Daoist Philosophy: Ease | Zhuangzi’s The Happiness of Fish, by the team of Hans-Georg Moeller.

Texts and Translations: (please refer to ctext.org; translations adapted by me)

1, 莊子與惠子遊於濠梁之上。莊子曰：「儵魚出遊從容，是魚樂也。」惠子曰：「子非魚，安知魚之樂？」莊子曰：「子非我，安知我不知魚之樂？」惠子曰：「我非子，固不知子矣；子固非魚也，子之不知魚之樂全矣。」莊子曰：「請循其本。子曰『汝安知魚樂』云者，既已知吾知之而問我，我知之濠上也。」(《秋水》外篇）

Zhuangzi and Huizi were walking on the bridge over the Hao, when the former said, ‘These thryssas come out, and play about at their ease – that is the enjoyment of fishes.’ The other said, ‘You are not a fish; how do you know what constitutes the enjoyment of fishes?’ Zhuangzi rejoined, ‘You are not I. How do you know that I do not know what constitutes the enjoyment of fishes?’ Huizi said, ‘I am not you; and though indeed I do not fully know you, you certainly are not a fish, and (the argument) is complete against your knowing what constitutes the happiness of fishes.’ Zhuangzi replied, ‘Let us keep to your original question. You said to me, “How do you know what constitutes the enjoyment of fishes?” You knew that I knew it, and yet you put your question to me – well, I know it (from our enjoying ourselves together) over the Hao.’ (Qiu Shui)

2, 惠子謂莊子曰：「人故無情乎？」莊子曰：「然。」惠子曰：「人而無情，何以謂之人？」莊子曰：「道與之貌，天與之形，惡得不謂之人？」惠子曰：「既謂之人，惡得無情？」莊子曰：「是非吾所謂情也。吾所謂無情者，言人之不以好惡內傷其身，常因自然而不益生也。」惠子曰：「不益生，何以有其身？」莊子曰：「道與之貌，天與之形，無以好惡內傷其身。今子外乎子之神，勞乎子之精，倚樹而吟，據槁梧而瞑。天選子之形，子以堅白鳴！] (《德充符》内篇）

Huizi said to Zhuangzi, ‘Can a man indeed be without desires and passions?’ The reply was, ‘He can.’ ‘But on what grounds do you call him a man, who is thus without passions and desires?’ Zhuangzi said, ‘The Dao gives him his personal appearance; Heaven gives him his bodily form; how should we not call him a man?’ Huizi rejoined, ‘Since you call him a man, how can he be without passions and desires?’ The reply was, ‘You are misunderstanding what I mean by passions and desires. What I mean when I say that he is without these is, that this man does not by his likings and dislikings do any inward harm to his body – he always pursues his course out of his own accord, and does not (try to) increase his (store of) life.’ Huizi rejoined, ‘If there were not that increasing of (the amount) of life, how would he preserve his body?’ Zhuangzi said, ‘The Dao gives him his personal appearance; Heaven gives him his bodily form; and he does not by his likings and dislikings do any internal harm to his body. But now you, Sir, spend your spirit as if it were something external to you, and subject your vital powers to toil. You sing (your ditties), leaning against a tree; you go to sleep, grasping the stump of a rotten dry tree. Heaven selected for you the bodily form (of a man), and you babble about the words of hardness and whiteness.’ (De Chong Fu.)

3, 惠子謂莊子曰：「吾有大樹，人謂之樗。其大本擁腫而不中繩墨，其小枝卷曲而不中規矩，立之塗，匠者不顧。今子之言，大而無用，眾所同去也。」莊子曰：「子獨不見狸狌乎？卑身而伏，以候敖者；東西跳梁，不避高下；中於機辟，死於罔罟。今夫斄牛，其大若垂天之雲。此能為大矣，而不能執鼠。今子有大樹，患其無用，何不樹之於無何有之鄉，廣莫之野，彷徨乎無為其側，逍遙乎寢臥其下？不夭斤斧，物無害者，無所可用，安所困苦哉！」(《逍遙遊》內篇）

Huizi said to Zhuangzi, ‘I have a large tree, which men call the Ailantus. Its trunk swells out to a large size, but is not fit for a carpenter to apply his line to it; its smaller branches are knotted and crooked, so that the disk and square cannot be used on them. Though planted on the wayside, a builder would not turn his head to look at it. Now your words, Sir, are great, but of no use – all unite in putting themselves away from them.’ Zhuangzi replied, ‘Have you never seen a wildcat or a weasel? There it lies, crouching and low, till the wandering small creatures approaches; east and west it leaps about, avoiding neither what is high nor what is low, till it is caught in a trap, or dies in a net. Again there is the Yak, so large that it is like a cloud hanging in the sky. It is large indeed, but it cannot catch mice. You, Sir, have a large tree and are troubled because it is of no use – why do you not plant it in a tract where there is nothing else, or in a wide and barren wild? There you might saunter idly by its side, or in the enjoyment of untroubled ease sleep beneath it. Neither ratchet nor axe would shorten its existence; there would be nothing to injure it. What is there in its uselessness to cause you distress?‘ (Xiao Yao You)

4, 莊子送葬，過惠子之墓，顧謂從者曰：「郢人堊慢其鼻端若蠅翼，使匠石斲之。匠石運斤成風，聽而斲之，盡堊而鼻不傷，郢人立不失容。宋元君聞之，召匠石曰：『嘗試為寡人為之。』匠石曰：『臣則嘗能斲之。雖然，臣之質死久矣。』自夫子之死也，吾無以為質矣，吾無與言之矣。」（《徐無鬼》外篇）

As Zhuangzi was accompanying a funeral, when passing by the grave of Huizi, he looked round, and said to his attendants, ‘On the top of the nose of that man of Ying there is a (little) bit of mud like a fly’s wing. He sent for the artisan Shi to cut it away. Shi whirled his axe so as to produce a wind, which immediately carried off the mud entirely, leaving the nose uninjured, and the man of Ying standing undisturbed. The ruler Yuan of Song heard of the feat, called the artisan Shi, and said to him, “Try and do the same thing on me.” The artisan said, “Your servant has been able to trim things in that way, but the material on which I have worked has been dead for a long time.” Zhuangzi said, ‘Since the death of the Master, I have had no material to work upon. I have had no one with whom to talk.’ (Xu Wu Gui)

Commentary by Bin Song.

The quoted Passages 1 and 4 are utilized by the video to explain the joy of rambling and seemingly aimless intellectual debate just as the joy of swimming fishes. However, the encounters of Zhuangzi and Huizi are ample in the text of Zhuangzi. If we consider other encounters together with the quoted ones, the message conveyed by the text of Zhuangzi is actually quite consistent.

In the above Passage 2, Zhuangzi disapproves of Huizi, and avers that an obsession with conceptual analysis and philosophical debate on right and wrong is to exhaust the natural life given by heaven. Therefore, in order to continue the naturally happy life of human beings, Zhuangzi thinks we should give up such analytic thinking all together.

The same message is delivered by Passage 3, where Huizi insists upon the definition of “greatness” and “usefulness” of things according to how they fits for varying human needs. However, Zhuangzi thinks this way of thinking about usefulness is just relative to, and thus, limited by social conventions. If we are free from such conventions, we can genuinely find the greatest use of a seemingly useless tree, niv., that of “there is nothing to injure it” and hence, keeping the tree’s natural longevity.

Therefore, in light of the passages 2 and 3, the debate about “happiness of fishes” between Zhuangzi and Huizi is actually to highlight, from the perspective of Zhuangzi, the limitedness of the analytical approach of Huizi’s thought. What Zhuangzi means is that analytical rigor, such as the one that features Huizi’s thought, cannot grasp the wholeness of the Dao, and hence, cannot let humans affectively being united with it. Instead, only if we give up our analytic thought, stop debating about right or wrong, and furthermore, aimlessly wander without being constrained by social conventions, we can achieve the ideal Daoist state of joy and the good life.

Seen from this perspective, the so-called intellectual friendship eulogized in Passage 4 is more about expressing Zhuangzi’s own feeling towards the ample intellectual exchanges between him and Huizi. Huizi tries to construct theories or discourses to argue positively about some endpoint. However, each of such constructions will be addressed by Zhuangzi for the purpose of deconstruction, and, hence, for disclosing the unique Daoist way of life of “sauntering idly by the side of a useless tree.” However, whether Huizi understands intellectual activities also as such would remain a question, and whether Zhuangzi’s such understanding can remain accommodating to Huizi is also worth asking.

Hence, my comment towards such a thought of Zhuangzi will be consistent with my previous one: I admit that union with nature, such as the contemplation over swimming fishes, is a great source of joy. However, if the joy is beyond human language to express, it is definitely not contrary to human endeavors which take such a try. In other words, the non-rationality of the mystical feeling or intuition towards the union with Dao is not contrary to rationality. In a certain way of life, it can even include the pursuit of rationality. That’s when human language is taken as a fallible, perfectible, yet indispensable tool to describe and integrate every piece of life experience into a growing and harmonizing whole.

Also, I have to remind that continual deconstruction is itself a claim to make, a stance to hold, and hence, a potential orthodox to defend. Therefore, when Zhuangzi advocates such a continually deconstructive, Daoist way of life, it is still a way of life, which has been argued and debated by Zhuangzi in the way of apparently non-debate, and non-argument. Understood as such, the wandering joy of intellectual activities beside a useless tree is factually based upon a specific understanding of what intellectual activities are, and in light of the above discussion, I doubt whether Zhuangzi ever thinks of alternative ways of understanding intellectual activities. In other words, if Zhuangzi knows the joy of fishes from his guts, does Zhuangzi really knows the joy of Huizi?