MEDITATIONS: ZHUANGZI, CHAPTER FIVE PART TWO

FRAGMENTATIONS BETOKENING FULL VIRTUOSITY, PART II

In part one, meditating on “Fragmentations Betokening Full Virtuosity,” we considered the relationships among the concepts of “fragmentation,” “wholeness,” and “virtue.” Put in short here, Zhuangzi used enlightened cripples as an allegory for becoming virtuous by becoming whole, and becoming whole by fitting together—i.e. thinking, living, and acting in accord—with the Tao source of life. And all this is done by affirming the fragmented condition of one’s own existence. How things are is how they ought to be, however tragic. Virtue is not the ability to reshape the world, but the ability to reshape the self to better fit objective reality.

With the previous meditation’s lesson in mind, let us listen in on a verbal sparring match between Zhuangzi himself and his logician rival, Huizi:

Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Can a human being really be without the characteristic human inclinations?”

Zhuangzi said, “Yes.”

“But without the characteristic human inclinations, how can he be called a human being?”

“A course gives him the demeanor, Heaven gives him this physical form, so why shouldn’t he be called a human being?”

“Since you call him a human being, how can he be without the characteristic human inclinations?”

Zhuangzi said, “Affirming some things as right and negating others as wrong are what I call the characteristic inclinations. What I call being free of them means not allowing like and dislikes to damage you internally, instead making it your constant practice to follow along with the way each thing is of itself, going by its spontaneous affirmations, without trying to add anything to the process of generation.”

Huizi said, “If someone doesn’t add to the process of generation, how can he even continue to exist as a person?”

Zhuangzi said, “His course gives him a certain demeanor, Heaven gives him a certain physical form, and he doesn’t damage himself internally with likes and dislikes. Now you, on the other hand, treat your spirit like a stranger and labor your vitality, whether reciting your disputations under the tress or nodding off across your dried-wood desk. Heaven dispatched this physical form of yours, and here you are using it to crow about ‘hardness’ and ‘whiteness’!” (Zhuangzi 50-51)

Now, what are these two even talking about? It is a strange conversation, one that is difficult to follow because one participant, Huizi, is speaking past his debate partner and therefore is tangled up by his own conscious understanding. From the logician’s perspective, this conversation is about resolving an apparent contradiction: he’s questioning whether it is even possible for a human being to live in such a life-affirming way as is described in Taoism. For you see, human beings have likes and dislikes, desires and aversions. So, that being the case, how can one simply affirm when, really, he is averse to the circumstances?

Zhuangzi’s response questions the very root presuppositions about how a human being is defined. He agrees that a person is molded by a combination of experiential and natural factors—nature, nurture, and circumstance—but suggests that it does not follow that someone would be inhuman if he were not caused psychological injury because of his likes and dislikes. Such a person would merely be withholding projection onto that which already is. Put another way:—sometimes eating food that tastes bad can be kind of fun, too. What Zhuangzi is sayings is that pleasure and pain, likes and dislikes, are things determined by our biology and our upbringing, but that our value judgements are things determined ahead of time by our attitude. Now, changing one’s own attitude may require diligent practice, but it is certainly within the realm of human potential.

Huizi cannot understand, and the reason is that he is operating under the fallacy of a Frozen Abstraction. The logician is trapped in his preconceptions of what constitutes human beings. It is a form of arrogance which prevents further learning, something akin to presupposing one’s conceptions of ideal forms is correct ahead of time and then reasoning on top of that. No matter how logical one is, if he starts from a false premise, his conclusions are no better than guessing—than random chance. That is the meaning of Zhuangzi’s criticism at the end, “and here you are using it to crow about ‘hardness’ and ‘whiteness’!” Here, “hardness” and “whiteness” are abstractions to which hard or white things conform. Zhuangzi is telling Huizi—by proxy, us—that thinking this way misses the whole point. If the purpose of life is to live meaningfully (and how could it be another way?), then the man who accomplishes this through transforming himself through a change in his attitudes is living a more purposeful, more meaningful, more harmonious life. He is the virtuoso here, regardless of anyone’s theories or abstractions, especially since their definitions of how the world and people are seem to be out of accord with manifest reality.

In sum, Zhuangzi might have said to Huizi, “It is your thoughts that are wrong, friend, not the things in themselves.” It is a useful lesson and reminder that our assumptions and attitudes about life are the true source of our problems. Our maps and models of the world are not the genuine article. They are merely a means of navigating one’s Path, and they ought to change and adapt as that Path curves and bends.

Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi; The Complete Writings, translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2020