True philosophy consists in relearning to look at the world.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty With the clarity of morning light he could see the unique.
Zhuangzi
Loss of self
“On the Equality of Things,” Zhuangzi’s most brilliant essay, opens with a parody of the classical Chinese scene of instruction, as it is paradigmatically exemplified in the exchanges between Confucius and his disciples. These exchanges take place in an atmosphere that is often intimate and at times full of humor (Harbsmeier 1990), but the Master (Confucius) and the dis-ciple always maintain their proper postures and their relative positions, for these are the conditions that ensure that the word of the Master can be passed on to the disciple. When it is said in the Lunyu that one should not sit on a mat that is not straight (Lunyu 10.12), then that is not just a minor point of etiquette, for proper posture and position were part of that par-ticular stylization of the self that was the very foundation for the truth of Confucian discourse. Therefore, when Zhuangzi has Master Ziqi from the south wall ! “sitting leaning on his armrest, looking up at the sky, slowly exhaling – falling apart as if he has lost the counterpart of himself,”
then this amounts to the total collapse of the conditions which made meaning-ful discourse possible in the traditional scene of instruction. The disciple, however, maintains his posture and position, he “stands in attention before the Master” and asks:
What is this!? Can the body really become like withered wood, and can the mind really become like dead ashes? The one who is leaning on the armrest now is not the one who was leaning on the armrest before.
(2/1–2)
By using the particle ju in his question “what is this!?” (hejuhu ), the disciple reveals the location of the scene of instruction, for this particle is peculiar to the areas of Qi and Lu , the heartland of Confucian learning (Wang 1988: 42). It is, then, the whole Confucian project of learning aimed at completion (cheng) that Zhuangzi ridicules.
Zhuangzi’s humorous and intimate description of the Confucian scene of instruction (even as he has it fall apart), and his generally equally tender portrayals of Confucius (even as he shows him to be crude), suggests that Zhuangzi had a certain nostalgia for early Confucian learning. Indeed, Guo Moruo (1954) thought that Zhuangzi may have been affiliated with the school of Confucius’ disciple Yan Hui, and Graham speculates that for Zhuangzi “Confucius was a father-figure whose blessing the rebellious son liked to imagine would have been granted in the end” (1981: 18). Neverthe-less, as we have seen, for Zhuangzi Confucian learning is entirely inscribed in the realm of man (ren), and therefore it neglects the experience of Heaven (tian); it aims at completion (cheng) and therefore it fails to nurture life (sheng). Because he saw these limitations in Confucian learning Zhuangzi has the traditional scene of instruction fall apart, and he transforms Master Ziqi into a mouthpiece for his own teaching. To the disciple’s question, if the Master, after he has fallen apart, is the same person as before, the Master answers:
It is sure good that you ask, Yan! Just now I lost my self. Did you know that? You may hear the pipes of man but not yet the pipes of the Earth; or you may hear the pipes of the Earth but not yet the pipes of Heaven.
(2/3–4) The pipes of man (renlai ) refer to the various forms of learning in the realm of man (ren): Confucian, Mohist, and so on. For Zhuangzi the transition from hearing the pipes of man to hearing the pipes of Earth and Heaven requires the loss of self. Zhuangzi says that the perfected person has no self ( ji ) (1/21–2), and Master Ziqi says he has lost his self (wo ).
Kuang-ming Wu points out that in the Zhuangzi the wo “quite consistently means objectifiable self,” or “the self identifiable as a particular something,”
the self as “completion-formation” (cheng), and the self that “originates division,” in particular the division between self and other (1990: 155, 185).
Master Ziqi has not only lost his self (wo), he has also lost his counterpart (ou ). “Counterpart” is Graham’s translation of ou (Mair translates “soul”;
Watson has “companion”). The word ou, written slightly differently, occurs again later in the chapter, where it is said that “when neither ‘that other’
(bi) nor ‘this here’ (shi) attains their ou, it is called the pivot of the Way”
(2/30–1). In this case clearly “counterpart” is a good rendering of ou (Mair and Watson both translate “opposites”), for “this” is the counterpart of
“that” and visa versa. Still, we can understand ou as “counterpart” in two ways: either as the counterpart, or the other (bi), of the self (the ji or the wo) – Zhuangzi says that “if there is no other, there is no self ” (2/14) – or as the inauthentic counterpart to authentic being. In the second case, the ou com-prises both the self (the ji or the wo) and its other (bi), for this dichotomy constitutes inauthentic being. Authentic being, on the other hand, has no other, for it is totally Other – like a bell that only rings when it is struck, or a hollow tree that only sounds when the wind blows through it. At any rate, whether the counterpart (ou) refers to the other of the objectified self (the ji or the wo) or to the other of authentic being, the result of the loss of the
“counterpart” remains the same. For since the objectified self is constituted by the self–other split, it follows that when you lose the other (bi) you also lose the objectified self ( ji or wo), and so the whole construct that forms the counterpart to authentic being.
The decisive point is that the counterpart (ou) is our being in so far as it is inscribed in the social and symbolic order. Wu suggests that the ou is “the [authentic] self’s counterpart that is recognizable, identifiable, and objectifi-able as ‘self’ (in one’s self-consciousness), or recognizobjectifi-able (by others) as an identity or even an object” (1990: 155). Wu adds that a name may be such an objectified counterpart to the authentic self. The name “Hui” functions exactly in this way in the dialogue where Confucius suggests to Yan Hui that he tries the exercise of “fasting of heart and mind.” After the spiritual exercise Yan Hui reports that there is no longer any “Hui,” that is to say, he no longer identifies with his objectified, nameable self (4/28 – 9). We may conclude, then, that the ou and the ji, or the wo, are overlapping terms, with the term ou having the broader scope. When Zhuangzi says that the per-fected person has no self ( ji) and no name (1/21–2), this means that the perfected person has transcended the self (the wo or the ji) as an entity constituted by its opposition to an other (bi) and inscribed in the outer (wai) realm of man (ren) as a name. The loss of this whole construct is the loss of the “counterpart” (ou).
Lacan’s distinction between ego (moi) and subject (sujet) is suggestive in explicating Zhuangzi at this point. According to Lacan (2006), the ego is formed by a process of identification in the “mirror stage,” where the infant sees its own specular image and identifies with this image, because the image is whole, whereas the infant’s own sense of its uncoordinated body is frag-mented. This primary identification with the counterpart gestalt forms the ego. For Lacan, then, the ego is not the center of the subject, it is rather an object and, furthermore, it is a product of misunderstanding (méconnaissance);
for it is by identifying with its counterpart that the subject becomes alien-ated from itself. Lacan goes as far as saying that the ego “is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it is only a privileged symptom, the human symptom par excellence, the mental illness of man”
(1991: 16). The subject (sujet), on the other hand, is the subject of the
unconscious; it is that dimension of a human being that cannot be objectified, it is “what in the development of objectivation, is outside the object” (Lacan 1991: 194). According to Lacan, psychoanalytic treatment has the aim of breaking the identification with the ego and letting the subject emerge.
Zhuangzi would agree with Lacan that the ego (the objectified self, the ji or the wo) is a kind of mental illness, and Zhuangzi has his own therapies such as the “fasting of the heart and mind” (xinzhai) and “sitting in forget-fulness” (zuowang ), which withdraw cathexis from the objectified self and so make possible the emergence of the real self, or that dimension of existence that cannot be objectified as an identifiable, nameable thing but is the spontaneous force of the Other of the realm of man (ren), namely Heaven (tian). Furthermore, we find in Zhuangzi something like Lacan’s view that the ego is formed through identification with the counterpart as total Gestalt. For the word ou, “counterpart,” can be read as shen , “body,” or
“oneself (in person),” that is to say, the personal representative of authentic being in the outer (wai) world, the part of the self that can be perceived by others (or perceived by oneself in the mirror). Zhuangzi saw in the Con-fucian’s identification with this completed form in the outside (wai) the origin of the objectified self as counterpart (the wo, the ji, or the ou), and Zhuangzi’s praise of mutilated persons and his valuation of the incomplete over the complete are aimed at undermining this identification with the whole body (shen), or the objectified self inscribed in the realm of man (ren).
When the objectified self formed through learning and self-fashioning is lost, then the pipes of the Earth (dilai ) are heard, and the true ground of human existence is revealed. Master Ziqi gives a rhapsodic description of this experience:
When the Great Clod [the Earth] exhales, it is called the wind. But this is only when nothing arises. When it arises then ten thousand hollows howl furiously – haven’t you heard their howling? The ragged crags of mountain forests, the hollows and holes of big trees a hundred span around are like noses, like mouths and ears, like basins and bowls, like mortars and pools, like puddles. There is a splashing a hissing, a sniffing and a sucking, a screeching and a moaning, a whistling and a wailing. Those ahead sing out aiee, those that follow sing out wouu. In a light breeze there is a small ensemble, in a whirlwind there is the great ensemble. When the fierce gale has died down, then all the hollows are empty. – Have you not seen them swaying and creaking?
(2/4–8) This music of the Earth is precisely what is neglected in the music and rituals of the Confucians: the jade bells and drums in the “ensemble of great completions” Mencius ascribes to Confucius. According to Zhuangzi,
authentic existence is not such an outer completion (cheng) but pure coming-into-being, or life (sheng) itself. In Zhuangzi the sounds of nature – a nature with noses, mouths, and ears, for the wind blows equally through the human form – the howling and wailing, the aiee and the wouu, are the only way authentic being can articulate itself without objectifying itself in a self ( ji) or counterpart (ou). For as the wind blows nothing is formed and completed, the discourse has no identifiable, nameable content and the subject remains empty and hollow.
And yet, from this void emerges a fuller sense of being: when the self that is only itself by virtue of the other falls away, a sense of autonomy and uniqueness dawns. After the pipes of the Earth we hear the pipes of Heaven (tianlai ), which “blow at all things in different ways” and so “make each be itself,” each phenomenon “chooses for itself,” there is no “agitator”
(2/8–9). Or, as Mair translates: “the myriad sounds produced by the blowing of the wind are different, yet all it does is elicit the natural propensities of the hollows themselves. What need is there for something else to stimulate them?” (1994: 12). Paradoxically, authentic being is wholly a response to the Other (the wind) and at the same time its own unique articulation. This is the uniqueness (du) engendered by Heaven. “When Heaven engenders some-thing,” says Zhuangzi, “it makes it unique (du)” (3/13). This uniqueness of each phenomenon generated by Heaven (tian) dawns only after all things are equalized (qi) by the pipes of the Earth. When man-made distinctions, the pipes of man, are equalized by the pipes of the Earth, then the world is seen afresh: beyond difference each thing shines forth in its uniqueness as it is engendered by Heaven.
Emotions are like music from empty spaces
When the self is well lost the spontaneous self-articulation of the world appears, and we realize that our moods and emotions arise and change spontaneously just like self-emerging life (sheng) itself. Zhuangzi writes:
Pleasure and anger, sorrow and happiness, worries and sighs, vacilla-tion, sluggishness, frivolity, indulgence – they are like music that comes from empty spaces, like mushrooms that form from vapor.
Day and night they alternate before us, and nobody knows from where they sprout.
(2/13–14) The self-emergence of moods and emotions is part of the pure appearance (chu) of phenomena engendered by Heaven. Indeed, our very self (wo or ji) that depends for its existence on the other (bi) is part of the same unfolding of phenomena and ultimately caused by the True Ruler (zhenjun ), another name for Heaven or the Way. Zhuangzi says:
If there is no other (bi), there is no self (wo); if there is no self there is no other to be had. Surely this is quite true, and yet I do not know what acts as a cause for it [the self constituted as self/other].
It seems that there is a True Ruler but we just do not see its trace.
That it can set [the self] in motion is certain, but we do not see its form. It has reality (qing) but no form (xing).
(2/14–16) What is this reality (qing ) that Zhuangzi ascribes to the True Ruler? In general usage, says Graham, the qing of something “is what confronts us as fact, irrespective of how we name, describe, or try to alter or disguise it”
(1989: 99). In this sense qing means “reality” or “the facts” in contrast to names or reputation (ming) (which may not correspond to the facts); qing is the true or genuine (zhen ) in contrast to false or artificial (wei ). As a technical term, says Graham, qing refers to the essential definition of a thing, and Graham suggest that in technical usage qing is equivalent to
“essence,” although, unlike in Aristotle, the essence defined “relates to naming, not to being” (1990b: 63).
Zhuangzi sometimes use the word qing in the technical sense to indicate the essence of something. For instance, Zhuangzi says that it is better to be without the essence (qing) of a human being, or without that which essen-tially defines human beings, namely evaluative judgments and likes and dislikes (5/55–60). But when Zhuangzi uses qing to describe Heaven, the Way, and the True Ruler, then he uses the word in what Graham calls its general usage and not in the technical sense. For Zhuangzi, Heaven, the Way, and the True Ruler have no definable essence, but the experience of being engend-ered by Heaven and the Way is precisely the experience of reality (qing) that
“confronts us as a fact” regardless of how we name or describe it. For Zhuangzi the experience of the reality (qing) of the Way is genuine and true (zhen) precisely because it is not a nameable form (xing) (6/29).
If we recall the moment Zhuangzi and Hui Shi wander across the Hao river, then we may say that this moment has reality (qing). For here the world appears to Zhuangzi as it is in itself, that is to say, as pure self-emerging appearance. As explained above, Zhuangzi’s impromptu words do not describe this reality, they announce and acknowledge it. With his skeptical remarks, Hui Shi tries to describe the situation, but like the Mohist logi-cians, whose test of knowledge (zhi) is to see if one can describe (mao ) the thing after one has passed beyond (guo ) the facticity of the appearance of the thing – “having passed the thing one is able to describe it” (Graham 1978: 267) – Hui Shi passes over the reality (qing) of the situation in order to describe it.
The reality (qing) of the moment of wandering above the Hao river is characterized by its facticity, but it also has emotional content. The emo-tion associated with the experience of the real (qing), the fact that we are
engendered by Heaven, is not desire ( yu) but heavenly joy (tianle). This joy may be called an objective emotion as opposed to the subjective emotions, the desires ( yu), which draw us away precisely from the real (qing). The Zhuangzi advises that we neither indulge in nor repress our desires, likes, and dislikes (24/2–3), but let them unfold naturally like music. In this way the egoistic emotions of man (ren) will be transformed into the joy of being engendered by Heaven.
Techniques of inner training
Zhuangzi’s essay “On the Equality of Things” does not present us with a theory of equalizing (qi), it is rather itself, as discourse, a spiritual exercise in equalizing things. Meditating on death Zhuangzi says,
How do I know that to find pleasure in life is not a delusion? How do I know that when we abhor death we are not like those who lost their way when young and do not know how to return home? Pretty Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When the state of Jin first got her, her tears wet her dress. But when she came to the palace, shared the king’s bed, and ate the meats of grain-fed animals, then she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret that they ever prayed for life?
(2/79–81) This may seem a hard teaching, perhaps too hard, even for those who accept it as wisdom, and Zhuangzi may seem to be overly pessimistic. But the passage does not simply express Zhuangzi’s state of mind or his philo-sophy of life. It shows, rather, Zhuangzi engaged in spiritual exercise that aims at recapturing the heavenly joy that is lost as we cling to our human life and live only by resisting death.
In a celebrated passage Zhuangzi dreams that he is a butterfly, and when he wakes up, he does not know if he is Zhuangzi dreaming he is a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming it is Zhuangzi (2/94–6). A little earlier in the same essay Zhuangzi has an equally magnificent meditation on the dream-like quality of life.
Who banquets in a dream weeps in the morning; who weeps in a dream goes hunting at dawn. At the moment we dream, we do not know it is a dream. In the midst of a dream we may even interpret a dream. Only after we wake up do we know it is a dream. And only after the great awakening do we know that this is a great dream. Yet fools think they are awake and self-assured assume they know: that’s a ruler, that’s a shepherd. How secure they are!
(2/81–3)
These passages on dreams do not address epistemological questions of relativism and the difference between dream and reality. Robert Allinson’s philosophical analysis (1989) of Zhuangzi in terms of various notions of relativism, even as he tries to clarify the transformative impact of Zhuangzi’s text, misses the much simpler but decisive point of the dream passages.
The dream passages are spiritual exercises designed to release us from our attachment to the world of our own making where we confidently
The dream passages are spiritual exercises designed to release us from our attachment to the world of our own making where we confidently