The story of Cook Ding in the Zhuangzi has been on my mind lately, especially as it pertains to questions of how to guide my action and discern principles to guide that action. First, a summary of the story.
Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for King Hui of Liang. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Jingshou Chorus of the ancient sage-kings.
“Ah, this is marvelous!” said King Hui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”
Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now—now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup (天理 tianli), strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.
“However, whenever I come to a clustered tangle, realizing that it is difficult to do anything about it, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until—flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.
“Excellent!” said King Hui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ding and learned how to nourish life!”
from Chapter 3 of the Zhuangzi (a mix of the Watson and Ziporyn translations)
There are two parts of this story that stick out to me. First, the cook is clear that, despite being praised for his skill—from a king no less—what is important isn’t his ability to expertly butcher an ox but going along with the natural patterns (天理 tianli) and following things as they are. This is how the cook follows the Way and nourishes life. It’s also important to note that he is clearly taking not just action, but strenuous action. No where in this story is the Chinese character for non-doing (無為 wuwei) used. So it seems there is some connection between following the natural patterns (an active process) and nourishing life. More on this later.
Second, there is an irony to this story that, to my knowledge, no one has commented on. The title of this chapter, translated by Brook Ziporyn as The Primacy of Nourishing Life, by Burton Watson as The Secret of Caring for Life, and by Angus Graham as What Matters in the Nurture of Life, all suggest that the contents of the chapter will have something to do with maintaining life in some way. Yet the first anecdote is about butchering an ox! Indeed, the words of the king seem to emphasize the irony, because just as the cook finishes his description about his process of butchering, the king proclaims that he has, “learned how to nourish life!”
Considering that the Zhuangzi is filled with irony and paradox, it might make some sense to interpret the story not as extolling the virtue of skillful activity, but as a commentary on the ways that such skillful activities can cut life short. Viewed from the perspective of the cook, it might very well be a story about skillfully following the dao; viewed from the perspective of the ox, however, the story seems to suggest something else. As is often the case with the Zhuangzi, multiple interpretations are possible simultaneously, and being able to move freely between them is essential.
A tentative answer to the question of how to guide my actions, as opposed to pursuing non-action, might be found in the way the cook and the ox followed the natural patterns (tianli) and followed along with things as they are, to nourish life.
Heavenly patterns
Something that isn’t immediately obvious in the Cook Ding story, but is obvious in the rest of the Inner Chapters, is the tension between what is often translated as the human and the Heavenly. The character for Heaven, 天 (tian), shows up once in this story as part of the binomial tianli (天理). Even though tian is commonly translated as Heaven, or the Heavenly, that can be a bit misleading.
To Zhuangzi, tian broadly refers to nature and the natural—the four seasons, the birth, growth, decay, and death of things, their wondrous transformations, their plural and unique natures, each creature and thing with its own predilections, suited to different environments, ways of life, and so on. In this regard, human beings hold no special place. They are not subject to any moral decree from tian, and the universe is not human-centered.
Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians by Kim-chong Chong
Heaven as a translation of tian should not carry connotations of a divine, judgmental entity or being, or their abode.
The other half of the binomial, li, refers to the “lines in the grain in a thing (in this case, the marbled lines in the flesh of the ox) along which it is most easily cut.” You could also think about it as the grain in wood, or “the pattern of lines on skin.” (quotes from Ziporyn) Put these two together and you get tianli: natural patterns, Heavenly configuration, Heavenly structure, etc. Tianli is a unique phrase in Chinese literature, used for the first time ever in this passage, which indicates to me that we should pay special attention to it.
The tension between tian (heaven/nature) and the human is never really resolved but is brought up again and again throughout the Inner Chapters. Zhuangzi is never clear about which is preferred—that which is done by man or that which is done by heaven/nature. In fact, it isn’t even clear how to distinguish what things are human things and what things are heavenly/natural things. At the beginning of chatper 6 he says, “To understand what is done by Heaven, and also to understand what is to be done by the human, that is to reach the utmost.” But, as is typical of Zhuangzi, he immediately deconstructs the statement and muddies the water: “how could I know whether what I call the Heavenly is not really the human? How could I know whether what I call the human is not really the Heavenly?”
Despite the general distinction between tian and the human, in the Inner Chapters Zhuangzi states that what constitutes tian and the human in not something self-evident. Thus, the contingencies of life—including events that are seemingly the result of human action—are not within human control and can be attributed to tian.
Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians by Kim-chong Chong
So, perhaps, when reflecting on the story of Cook Ding from both the perspective of heaven/nature and the human we can see some pattern that bridges the gap between tian and the human. Perhaps the tianli is what harmonizes the heavenly/natural and the human.
Harmonizing Heaven
Viewed from the point of view of the cook, the story shows how going beyond skill and following along with things as they are, being guided by spirit and not mental processes or sense perceptions, he was able to follow the natural/heavenly pattern.
Through years of practice, Cook Ding has come to have an intuitive feel of his object—being able to ‘connect with his spirit’ instead of looking with his eyes… The notion of ‘spirit’ here connotes the spontaneous ability to work with the object such that both the process and the result are inadequately described as simply human action. Nor can they be attributed to tian alone.
Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians by Kim-chong Chong
The result of following the natural pattern: life was nourished. Through action in accordance with some natural pattern the cook was able to nourish life. But what exactly does “nourish life” mean in this context? One answer could be, as mentioned above, that the natural transformations of things, through birth, growth, life, decay, and death, was permitted to unfold without interference and in harmony with the natural/heavenly patterns of life. The cook nourished life because he was an agent in the transformation of things, taking action by participating in the patterns of nature.
But the ox is an important actor in this story too. Because while the heavenly/natural patterns in the story refer both to the pattern of muscle and sinew in flesh of the ox and to the way in which the cook butchered, isn’t it also possible that it refers to the natural patterns of death nourishing life? The ox was literally providing nourishment through its body, and thus just as much an agent in the patterns of nature as the cook. I can imagine Zhuangzi waxing poetic about the virtue of the ox who accepts both life and death as a gift, not resisting death and not preferring life.
The Genuine-Humans of old understood nothing about delighting in life or abhorring death. They emerged without delight, sank back in without resistance. Whooshing in they came and whooshing out they went, nothing more. They neither forgot where they came from nor inquired into where they would go. Receiving it, they delighted in it. Forgetting all about it, they gave it back. This is what it means not to use the mind to fend off the Course (dao), not to use the human to try to help out the Heavenly. Such is what I’d call being human yet genuine, genuine yet human: the Genuine-Human.
Zhuangzi, chapter 6, Ziporyn Translation
Perhaps the ox that Cook Ding butchers is the Genuine-Ox, going along with the Course and not interfering with the Heavenly/natural, whooshing out without resistance. The harmonious music created by the movements of the cook’s knife required both the cook and the ox to participate in the heavenly pattern of things, harmonizing the human, the heavenly, and the bovine.
Concerning my original question, about how to discern principles to guide my action, the Cook Ding story offers two ways to find an answer. First, from the perspective of the cook: following along with the natural patterns of things as they are is one avenue to nourishing life. This is an active process but not a mental or cognitive one. Second, from the perspective of the ox: nourishing life is a participatory act, one that involves multiple agents as opposed to objects. All actors in the story are agents fully participating in the transformation of things according to natural patterns. Viewing this story from just the perspective of the cook reduces the ox to an object and treats it as a tool that the cook uses on his path to an enlightened existence. As Chong said, every creature has its own way of existing and, “human beings hold no special place.” Any guiding principles for action that privilege the human over the heavenly/natural will diminish life. Nourishing life is an active process involving multiple subjects acting in harmony with natural patterns.