Ep. 341: Guest Karyn Lai on Daoism in the Zhuangzi

0:00 Mark: Please consider purchasing the new Partially Examined Life book. A breezy read, an excellent memento, the ideal gift. Learn more at partiallyexaminedlife.com book. You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, a podcast by some guys who are at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. Our question for episode 341 is something like what's a chill Taoist way of dealing with yourself and your social responsibilities? We read books 4, 5 and 19 of the Zhuangzi from perhaps the late 4th century BCE using Brook Ziporyn's 2020 translation. More information on the book and the podcast, please see partiallyexaminelife.com this is Mark Linsenmayer, whose intrinsic virtuosity has yet to take tangible form in Madison, Wisconsin.

0:52 Seth: This is Seth Paskin, jolted as if kicked in Austin, Texas.

0:57 Dylan: This is Dylan Casey, still working on the not knowing, the know how of not knowing or something like that.

1:03 Mark: And our returning guest, Theo. Introduce yourself.

1:06 Theo: This is Theo trying to catch the cicadas in Fukuoka, Japan.

1:10 Mark: And our special guest just for this hour, please introduce yourself.

1:13 Seth: Karen.

1:14 Karyn: I'm live from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and we

1:19 Mark: are thrilled to have you on at this time. I talked to you last year when we were doing our whole run of Chinese philosophy. It was a little too difficult to schedule something at that point, but the Chuang Tzu is the text you chose. We are going to maybe have you on to talk about the Dao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu is my favorite Eastern philosophy texts. I'm glad we're coming back to this now a year later to coincide with the beginning of Peter Adamson's History of Chinese Philosophy that you are co authoring.

1:45 Karyn: That's right.

1:46 Dylan: Yeah.

1:46 Karyn: It's been a fun ride. Yeah, fun ride with Peter, we're into the sixth episode that's coming up. We planning to have around 80 episodes. These are 20 minute episodes so it's thorough. And when Peter says history of philosophy without any gaps, that's serious stuff. Looking forward to this discussion today on the Zhuangzi. It's my favorite text too, and we

2:11 Mark: did this book a long time ago on this podcast. In our first year as episode 12, we picked different chapters this time to focus on. So you know, we have a lot of sort of recent information about the Dao from the Daodejing episodes if people want to listen to that. This whole Wu Wei. Can we accomplish things without putting forth specific effort to accomplish things? Can we somehow use our natural tendencies to accomplish things as opposed to A Confucian. Pick your dao, pick your path and use it as a recipe for life. Rewrite your whole. The operating system of your brain. No, instead, the brain has its own things that it wants to do. Let us let it do that. Let it be. Let these things happen.

2:53 Theo: Yeah.

2:53 Mark: Do you want to give us, Karyn, some sort of introductory words before we get into this?

2:57 Karyn: Maybe I'll say a little bit about why I picked these three chapters. Specifically. Chapter four is interesting because it really is a chapter about political life. There's so much there about detachment generally, but there we have Confucius in conversation. That's one of the main stories. Confucius in conversation with one of his followers, in fact, his favorite follower, Yen Hui. And Yen Hui says, I'm going to go in to serve this evil tyrant. And Confucius says, what? You crazy? So a lot of it, what comes out in chapter four is really, do you want to be involved in political life?

Do you want to get sullied? And so that's extremely interesting because, as you know, in these early texts, a lot of the ones that we have from this ancient period, and I'm Talking about the 5th to the 2nd century BCE very much, of course, have come to us from people in privileged lives. You don't expect farmers to be writing these texts. So these texts are written by people in the political sphere. And here is a text to say, hang on there, we need to give a second thought. And then chapter five is an interesting text because it features people who are deformed and disabled.

And I use this in quote marks because Zhuang Tzu does not hold back on describing the disabilities. He says, you know, toeless. And he calls people the discombobulated with the swollen neck. And Zhuangzi specifically wants to do this because he wants to say, this is how you normal people view these people who are disabled. So he's kind of confronting the issue right there. You call these people disabled? Well, let's see what they can do. So at every turn, both in chapters four and five, in fact, right through the Zhuangzi, there's an overturning challenge to the prevailing ways and methods of living and the ideals.

And in chapter 19, we see a wonderful array of people who do things marvelously well. And here is Zhuangzi, I believe, saying, look, we just live life. We take it as is. We don't need to tick the boxes, and we do well and we excel and people marvel.

5:24 Mark: Can we kind of go around and get some other sort of opening statements of Theo, do you Want to give

5:29 Theo: us some opening thoughts on Karyn's remark? I was thinking and I don't think I really got to the bottom of Confucius in the Zhuangzi who isn't unsympathetic. Well, sometimes he's the pure whipping boy of Taoist wisdom, you know, looks due for Confucian at other times he learns through dialogue. So I think we picked some heavy Confucius chapters in the Zhuangzi. Are you meant to like him? Like is he learning he's on the way. I was thinking he's like the readership the readership who really is actually reading Zhuangzi but he's probably going to go into government anyway.

6:02 Karyn: Yes, and you're absolutely right to raise that question because Confucius has different roles in right through the Zhuangzi but he does feature quite a lot, doesn't he in these chapters we picked. He sometimes is a stooge. He completely misses the point. Sometimes he's great. He speaks Daoist wisdom so it varies quite a lot and it is confusing for the first time reader because it's hard to understand. Well, Confucius is speaking here often Confucius is summing up certain insights, particularly in chapter 19, a couple of the stories Confucius sums up the insights and then he then teaches his disciples.

And Confucius is also often the teacher sometimes in this passage I believe with Confucius as the teacher, he doesn't get it. He's still teaching. Notice that the figures in chapter 19 don't have teachers so it moves around a bit. It's variable. When Confucius talks about fasting the mind heart there he is, the Zhuangzi's spokesperson.

7:18 Dylan: Yeah, I found myself feeling like such a neophyte when I was reading this in a way that I haven't in a while partly because I just am not immersed in the Zhuangzi and even is still getting my feet on a lot of the just the way of writing in these different cases. I felt most like the first time I read the Republic where I had all these characters who seemed to be saying things from specific directions and that it likely mattered. And later and as I went through I learned that it did matter but I don't have any grasp of it right. So when I was reading through I was like what you just said Karyn about well, you know, it's worth paying attention to how Confucius is speaking in the different sections and noting that how he is disagreeing or not disagreeing and then all the different characters or the different speakers, they're weird names.

And then I'm looking forward to talking a little bit to untangle some of the juxtaposition in each of them because it's hard. This is the first time I've read this to disentangle the challenge from the Zhuangzi teaching.

8:31 Mark: Yeah. Is the position of the author getting lost.

8:33 Dylan: My best analogy is a little bit like trying to understand the difference between what's Plato saying, what's Socrates saying, what's Callicles saying, what's Thrasymachus saying. All those different characters, each of them having a different point of view in the Republic, at least to complete my analogy on what the nature of justice is.

8:50 Mark: Seth, any opening thoughts before we get into it?

8:53 Seth: Well, certainly had the same experience as Dylan, you know, and I. I found myself assuming that reference to kings or individuals in stories or parables, whatever they might be, were used as illustrative and trying to focus on thematic things that to me surfaced throughout. So in fact I read 1 through 7 and then 19. And I've been trying to read carefully, or at least as carefully as I'm capable of. So I certainly have a series of recurring tropes which I'll probably pull in to the broader conversation and look for some contextualization on. But I was genuinely struck, literally jolted, as if kicked on at least two occasions in the book, which perhaps we'll speak about, perhaps we won't.

But there are. I'll just give you a quick example here. There's a point where one of the characters is talking about a stone and how useless the stone is and says, because it's useless, nobody messes with it and it just lives out its natural life forever without. And it's like, wouldn't it be great to be that useless sort of something to that effect? Or being useful isn't always what it's cracked up to be, because if you're useful, you might get chopped down and used for wood or something like that. And I just thought to myself, I don't know I've ever seen in all of the 15 years we've been doing this, somebody put that idea put forth in that way, that there's a utility to having no utility with respect to.

And then putting it in the context of the way or the course or whatever. So I definitely had a few of those moments while reading this and I'm really struck by it and I'm pleased and involved and moved in a way that I haven't been by any of the other so called Eastern texts that we've read. I'm not sure if it's just where I am in life or it's this particular text or what have you, but I'm having a lot of fun.

10:52 Mark: Maybe just before we start with chapter four. And I want to get. Get into this to orient, because these. Right, it's Confucius giving people advice. And so is that Chuang tzu's advice? Chapter 17. I just picked this because there was a video that was introducing Chuang Tzu, and it used this particular paragraph. If we're talking about in chapter four, should I go advise some king somewhere? What is the attitude? How can I keep them from killing me as a baseline? Zhuangzi himself. This is a story about him in chapter 17, which means it was probably written.

The intro says there are probably multiple authors here, so we sort of are focusing on the inner chapters, this one through seven or so. But this is a later one. Let me just read it. It's one paragraph. This is page 141. Chuang Tzu was once fishing beside the Pu river when two emissaries brought him a message from the king of Chu. The king would like to trouble you with the control of his realm. Zhuangzi, holding fast to his fishing pole without so much as turning his head, said, I've heard there is a sacred turtle in Chu already dead for 3,000 years, which the king keeps in a bamboo chest high in his shrine.

Do you think this turtle would prefer to be dead and having his carcass exalted or alive and dragging his tail through the mud? The emissary said, alive and dragging his tail through the mud. Zhuangzi said, away with you. Then I too will drag my tail through the mud. So in other words, just based on everything else we know about Daoism, don't teach anybody. But yet that would be a very short chapter, even though it might sort of start like that. Don't go off and teach this tyrant. But they're sort of. Well, I'm going to go off, so what advice do you have to me?

So, you know. But I just wanted to give that as a starting point. Yeah, Karyn, you want to start us on chapter four proper?

12:24 Karyn: I'll pick up from where you left off in Seth's point about the useless tree as well. Yen Hui comes to Confucius, the opening story, and he says, look, I want to take on this mission, which is to work with this tyrant of Wei. And you would have expected, being a follower of Confucius, that he would have given you a Big pat on the back and sent you off. Because this is, after all, what the Confucians do, right? They cultivate themselves, they're full of learning. And this has to do with use we as human beings. What higher calling could there be but to serve our country?

And so they trained specifically to serve with rulers. They give rulers advice. And this is a particular difficult one that Yen Hui has courageously picked. And they're Confucius in the Zhuangzi say, oh, no, don't you, because you're going to get killed. And it's fascinating how in that story, Yen Hui, then Confucius nobody. Yen Hui says, hey, hold your horses. I've got plans. You know I've got plans. And Confucius says, well, you haven't even met the guy. How can you have plans? These plans are bound to fail. And Yen Hui comes across as someone who has thought through precisely what is needed.

He said, outwardly, I'm flexible, but inwardly I'm going to stand firm to my principles. Those would be the Confucian principles. And Confucius says, nah, you're going to get killed. What you need to do is to fast, just empty your heart, mind. And this fasting has to do with various mentions of fasting and forgetting in some of the chapters we've read and even in passages in chapter five where they're not mentioned. This idea of forgetting means forgetting what we've been trained in, forgetting how we've been cultivated. Jumping to the useless tree symbolism.

At one point, this tree appeared to the carpenter, who basically pooh poohed the tree as being ugly. It's got knots and bolts. Who wants it? Nobody could use it. Lousy wood. The tree comes to the carpenter and the tree says, look, what do you expect me to be? How do you want me to be? Do you want me to be cultivated like those pretty little trees? And that made me think of bonsai. Although bonsai, you know, it's is a kind of Japanese tradition, but there is also in the Chinese tradition, this idea of cultivating trees, making them, using wires to make them make branches go the way they want to be.

And the tree says to the carpenter, well, what do you want me to be? A useful fruit tree. And then you all just pick my fruit. So that goes to the theme of uselessness as well. And Confucius says, look fast your mind hard. Which means, don't worry about all this cultivation, about the right ways to go, about decorum, about ritual practices. If you were to go without any expectations and deal with the situation and act responsively. So this now what we're got to now preempts what's going on in chapter 19, I believe, which has to do with all these marvellous skillful people acting responsively.

16:07 Theo: I'd connect that specifically with like the bell stand maker. So it's not just that Yue should go and, well, he should go and forget but he's forgetting his only possible learned all of the Confucian rules and regulations. Confucius still wants to be wants his disciple to be a Confucian but to be able to do that effectively he has to forget about being a Confucian. So you can read this in a Confucian way that the best way to be responsive in government is indeed to, you know, train with the standards and principles but then when you actually enter government to put them aside somehow. So like the bell stand maker in chapter 19, he knows how to make bell stands. He's obviously spent a lot of time making belt stands. Someone taught him how to make bell stands.

16:57 Seth: Theo that brings me to a question I had about the text and I'll bring in some Western philosophical analogies but there are many, many times in here where there's talking about the function of understanding and the relationship between understanding in the way or the impediment that understanding can be to a certain kind of, I don't know what the right term is enlightenment awareness. And in just what you were saying, what you pointed out is something like the difference between techne, sort of practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge in the traditional Greek sense.

Right? The know how, knowing that versus knowing how. And I don't get a strong sense that there's a pragmatic aspect to the type of understanding that's required to throw away the theoretical understanding here. And yet I do feel like it's also somehow there, it's present that being fully present and operating without purpose directionally but without purpose is somehow an experiential form of what it's something you learn by doing, I guess is the easiest way to say it like not by

18:11 Dylan: reading about it, not by figuring it out.

18:14 Seth: Trial and error. I don't know, I don't know. It's confusing, but that seems like a rich topic.

18:19 Dylan: I agree along those lines if I go to page 37, which is where the fasting of the mind is brought up and Confucius has a couple different exchanges with Yen Hui at this point and in fact it comes down to at the bottom of 37 you've learned the know how of knowing but not the know how of not knowing at first I was thinking that there's this letting go that is associated with a kind of pragmatism of getting through life successfully. And I was wondering, well, to the extent that you're being given advice or being given guidance, it's in order to do something successfully.

And so what is that thing that we're trying to do successfully? And in this section I feel like there's a kind of Confucius is pointing to, like not just something pragmatic, but actually a kind of understanding about how the world works, about being in with the world. He says at the beginning of the paragraph, I tell you truly, this way you can go roam around in his cage without feeling the pull of reputation, the pull of all the names, so he can be near this leader without being sort of corrupted by him. When you're in there with him, your squawkings will just emerge.

But when you're not, they will stop. With neither doorways nor protective walls, all the dwellings will be as one to you. So he'll be able to move around in a kind of safe way. But it also seems to be a way of being that involves him. Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe it's just trying to tell him how to be successful and not get killed, as opposed to a kind of truth about the way of being in the world.

19:58 Karyn: Certainly a little bit of that in a smaller follow on passage that basically just says you go along with whatever. And that has a big ring of pragmatism there. There is more to forgetting, I believe. And one of the big themes in the Zhuangzi is that when we get ingrained, when we get trained in ways that we're used to, just generally right and wrong, just and unjust, we work according to these norms, we guide ourselves according to these norms, we perceive the world according to these norms. And that the way then we think about our pursuits, the way we craft our lives, we think about what our ideals are and how we see other people, how we see situations, is very much looking through the tainted glasses of these values that have been handed down to us and that we ourselves live by and perpetuate.

So in some ways I think the forgetting is quite thorough. I'm not sure that one acts with, and this is in response to Theo's comment, I'm not sure that there is a sense of. Never mind that, just put it aside. But the question then is how much putting aside how much of that forgetting, how much of the ingrained not knowledge, but understanding gets closer to it? And I Think understanding gets closer to the idea of dao, what are your ways? And when you say to someone, what are your ways? We mean more than that. We mean behavior, we mean thinking.

We also mean the motivations that drive those behaviors. So it runs quite deep, and it does kind of mess around with the way we think about techne, about knowing how, knowing that and the way in English language philosophy we divide up the categories in epistemology. So I think it's quite fascinating. It's just basically the idea that if you've been trained in particular ways, that's how you guide yourself through the world. And if that's how you guide yourself through the world, you're certainly going to miss things. Hence Confucius's advice to Yen Hui.

Yen Hui is typically someone now the paradigm of someone who aims to guide himself through this Duke of Wei's world with Yen Hui's own principles and Confucius. Now you won't be looking. If you're not looking, then you're going to run into a lot of trouble.

22:40 Dylan: Karyn, I was wondering if you might comment on something which is in this translation. The translation for Wei is coarse, right? Is there something to that choice translation for that which comes with an activity to me in its translation? Whereas course, that word doesn't come with the verbiness that way has. And I was wondering about it feels more like it feels less active, honestly, than with the way.

23:10 Mark: Which course are you signing up for?

23:12 Karyn: I'm not sure why Brook Ziporyn chose course, because I would go with way, but it can also be path. I see what you mean by course, having less of the idea of agency. But a course also has the idea of no beginning and no end. Which way doesn't have. So that could be it. A course also has the suggestion of dynamism. If you think of the course of a river, for instance, twists and turns and bends and whatever it collects, whatever the river collects along the way. So maybe in that metaphysical sense, it's richer and it's more open. I think when we talk about dao in English, I see in a lot of discussions and translations that people tend to translate dao as the way. And this is what I have a lot of issues with, because I think when you read the Zhuangzi and the Daodejing or Laozi, often you get the impression that it's just a way rather than one prescribed, predetermined, fixed point.

24:30 Dylan: Yeah. There isn't a best way when you call it the way. There's a kind of optimization that doesn't seem to be the case when you read it precisely.

24:39 Karyn: And in Chinese there are no articles. So it's just in these classical texts. But when we translate into English we need to make sense of it. So we stick in the. And it's kind of dominant translation still of Dao is the way. There have been comparisons of Dao with Plato's forms, for instance. I think the way is one interpretation of Dao, but for many people it's the only interpretation of Dao. So you have to get it right. Which when you look through the Zhuangzi you think there can't just be one way of getting it right for sure.

25:19 Mark: So I think I can relate this to Chuang Tzu's use of Confucius as a character, which is. I was kind of comparing it in my mind to Islam's appropriation of Jesus. It's like, oh, Jesus is okay, he's just a prophet, he's been superseded. So here's Confucius. And Confucius is wise and has things to tell you. But you know, if you only find the follow the so called Confucian teachings, you've only gotten part way along his course. He recognizes that he should be open and learn from, you know, he's amazed by seeing, you know, the footless man who everybody flocks to and is.

And even in just giving advice in this chapter four here, what really impressed me when we were reading Confucius is that it's not just here's the rules and just always obey the rules. Once you obey the rules enough, once you habituate yourself, then you don't have to obey the rules anymore because you are in harmony with the cosmos, with Tian, with heaven. And so you could actually have a judgment call. You could be flexible in a way. So it seemed like the seeds of Taoism were right there in Confucianism. And this is what Zhuangzi is picking up on, that Confucius doesn't have to be a Confucian, he can use his own judgment which leads to not only being more responsive to individual situations and individual people, but maybe throwing away the whole doctrine in some circumstances of advice.

26:37 Seth: I did not come here to destroy the law, Mark. I came here to fulfill the law.

26:42 Mark: I don't know, is that too optimistic, Karyn? Or do you think that. No, no, he's making fun of Confucius. He's not trying to appropriate Confucian. And even Confucius thinks that the Taoist way is the way.

26:53 Karyn: Sometimes we get that. But I think sometimes Confucius is Really stooge. And when we get to some of the stories in chapter 19, so there isn't one picture. There certainly are points where Confucius really is the spokesperson for Zhuangzi. Shall we move on to chapter five? There's a story about this man called Toeless. And Confucius has a lot of contempt for him because Toeless, it's not clear whether he's Toeless or Footless. Anyway, his name is Toeless. And talking about these names because, Dylan, you brought them up, Brook deliberately wants to translate these names to give them what he thinks is the, you know, the literal translation.

So it gives them the shock value. And I think that's right. I go along with that because Zhuang Tzu deliberately does that. So this is Toeless and he heels his way. So he's walking on his heels over to see Confucius and you get the impression that, well, there's some amount of sincerity in this fellow. The reason why he's Toeless is he's an ex criminal. And so he comes to Confucius seeking advice. And Confucius says, ah, you've come too late. So Confucius is full of contempt for him. And here Mark is the embodiment, Confucius, the embodiment of Confucian virtues.

You don't fit. And this is the sort of thing that Zhuangzi is on about. When you have specific values, the more ingrained you are, the more difficult it is to shed those and to see the world in that light. And yes, I agree with you that Confucianism has a huge amount of flexibility. Once you get to the idea of flexibility. And it's an enviable sort of flexibility because Confucius does without thinking, he's responsive. And that's all great. However, the way Confucius is acting with flexibility has to do with the fact that he's no longer thinking about what should I do now?

You're the people who are rule bound or principle driven in a way, they are embodied in a way. It's nice to, I think, think about the Confucius figure as someone who embodies Confucian virtue. So he's not thinking about it, he's just living it. And in this picture he lives it. And then, you know, here is a complete mismatch. This guy is deformed and rightly so because he's paying for his crimes. And then Toeless has the upper hand. Toeless then says, I thought you would be more magnanimous than that. I thought you would Be receiving, you know, I've come to see you.

So there's contrition, there's perhaps remorse. We're not told that. But the very fact of the actions of coming to see Confucius. And then he says, oh, well, whatever. And then he leaves and Confucius, tell me, tell me more. And then he refuses. So it's very interesting, I think he returns contempt with contempt and he says, no, I don't want to talk to you. And then later on, it's so interesting, later on he goes to speak to Lao Tan. Lao Tan, by the way, is the reputed author of Lao Tzu of the Tao Te Ching in the Zhuangzi, is undoubtedly and unambiguously a revered Taoist sage.

So you see, some people like Confucius have different roles, but Laodan is always the Taoist sage. He says, oh, this Confucius. He goes complain about Confucius. And Laodan said, well, sort of, why don't you give him a chance? And Toeless has decided, no, it just fall on deaf ears. What is interesting at the end of the passage is that it describes Confucius as being in fetters. And this almost takes us full circle, I think, when we come to talk about the idea of the norms and what one should forget. Confucius is in fetters because he's living according to the chains.

He can be responsive to an extent, but he's responsive only to the norms he has set up for himself. But he can't be truly responsive.

31:19 Seth: I think it also highlights a kind of problematic in the entire text and many of the other things we've read, just the nature of pedagogy. Who is the teacher, who is the student, and what are the expectations in that power dynamic? Because you see time and again in all the texts we've read from this tradition, students coming to teachers expecting to get a certain kind of response and getting something absolutely different than what they expected, or the masters and teachers doing things that seem totally out of character or at least disingenuous with the questions that were asked.

And I find that another interesting aspect of this, just the notion of Confucius as teacher, just thinking of Confucius as a teacher. Whereas we might also are looking at Confucius as a role model or Confucius as an advisor. He has these different personalities in the text and they inform each other, but they can also get wrapped up in other dynamics.

32:21 Theo: Yeah, I think this particular story is particularly interesting, like the teacher disciple movement, because Confucius at one point, you know, he's the teacher, you know, the Toeless has come to him. But then, you know, once he's being scolded by Toeless, Confucius says, well, now how about you teach me? So then he becomes the student. And then at the end, you think Toeless is perhaps the disciple of Lao Dan because he's got maybe gone back to report to Lao Dan. Maybe he's like a secret agent or something. But it seems like Lao Dan treats Toeless as his master, like he said he's suggesting.

Why didn't you do this? Would this have worked? You know, in the kind of way I think that, like, the disciple would talk to a master. So everyone's kind of moving into each other's shoes as far as the master and disciple relationship goes. And this is. Ties very nicely into that Confucius's perspectivism that, you know, that that's kind of what we should be doing is kind of moving into each other's shoes.

33:23 Karyn: Did you mean Zhuangzi's perspective? Is Confucius Zhuangzi's perspective?

33:28 Theo: There's no correct perspective according to Zhuangzi, but there is at least a way, maybe that he's recommending is to always be moving between perspectives, right?

33:39 Karyn: There is no correct perspective, but yet I would say there is no one correct perspective, because yet we each have our own perspective, because we can only see what we see from where we are and how we're situated. And so there isn't a correct one. Whereas all around him, the people advocating their perspectives as once for all correct. But there's another layer to this idea of teaching and the nature of the text, which is very interesting because of these texts in ancient China and because of the authorship, often by people who are involved in some way in official life, because they're the ones who would have had an education and who would have learned to write and to converse and to debate.

Many of these texts would have been written by people who had opponents and who were trying to get listening ears of those who were powerful. And so many of these texts would have been a little bit didactic, as in teaching upwards. Like the Prince, for instance. Machiavelli's the Prince, right? You're teaching upwards and you see that. In fact, in the later medical texts, for instance, where the emperor is constantly learning from the advisor. In the Mengzi Mencius, a Confucian text there, Mencius often talks to kings and he gives them advice.

So that is a sort of overturning of roles as well. In some ways, the advisors are more intellectually powerful.

35:15 Mark: This seems like the first text, at least the part we read for today, which I don't see anything indicating that the author is talking to potential leaders. He's talking to potential scholars who might advise leaders, but not to the leaders themselves, that this is not that Chuang Tzu, just like in the story of I'm not going to bother to teach leaders because they're hopeless and because I don't want to get involved in that life, that I'm not going to write this book toward, you know, that will be used as a manual for government.

35:44 Karyn: There's also something particularly curious about this book as well in the way, following on the line you made Mark, about Zhuangzi, addressing opponents rather than leaders. It's interesting that if you want to be taken seriously by stuffy old men, why would you put in funny animal stories either talking animals? Would that persuade them? So it's really, really interesting. In fact, not a few of the Zhuangzi stories have now been turned into little short children's books in Chinese. Some of them translated, but little drawing picture books.

36:27 Mark: The Not Giving Tree

36:30 Karyn: or the Frog in the. Well, that's kind of very famous now in Chinese culture. But yes. Why would a text that expects to be conversing with stuffy old men bring in all this kind of humor and expect them to be taken seriously?

36:49 Seth: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think you also have to think about during this period, what's the character of a leader and what is the expectation? And in my mind, a leader during this period is. Is a man of action. So there's probably an aspect of statesmanship. But we've talked about how there were states at war with each other where there were disputes over lands, that if you were not a man of action, if you were not bold or crafty in the ways of war and statescraft and marshaling resources. So the kind of advice that I think you would give that type of person versus the kind of advice you would give somebody who was ruling in, let's say, a much more stable geopolitical situation would be very different things.

And that's why I think you're right. This book does not feel like it's directed at the Alexander the Great type personality. And that's one way it obviously differs from Machiavelli. Now, I will say something else we read the examples used were frequently referring to kings who had lost or won based on various virtues that they did or did not possess. Mozi, Mo Tzu, uses a lot of very specific examples that are about Those types of things. That feels much more like it would be directed at that type of personality.

38:15 Mark: Right? I mean the Dao de Jing does have that aspect that it's. But it's very unhelpful as a ruling text. It's just like the fabulous leader is one that everyone will just be attracted to. And we see that in the Chuang Tzi as well, is that in chapter five, the first story is about another man. I think that, you know, the compiler just let's get all the parts about people who are missing a foot and we'll put them next to each other.

38:38 Seth: So kingly crobate.

38:40 Mark: Yes, kingly crobate. That Confucius is saying, wow, if I had a little more time, I'd be his follower myself. That he doesn't do anything, everybody just flocks to him. And there's, you know, this sort of sets up this ongoing ideal of, you know, he's a still water, so everybody can see their reflection in him. He is entirely empty of his own doctrine pushing out at, you know, like all the other scholars are, are pushing their doctrines on. But because he is so receptive, then he's able to. At least there's a. The question is there such thing as a wordless instruction, a formless way of bringing the mind to completion?

So we want this sort of completion. And I guess his example is showing us that we all have that if we don't let ourselves get, you know, so this is sort of a Rousseau thing, you know, if we don't let ourselves get poisoned by doctrines that are foreign to us. Just like trying to give the fish a fancy five course meal or something. No, no, let the fish do what the fish does. Can you characterize a little more about what this ideal is?

39:42 Karyn: It's tricky because in my view, I think there are many daos. So I think this Kingly crobait is someone who doesn't do as you say and people are just attracted to him. I think that's put up as a model to say to others, oh, look, you try so hard, you try so hard and it's all unwieldy. But here is someone who doesn't even have to try. So this sounds a little like what we know about the Tao Te Ching. The way of Wu Wei is to, you know, do without doing so you're ruling without having to impose all these standards and measures. I think overall in chapter five, it's quite interesting that there's a.

As Theo said, there's this overturning of the teacher, disciple Teacher, student. But all of chapter five is interesting in itself in that the teachers are the people who are crippled and deformed when they're the ones who have the upper hand. And so what the text is saying is that, you know, these people are deformed, but hey, look, they still have the upper hand. And I think what the Zhuangzi is offering is this trying to make sense of a bigger picture understanding of Chuang Tzu. If a text is mocking Confucius, if a text is saying, look, these standards are distracting.

In fact, they obstruct our engagement with the world because they make us see the world in only one way or in the way the values want us to see the world. I think the text is right about that, incidentally, that when we learn a set of values and when we embrace a set of values, that's how we then go on to interpret the world according to that chosen set of values. So I think the text is very wary of that. And it seems to me that it would be illogical for it then to promote its own set of values, because that would be then recommending a way that tells you how to approach the world.

If the Zhuangzi is to remain consistent, it has to keep this theme going of that open engagement with the world. And these deformed, crippled figures come up in Zhuangzi Chapter 5 as a way to show look how they can thrive. There's one with the, you know, the jar-sized goiter who is so good at what he does that people focus on what he does and they appoint him to high positions. So it's not that the Zhuangzi deplores high positions as such, but it's about people making the most of what is in their environment and excelling as best they can. And so in that regard, I think the Zhuangzi proposes many models of how one might live without prescribing any one model.

This is where chapter 19, I believe, comes in. There are so many models because if you look across these different models, and again we would say, what is a text wanting to be taken seriously by stuffy officials writing about people who are in the most modest, to say the least, modest, ordinary occupations such as cicada catching and butchering in chapter three, these are very lowly occupations. But the Zhuangzi, again there is turning the tables and saying, look, these men are doing so well.

43:31 Theo: I want to add to like the cripple and the kind of the people who have lost a leg. I think Zhuangzi or the writer might be thinking they have a certain advantage over everyone else. As far as following a way goes, I'm thinking of a quote on 46 down the bottom. Imagine how much more fearless a man who takes heaven and earth to be his own bodily organs and 10,000 things to be his guts. A man who is merely lodged for a moment in some particular limbs and trunk and head. A man who regards even his own eyes and ears as merely images perceived. It's like people who have been deformed in how we usually understand them have undergone transformation, so they kind of have a relation to their body that allows for at least the possibility of a different relation.

Whereas we assume our body, we assume we're normal. We assume these people are being shocked out of that by their fate. There's actually an advantage being formed. As far as being a daoist goes, that transformation has been cast upon you.

44:34 Seth: That's a good distinction to make there at the end, Theo, because I love this chapter and I love these examples and I love everything about this. I have pages of notes. But if you think about it, you were talking about forgetting what you've learned, forgetting customs and habits like, oh, you know, the welfare state is corrupt, right? Like, getting rid of that idea is a lot different than getting rid of the idea of having two arms is normal. Like, I lost an arm in an accident. If I can get to the place where that doesn't bother me, I am now accepting that this is just the way of things.

I've done a lot more work than if I've just given up the idea that the welfare state is corrupt. And that gets you closer to the ability, closer to, as you know, it's mentioned, staying close to the source. If you think about all of the transformations that your body can undergo and that during the course of a lifetime, if you're able to get to that point where you're just like, that's my fate. Lost an arm, that's my fate. This is the chapter where they say, and this was very impactful, but I love it, right? Life cannot be refused or detained.

You have no control over being born, and you have no control over dying. And those are the two most impactful transformations you will undergo as a human being. And focusing your energies on coming to terms with those things and understanding and accepting your fate and being in harmony with that makes a lot of sense to me.

46:06 Mark: So there are a lot of things like that that look like stoicism to me of identify what you can't control and don't try to. But there's not the sharp distinction, then identify what you can control and do, do, do, do that. Because there's a lot of. Well, what you think you can control actually is much less. You really understand. There's a deep skepticism and maybe even nihilism running through this that, well, it's sort of all the same. Anyway, the way that you could get comfortable with having lost a limb is to expand your circle of concern. So you're not identifying yourself so much with the one body, but this amor fati that, you know, you're identifying with the 10,000 things.

So when I die, it's no big deal. I mean, you know what's really important? The larger universe is going to continue on. And really just living like that in a way that is very much unlike the Stoic, that is very focused on I can control my will. Like this is, don't try to control your will.

47:02 Dylan: Yeah, but there's a kind of balancing that's going on. At the very end of five Huizi and Zhuangzi, they start talking about this characteristiclessness in human beings. And Zhuangzi gets asked, can a human being really be without characteristic human inclinations? And I think this is going towards the idea that there isn't anything that defines what a human being is in terms of a human nature or something like that. He's trying to deny that, or Zhuangzi is. And he says the course gives him this demeanor. Heaven gives him his physical form. So the course, the way that they're going through life, is the characteristic.

He gets asked again, how can he be without the characteristic human inclinations and still be called a human being? And he ends up saying that affirming some things as right and negating others as wrong are what I call characteristic inclinations. What I call being free of them means not allowing likes and dislikes to damage you internally, instead making it your constant practice to follow along with the way. Each thing is in itself going by its spontaneous affirmations without trying to add anything to the process of generation. So it's a kind of going along with things.

I guess I'm wondering about this, about it being nihilist or in the sense of being valueless. The notion of the course or the way doesn't strike me as. It seems more like value flexible without being valueless.

48:35 Mark: Yeah, the rest of us are going to keep talking about this and add some more chapters. So, Karyn, we have, however, many more minutes here. Not too many more. Yeah, answer that. And if there's any other particular point from here you wanted to make before getting out of here. Let's hear it.

48:50 Karyn: I don't know if I have an easy answer to that. I think there's been much written on Zhuangzi as a text being offering no normative ethical guidance. However, there is also quite a lot written in the text, so it doesn't carve up morality in the typical ways that we would expect or we're used to in Anglophone philosophy. It really seems to shun normative ethics. But on the other hand, what it offers seems to be a kind of if it doesn't itself say it, it completely aligns with conceptions of freedom, for instance, and there are some papers that discuss at length the issue of spontaneity allowing of how in the political infrastructure, allowing people to be spontaneous is a recognition of agency and hence of freedom.

It is a text strikingly, when you compare. You've read quite a few ancient Chinese texts across this podcast that a lot of them are normative and this one isn't. It's not prescribing anything, but it is recommending something. And the something it recommends, apart from its kind of seemingly whimsical overturning, but I think often clever overturning of our typical expectations, it does something interesting. I see it as a text in some ways that wants to give a little bit back to the individual. Where I have difficulty then is saying how much to the individual, how much of government should there be and how much of the individual should there be?

And so it kind of seems to me maybe there are no questions. Maybe all it was trying to do is to give a little bit back to the individual. And of course, individuals is what we see across chapter 19. I'd like to, as a way of going into chapter 19, pick up this theme about the figure of Confucius. Again, there's this story of the cicada catcher, which is a low, low, lowly occupation. You catch cicadas for food. And that compared to Confucius, the occupation, the esteem that Confucius has, is worlds apart. But Confucius nevertheless is awestruck by this cicada catcher.

So he's catching cicadas with a stick. And that's how you catch cicadas. You have this very sticky adhesive at the end of the stick and you tap it on the wings and you get them. And then Confucius says, oh, what skill you have? Do you have dao? And the cicada catcher says, first of all, I practice on my stick. And this is very interesting, going back to Seth's point about the different ways in which we think about technique, because technique seems to crop up everywhere in this chapter across these different skill masters. And the cicada catcher, in saying how first he balanced how many pellets and then more and more and more, gives us the impression that he has a really clear sense of the trajectory that's required to get him to master the pole.

So he first starts with two pellets balancing on the pole and then three and then five. He seems deeply self aware. He seems to have all the knowing thats about it and more right, because he knows that he needs to have control of the pole and therefore he puts that into practice. Two pellets at the end and then three in the five because he wants to be at one with the pole. So ultimately this knowing that it's cast by the wayside, if you called him to account, yes, he can give you account, but he doesn't need it. And then so he says, you know, then he crouches and.

And the fact that there's so much knowledge going on here, I describe it as a knowing tool by observing cicada behaviors. He knows that he has to crouch, so he knows to crouch and he knows to hold his hand like a withered tree branch. And so there is a sort of a knowledge is for him, you get the impression a kind of input output system. And it's completely open, it's never finished. And these channels keep going. His attention now is on the cicada wings. Why? Because now that he's mastered the stick, he's not thinking, where do I hold the pole?

Where do I put my thumb? Where do my fingers rest? That's all in the bag. He only needs to look at cicada wings and he catches them expertly. And so I used to read this straight down the line and says, okay, these are all the amazing insights this cicada catcher has to share. And Confucius gets it and then he teaches it to his followers. About a couple of years ago I had another rethink about this story. And I was thinking, this passage is so rich, there is so much going on. Confucius has learned so much about this one person to come this personal dao this way.

The cicada catcher's weighing. And notice that the cicada catcher is hunchback too. The question arises whether he's a better cicada catcher because he's a hunchback or whether he's become hunch because he's been doing this for years. The Zhuangzi never tells us, but the Zhuangzi tells us he's a hunchback, what's the point of telling us? And the more I thought about this, the more I thought well he's a hunchback and he's got this story to tell. And Confucius appropriates his story and distills it for his followers. And what the cicada catcher has spent a whole lifetime doing and narrating to Confucius.

Confucius summarizes in a one liner and just throws it across to his disciples. And I began to think Confucius here is a stooge.

55:20 Mark: I was wondering about that because it did seem like a contradiction between what's going on in chapter four. If you're taking Confucius as saying Chuang Tzu's view using his will undividedly, the imponderable spirit in him converges and solidifies. Whereas before when he was saying hey don't go. It's really hard to have a plan and then go out in the world and do it right. I know that you might think that Confucianism says yeah here's the rules, here's the plan, go execute. But you can't do that. You have to be more responsive than that. Well yeah, the way you just put it here, the example is him being super respons, the cicada catcher being very responsive, you know not going in with a sort of a program.

But the way that Confucius is putting up is using his will undividedly. That, that yeah, that doesn't certainly doesn't capture the openness. Can you have an undivided will toward openness? That seems like too much trying to take the reins, trying to grab a hold of something in a way that you know, the willing to refer to our Eva Brann Un-Willing episode. Don't be so rough with your will. You must let things happen.

56:24 Karyn: In capturing a unique life in a one liner it mightn't be appropriate because you're full bodied people. Amongst other things kind of a critique

56:34 Theo: or of interpretation or the dangers of interpreting people's lives. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.

56:42 Mark: Well, at least his name is not hunchback Cicada catcher or something that you know, your whole life gets put in your name. Seems improper. Any final words for this hour? Hour ish. Before we get out of here?

56:55 Karyn: For the moment, yes, just a quick one that I think if you look across these examples of skill and how these men, they're all men are to be applauded for their mastery. I think they are little snippets of how one can live well. And when you say, well, what's the takeaway from the Zhuangzi? Well, definitely not to be like the cicada catcher or to be like the bell stand maker, but to be yourself. And that's the impression I get that Zhuangzi throws up many different models. The models are the Wei's, the daos rather than a singular one. So maybe that's a nice way to end off.

57:38 Dylan: Very nice.

57:38 Mark: Well, thanks so much for sharing your insight with this. Good luck with the remainder of the history without any gaps podcast. We love Peter. We love everything he does, you folks do over there.

57:48 Dylan: So glad you're enjoying, you're enjoying it and joining him.

57:51 Karyn: Yeah. Thank you so much, everyone. Nice meeting you and nice having this discussion. Bye for now.

57:57 Dylan: It's a pleasure.

57:57 Seth: Thanks, Karyn.

57:58 Theo: All right, let's see you again, Karyn.

58:01 Mark: Good night, everybody.

58:01 Seth: Good night.