One of the main reasons why I keep coming back to the Zhuangzi again and again is because it, somehow, always has something new to say about whatever stage of life I’m in. Each time I pick it up I am, of course, different than I was before. Those new experiences inform my re-reading, so I notice different things, maybe things I overlooked previously, or reinterpret favorite passages in surprising ways. The Zhuangzi itself encourages this, and it speaks to the depth and richness of the work that it continues to offer new things even after multiple readings.
After my son was born a few years ago I, like I often do when I’m in a new and unfamiliar situation, reached for the Zhuangzi once again. And I’ve kept reaching for it year after year. I was surprised by how much my interpretations of imporant passages had changed after becoming a parent, and by how much there was in it that seemed, dare I say, relevant.
I told myself that the one thing I would never do as a new parent is look up parenting advice on the internet. So the last thing I want to do now is give advice to anyone. What I do want to do, however, is to share how being a parent (of a toddler especially) has changed how I read one particular passage in the Zhuangzi, and to invite you to read your experiences into old philosophical and religious texts—you might be surprised at what they say.
A favorite vignette of mine concerns a monkey trainer and his monkeys. It’s short enough that I can share the whole story, from Brook Ziporyn’s translation:
“But to labor your spirit trying to make all things one, without realizing that it is all the same [whether you do so or not], is called “Three in the Morning.” What is this Three in the Morning? Once a monkey trainer was distributing chestnuts. He said, ‘I’ll give you three in the morning and four in the evening.’ The monkeys were furious. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you four in the morning and three in the evening.’ The monkeys were delighted. This change brought them no loss either in name or in fact, but in one case it brought anger and in another delight. He just went along with the ‘thisness,’ relying on the rightness of the present ‘this.’ Thus the Sage uses various rights and wrongs to harmonize with others, and yet remains at rest in the middle of Heaven the Potter’s Wheel. This is called Walking Two Roads.”
There are a lot of technical terms packed into this brief episode, but for now I want to start with the end of story, with the image of the potter’s wheel.
It wasn’t uncommon for Chinese philosophers of the period to use artisanal tools as metaphors for how one should live and rule (remember, a lot of these writings were explicitly political). In the Mozi, for example:
“My having the will of Heaven can be compared to a wheelwright having a compass and a carpenter having a square. Wheelwrights and carpenters hold on to their compasses and squares in order to measure whether things in the world are square and round. They say: ‘Whatever hits the mark is ‘‘this/right;’’ whatever does not hit the mark is ‘‘not-this/wrong.’’’ Nowadays, the writings of the scholar-officials of the world cannot be carried along in their entirety, and their pronouncements cannot be recorded completely. Though they convince the feudal lords above as well as the various intellectuals below, they are far removed from what is benevolent and righteous. How do I know this? I get hold of the clear standard of the world in measuring them.”
This seems to be a fairly straightforward use of tools-as-metaphor to describe how to tell whether something or someone is right or wrong. How do I know if my actions, or the actions of a feudal lord or intellectual, are right? if the course that I’m on (the dao that I’m following) is the appropriate one for the situation? I measure my actions and their actions against some standard to help determine its rightness or wrongness, in the same way that a carpenter uses a square and other tools to determine if a piece of lumber is square, plumb, and true.
In the case of Mozi, he is appealing to the will of Heaven1 as the standard against which he is measuring actions. As Wim de Reu says in his article, “How to Throw a Pot,”
“Compass and square conceptualize the will of Heaven as a clear standard that measures whether opinions or pronouncements hit the mark and are therefore ‘this/right’, or whether they instead fail to hit the mark and are therefore ‘not-this/wrong’.”
This makes some intuitive sense to me. If I want to know if what I’m doing is the right thing, then I measure that action against some standard that helps me determine if I’m doing things correctly. When I want to measure something for a recipe, I need to trust that the tool I’m using has been calibrated correctly, and that a teaspoon is really a teaspoon. But who decides how much a teaspoon actually is? Who sets the standard?
Dig a little deeper and it doesn’t take long to realize that not only are the standards against which we measure oftentimes arbitrary, but even what we consider to be right or wrong actions in a given situation are, as Zhuangzi puts it, peculiarly unfixed.
I’ve never made pottery or used a potter’s wheel before, but luckily de Reu describes the process and gives some hints as to why Zhuangzi might have preferred using it as a metaphor:
“In throwing a pot, the main challenge is to find the centre of the wheel. Anyone who is new at pot throwing will experience difficulties in trying to position the clay. An apprentice at first uses force and attempts to control the clay. Yet, despite his efforts, he will be unsuccessful. The clay will be swayed off the table, and the surroundings, including the apprentice himself, will get stained. It is only after sustained practice that the potter is able to feel the clay and find the centre. In doing so, he leans over the wheel and aligns himself with the axis. Only when the potter has reached this higher level of expertise can he start to model the clay.”
Finding and keeping the center are common Daoist themes, emphasized in both the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, and this description touches on why. The constantly spinning and shifting clay on the wheel can be disorienting: what was left is now right, what was up is now down. Fixed standards begin to lose their meaning when the thing they are measuring is constantly moving and changing. Hence, finding the center is crucial—it’s the one place on the wheel that isn’t always changing position. This is why Zhuangzi says the sage rests in the center of the potter’s wheel: it’s the best position from which to respond to ever-changing circumstances.
Resting in the middle gives one the best chance to respond to each situation appropriately, with flexibility. This necessarily means that in some situations you might respond this way, and in others you might respond that way. It might even mean that you respond differently to the same situation, or change your response midway through. This is, in part, what “going along with the ‘thisness,’ relying on the rightness of the present ‘this,’” means in the story. If the potter’s wheel is our example, and the constant motion of the wheel prevents us from using fixed standards to orient ourselves and determine the correct course, then the content of the “right” way will also change in each situation.
Ziporyn points out that the Guanzi, a very early text that blends Daoist, Legalist, and Confucian philosophies, says:
“To give commands without understanding fixed principles is like trying to establish [the directions] of sunrise and sunset while standing on a turning potter’s wheel.”
But Zhuangzi deliberately uses the same metaphor to make the opposite point: we are already and always standing on a turning potter’s wheel, there are no fixed principles or standards, rest in the center instead. Ziporyn again:
This is the deliberate irony of the use of the verb ‘rest’ in this context, which is connected to the idea of the unmoving center of the spinning wheel, the stability in the midst of this instability without ever eliminating it, instead enabling it: Walking Two Roads at once.
I have yet to find a better description of caring for a toddler than this.
Which brings me to the other, perhaps more important reason for resting in the center and going along with whatever the current “right” is: harmonizing with others. The keeper wants to feed them this way, but this way upsets the monkeys. They want to be fed that way, not this way. The keeper could have said, “no, this way is the right way. Here are all the reasons why this way is correct. It’s this way or no way.” But he didn’t. The keeper was going along with things to maintain harmony, not to maintain a preconceived notion of “rightness.”
De Reu describes it this way:
“[T]he sage responds to a situation in a flexible way and is thereby able to exert a harmonizing influence. His non-confrontational approach allows him to manage the situation and to avoid harm. What emerges is a model of communication used to resolve conflict, both in society at large and in cases where one finds oneself in treacherous political waters.”
I would also argue that the monkey keeper in this situation was modelling not just how to respond harmoniously to an emotionally charged situation, but how to respond with care. Part of what makes going along with whatever the present “this” is so difficult is that it requires both the ability to let go of our preferences and fixed standards of right and wrong, and to acknowledge and respect the preferences fixed standards of others.
In The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy, Curie Virág writes about this episode in the Zhuangzi:
“The wisdom of the monkey trainer lay not in the fact that he recognized no difference in whether one distributed three nuts in the morning and four in the afternoon, or vice versa. It was, rather, that he understood the importance of recognizing the inclinations of the monkeys, and the fact that their seemingly irrational preferences needed to be attended to. The trainer may have thought that there was substantively no difference between distributing three nuts in the morning and four in the afternoon or vice versa, but he understood that, for the moneys, there was a difference and that he should therefore act in accordance with their inclinations. He could pursue the right course of action because he was able to transcend his own inclinations as to how things ought to be and put himself in the position of the monkeys.”
Yielding, not interfering, being deferential—these and similar stances are valued above all else (below all else, perhaps) for Daoists. But interpreting these approaches as necessitating an unaffected and emotionally distant disposition is wrong, I think. What it does entail is a willingness to respect and take seriously the preferences, inclinations, and feelings of others, to appreciate that they really do feel that way, and that if creating and maintaining harmony are truly important, we must let go of our fixed notions of what “the right” course of action is in any given situation.
Before becoming a parent, this passage seemed much less threatening. “How hard could going along with the monkeys be?” I said, foolishly. But I understand now that the difficulty, for me at least, was not so much in the going along with what the monkeys want. After all, three in the morning or four in the morning doesn’t make that much of a difference. The difficulty for me was understanding that the monkeys really were upset, that they really do have their own inclinations and preferences, their own sense of how things should be—and that is a good thing. Because, like I’ve written before, the Zhuangzi is concerned with moving skillfully through life without damaging or hindering the process of generating daos. There isn’t one true Dao, but the never-ending emergence of new daos, new ways of being in the world. Wouldn’t imposing my sense of how things should be on the monkeys be antithetical to this? Do I really want to labor my spirit by forcing my will on the monkeys?
notes
- Ziporyn notes that in order to better understand what Zhuangzi means by “Heaven,” it’s helpful to use other words interchangeably for it, like “Natural,” “Undesigned,” “Spontaneous,” or “Skylike.”