CHAPTER VI.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Zhuangzi and Giles, Herbert Allen
"I am not," replied Tzŭ Yü. "What have I to fear? Ere long I shall be decomposed. My left shoulder will become a cock, and I shall herald the approach of morn. My right shoulder will become a cross-bow, and I shall be able to get broiled duck. My buttocks will become wheels; and with my soul for a horse, I shall be able to ride in my own chariot. I obtained life because it was my time: I am now parting with it in accordance with the same law. Content with the natural sequence of these states, joy and sorrow touch me not. I am simply, as the ancients expressed it, hanging in the air, unable to cut myself down, bound with the trammels of material existence. But man has ever given way before God: why, then, should I be afraid?"
"What comes from God to us, returns from us to God."—Plato.
By-and-by, another of the four, named Tzŭ Lai, fell ill, and lay gasping for breath, while his family stood weeping around. The fourth friend, Tzŭ Li, went to see him. "Chut!" cried he to the wife and children; "begone! you balk his decomposition." Then, leaning against the door, he said, "Verily, God is great! I wonder what he will make of you now. I wonder whither you will be sent. Do you think he will make you into a rat's liver
The Chinese believe that a rat has no liver.
or into the shoulders of a snake?"
"A son," answered Tzŭ Lai, "must go whithersoever his parents bid him. Nature is no other than a man's parents.
The term "Nature" stands here as a rendering of Yin and Yang, the Positive and Negative Principles of Chinese cosmogony, from whose interaction the visible universe results.
If she bid me die quickly, and I demur, then I am an unfilial son. She can do me no wrong. Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the best arbiter of my death.
"Suppose that the boiling metal in a smelting-pot were to bubble up and say, 'Make of me an Excalibur;' I think the caster would reject that metal as uncanny. And if a sinner like myself were to say to God, 'Make of me a man, make of me a man;' I think he too would reject me as uncanny. The universe is the smelting-pot, and God is the caster. I shall go whithersoever I am sent, to wake unconscious of the past, as a man wakes from a dreamless sleep."
Tzŭ Sang Hu, Mêng Tzŭ Fan, and Tzŭ Ch'in Chang, were conversing together, when it was asked, "Who can be, and yet not be?
Implying the absence of all consciousness.
Who can do, and yet not do?
By virtue of inaction.
Who can mount to heaven, and roaming through the clouds, pass beyond the limits of space, oblivious of existence, for ever and ever without end?"
The three looked at each other and smiled; and as neither had any misgivings, they became friends accordingly.
Shortly afterwards Tzŭ Sang Hu died; whereupon Confucius sent Tzŭ Kung
One of his chief disciples.
to take part in the mourning. But Tzŭ Kung found that one had composed a song which the other was accompanying on the lute,
Strictly speaking, a kind of zitha, played with two hammers.
as follows:—
Ah! Wilt thou come back to us, Sang Hu?
Ah! Wilt thou come back to us, Sang Hu?
Thou hast already returned to thy God,
While we still remain here as men,—alas!
Tzŭ Kung hurried in and said, "How can you sing alongside of a corpse? Is this decorum?"
The two men looked at each other and laughed, saying, "What should this man know of decorum indeed?"
Not the outward decorum of the body, but the inward decorum of the heart.
Tzŭ Kung went back and told Confucius, asking him, "What manner of men are these? Their object is nothingness and a separation from their corporeal frames.
Various commentators give various renderings of this sentence,—mostly forced.
They can sit near a corpse and yet sing, unmoved. There is no class for such. What are they?"
"These men," replied Confucius, "travel beyond the rule of life. I travel within it. Consequently, our paths do not meet; and I was wrong in sending you to mourn. They consider themselves as one with God, recognising no distinctions between human and divine. They look on life as a huge tumour from which death sets them free. All the same they know not where they were before birth, nor where they will be after death. Though admitting different elements, they take their stand upon the unity of all things. They ignore their passions. They take no count of their ears and eyes. Backwards and forwards through all eternity, they do not admit a beginning or end. They stroll beyond the dust and dirt of mortality, to wander in the realms of inaction. How should such men trouble themselves with the conventionalities of this world, or care what people may think of them?"
"But if such is the case," said Tzŭ Kung, "why should we stick to the rule?"
"Heaven has condemned me to this," replied Confucius. "Nevertheless, you and I may perhaps escape from it."
"By what method?" asked Tzŭ Kung.
"Fishes," replied Confucius, "are born in water. Man is born in Tao. If fishes get ponds to live in, they thrive. If man gets Tao to live in, he may live his life in peace.
Without reference to the outward ceremonial of this world.
Hence the saying, 'All that a fish wants is water; all that a man wants is Tao.'"
It is of course by a literary coup de main that Confucius is here and elsewhere made to stand sponsor to the Tao of the rival school.
"May I ask," said Tzŭ Kung, "about divine men?"
"Divine men," replied Confucius, "are divine to man, but ordinary to God. Hence the saying that the meanest being in heaven would be the best on earth; and the best on earth, the meanest in heaven."