think of the relationship between Zen Buddhism and Zhuangzi?

Answer: This is a very professional question. I am impressed that among the audience there are people who know Zen Buddhism so well. I’d like to start with the world as understood by Zhuangzi. For him our world is constantly changing with no law or pattern. In this sense, he is a pessimist in his world view. Being a pessimist means he does not think there is a fixed goal.

Confucianists believe that the world has a pattern, that it is definite with eternal things and values. So they are very optimistic and believe that humans have natures that are full of benevolence, righteousness, etiquette and wisdom. For Zhuangzi none of these exist. Human beings exist within unknown processes which we can not grasp. We are born unwittingly and will die in circumstances we cannot control. If there is an objective to life, it is to adapt ourselves to this constant change. We can call Zhuangzi a wonderer but one who has no objective. He compares life to a small boat without sail in the ocean. It is carried by the water.

This doesn’t mean that Zhuangzi does not care about anything. He has made a very clear distinction about his own life, which he says is composed of two parts, one of the body and the other the mind. Our body is completely controlled by destiny. We are born good-looking or not, tall or short; none of these can be determined by ourselves. However, Zhuangzi does care about his mind. In the book, Zhuangzi describes beautiful places, girls and butterflies, in short, lots of scenes which exist only in his mind. He doesn’t care what he sees because even the ugliest things, such as garbage, are transformed by him into something beautiful. It is because he has a special mind.

There are many similarities between Zen Buddhism and Zhuangzi. I don’t think that Zhuangzi would admire the idea of sitting in meditation that Zen promotes. He would find this too forced. When a person needs to sit still in order to quiet his mind, he is in a lower state of attainment. One should be able to attain the tranquility of mind even when one is talking, drinking wine, attending a concert or in a very noisy place.

Question: In what way is Zhuangzi the continuation of Laozi? In what way is he innovating?

Answer: The Chinese usually mention the two together. A corresponding pair is to mention Confucius and Mencius together. However the relations between the former are very different from those between the latter. The transmission of ideas amongst the Confucianists pass from master to disciple. That is why Confucius is the teacher of all teachers. But for Zhuangzi, no one can be the teacher of another, not even if that person is Laozi. That is why we can not detect adulation of Laozi in the book of Zhuangzi. They are actually very different.

Laozi cares mostly about the art of rulership. But Zhuangzi is not at all interested in it and finds Laozi vulgar. It is very difficult to say what Zhuangzi has inherited or innovated from Laozi. They do share some ideas but with totally different attitudes. The best is not to put Zhuangzi with anyone else, as all the others are mortals and Zhuangzi is a celestial being.

Thank you.

The transcript of the lecture was translated into English by Prof. I-Chuan Wu.