The Book of Chuang Tzu (Penguin)

encompasses the approach of Chuang Tzu to official status and power. He rejects anything which elevates one aspect of life over another. To him, all are equal, and he brings this out in various ways, such as the stories of Robber Chih. For example, at the end of chapter 8 he tells of Po Yi, a former king, who abdicated in favour of his brother and later died of starvation rather than serve an unjust ruler. For this he was held up by Confucians and others as a model of righteousness. Robber Chih, an invented figure, is used by Chuang Tzu at various places through the book as an example of utter greed, cruelty and ruthlessness. Yet in this text Chuang Tzu puts the two men side by side:

Po Yi died for the sake of fame at the bottom of Shou Yang mountain, Robber Chih died for gain on top of the Eastern Heights. These two both died in different ways but the fact is, they both shortened their lives and destroyed their innate natures. Yet we are expected to approve of Po Yi and disapprove of Robber Chih – strange, isn’t it?

The term ‘innate nature’ is a key one in Chuang Tzu. ‘Hsing’, as it is pronounced phonetically, is used throughout the text to indicate that which is naturally the way a given species or part of creation either simply is in its givenness, or how it reacts to life. In contrast to this innate nature, this hsing, which I sometimes have put as true nature, Chuang Tzu presents the artifices and ways of ‘civilization’ as contrary and destructive to the innate nature. Thus at the start of chapter 9 we have:

Horses have hooves so that they can grip on frost and snow, and hair so that they can withstand the wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, they buck and gallop, for this is the innate nature of horses. Even if they had great towers and magnificent halls, they would not be interested in them. However, when Po Lo [a famous trainer of horses] came on the scene, he said, ‘I know how to train horses.’ He branded them, cut their hair and their hooves, put halters on their heads, bridled them, hobbled them and shut them in stables. Out of ten horses at least two or three die…

The potter said, ‘I know how to use clay, how to mould it into rounds like the compass and into squares as though I had used a T-square.’ The carpenter said, ‘I know how to use wood: to make it bend, I use the template; to make it straight, I use the plumb line.’ However, is it really the innate nature of clay and wood to be moulded by compass and T-square, template and plumb line? It is true, nevertheless, that generation after generation has said, ‘Po Lo is good at controlling horses, and indeed the potter and carpenter are good with clay and wood.’ And the same nonsense is spouted by those who rule the world.

From that point on in chapter 9, Chuang Tzu launches into one of his characteristic attacks on the way in which the people’s true innate nature has been lost and broken. He pictures a perfect world when all were equal and none had any sense of being greater or lesser. They just followed their innate nature. He then depicts the fall from this age of primal, innate, natural living:

Then the perfect sage comes, going on about benevolence, straining for self-righteousness, and suddenly everyone begins to have doubts… If the pure essence had not been so cut about, how could they have otherwise ended up with sacrificial bowls? If the raw jade was not broken apart, how could the symbols of power be made? If the Tao and Te – Way and Virtue – had not been ignored, how could benevolence and righteousness have been preferred? If innate nature had not been left behind, how could rituals and music have been invented?… The abuse of the true elements to make artefacts was the crime of the craftsman. The abuse of the Tao and Te – Way and Virtue – to make benevolence and righteousness, this was the error of the sage.

Chuang Tzu sees all attempts to impose ‘civilization’ upon the innate nature of the world, and especially on the people, as a terrible mistake which has distorted and abused the natural world – the world of the Tao, the flow of nature. And so he stands firmly opposed to all that the Confucians stood for – order, control and power hierarchies. This is why the Book of Chuang Tzu was always ignored or despised by Confucians and why it, along with other such ‘Taoist’ classics, was never formally counted as being amongst the Classics of Academia in Imperial China. This man is a subversive, and he knows it! The Chuang Tzu is a radical text of rejection and mockery aimed at the pretensions of human knowledge and powers.

This rejection of the constructions of meaning which we place upon the world and which we then assume to be ‘natural’ is central to Chuang Tzu as it was to Lieh Tzu as well. They are perhaps the first deconstructionists. Let me give you an example from Lieh Tzu. In chapter 8 of Lieh Tzu we are introduced to a gentleman by the name of Mr Tien. He is about to set off on a long journey so invites his friends and relatives to come for a farewell banquet. As the dishes of fish and goose are brought in, Mr Tien looks benignly on them and says, ‘How kind Heaven is to humanity. It provides the five grains and nourishes the fish and birds for us to enjoy and use.’

In response to this quaint piece of anthropocentrism, everyone nods in agreement, except for a twelve-year-old boy, the son of Mr Pao. He steps forward and says,

‘My Lord is wrong! All life is born in the same