Autumn Waters

In this seventeenth chapter of the Zhuangzi, we enter into a Socratic dialectic between the River God and Ruo of the Northern Sea. Their conversation is an excellent sparring match: the former represents something much like our modern, enlightened, scientific skeptic; the latter represents something like a Taoist Socrates who deftly demonstrates the false presumptions in his opponent’s questions and criticisms.

The conversation begins with the River God’s newly elevated consciousness:

The time of the autumn waters had come, and all the streams were pouring into the Yellow River. The expanse of its unobstructed flow was so great that a horse on the other bank could not be distinguished from a cow. The River God was overjoyed, delighting in his own powers, believing all the world’s beauty now to be encompassed within himself. (Zhuangzi 134)

What is being described here is the initial experience of expanding one’s consciousness. That is to say, it is the excitement and pride in becoming aware of aspects of the self, or of others, which were previously unknown and undetectable. The is the ascending of the World Tree, the great climb before the precipitous fall:

Flowing eastward, he arrived at the Northern Sea. Casting his gaze toward the east, he saw no end to the waters. It was then that his face began twisting and turning, a whirlpool of features, in his attempt to take the sea in his sights.

He then addressed Ruo of the Northern Sea with a sigh: “There is a saying in the outlands: ‘He who hears the Course a mere hundred times believes no one can compare with him.’ This describes me perfectly. When I first heard that there are those who belittle the erudition of Confucius and the righteousness of Bo Yi, I didn’t believe it. But now I have seen your vastness with my own eyes. If I had never come here to your gate, I might have become a laughingstock to the masters of the Great Purview!” (134)

Now the fall has come. Increasing one’s consciousness necessarily means making oneself more self-conscious. This is the source of the River God’s contorted facial expression. He is embarrassed and perhaps ashamed of his arrogance now that he has been made aware of his own ignorance—his own limitations, even after expanding beyond his prior borders. Even though one may be a specialist and master of is trade, there is always infinitely more which he does not know and is incapable of.

Ruo is well aware of this, and he also knows that it is not the River God’s fault—that there is no need for him to feel ashamed or embarrassed:

“You cannot discuss the sea with a well turtle, for he is limited in space. You cannot discuss ice and snow with a summer insect, for he is fixed in his own time. And you cannot discuss the Course with a nook-and-corner scholar, for he is bound by his doctrines. Now that you have emerged from your dusty banks and had a look at the great ocean, you finally realize how hideous you are! Only now can you be spoken to about the Great Coherence.” (134-5)

Not only should the River God not feel ashamed, he—like us—must recognize that his self-consciousness, his self-awareness and insight, are the necessary first steps. In Jungian terms, he has begun to peer into his own shadow, his own vast, black ocean under which hides all of his primordial and undesired features—including that he holds many more false presuppositions about himself and the world.

Ruo continues:

“There is no body of water in the world larger than the ocean. . . . Its superiority to all the streams and rivers is beyond calculation, but I have never for this reason thought much of myself. For if I compare myself to all the beings taking shape between heaven and earth and receiving vital energy from the yin and yang, I see that my position between heaven and earth is like that of a small stone or a tiny weed on a vast mountain.” (135)

In an attempt to ascertain the proper measure of things—i.e. the proper hierarchical rank ordering of the greater and the lesser—the River God asks:

“Then I should consider heaven and earth large, and the tip of an autumn hair small—is that right?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “Not at all. For there is no end to the comparative measuring of things, no stop to the changing times, no constancy to the ways things can be divided up, no fixity to their ends and beginnings. Thus when a person of great wisdom contemplates both the far and the near, he does not find what is small to be paltry or what is great to be much, for he knows that comparative measurings are endless.” (135)

We are cast back to the “Equalizing Assessment of Things”. Every this is also a that, and every that is also a this. All things bring into being their contradiction, or rather, a this isn’t this unless there is a that which exists in its opposition. Therefore, what constitutes this or that, subject or object, is dependent on the relative position from which one stands. We happen to stand from a human perspective, but other standpoints exist which dwarf our human limitations. Some are relevant to us, others less, others not—the point is that there is no absolute measurement of a relative value. There are only measurements which are more or less useful relative to values—Maps of Meaning, to borrow Jordan B. Peterson’s phrase.

In response to this idea, the River God questions:

“From within thing or without, then, where is the standard that can divide the more from the less valuable, the great from the small?”

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “From the point of view of the Course, no being is more valuable than any other. But from the point of view of itself, each being is worth more and all the others are worth less. And from the point of view of convention, a thing’s value is not determined by itself. . . .”

The River God said, “But then what should I do? What should I not do? How shall I decide what to accept, what to pursue, what to renounce?” (136-8)

This is perhaps the most profound portion of the dialectic. The River God has keenly identified that applying the equalizing assessment from the standpoint of the Course dissolves all conscious value hierarchies. Moreover, it even dissolves the measure by which one determines which point he stands on and moves from—if that is confusing, think of it this way: we have value systems which we use to make decisions, but at a deeper level, we have a meta value system to determine which value system we ought to consider valid. Both of these have just been cast into the chaotic sea in the case of the River God.

We’ve now entered ancient Chinese post-modernism; and the River God poses a problem-question that must be resolved: if reality itself is determined in part by value structures, and value structures are by their nature relative to the particular beings’ and their view points, then by what objective measure can one decide on any single course of action? After all, that would require deciding on a value structure, but to pick one system over another paradoxically requires a system to decide.

Ruo of the Northern Sea said, “Taking the view of the Course: what could be worthy, what could be worthless? The question points to their reciprocal overflowings, back and forth. Not restricting your will to any of them, you limp the great stagger of the Course. . . . Not unifying your conduct along the path of any of them, you go along uneven and varied with the Course. . . . This is called the methodless, the directionless, the locationless. . . . The becoming of things is like a galloping horse, transforming with each movement, altering at each moment. What should you do? What should you not do? No matter what, you will be spontaneously transforming!” (138)

And so we conclude with the typical Taoist solution, another variant of wuwei, of action-through-inaction, or, more accurately described as uncontrived, authentic, and instinctive action. That’s what Ruo means when he says that we don’t have to decide on any of the above. From the point of view of the transcendent universe—the Great Course—our categorizations and distinctions are all arbitrary. To commit to them is to follow our own conscious notions, to confuse our projections onto reality for reality itself. Better, Ruo suggests, that we take whatever standpoint allows us to transform and adapt to the winding, staggering path of the Course. For the Tao doesn’t care if that seems contradictory to us. To it, to reality itself, that which enables us to become who we could be and to fit into our places in the world is what it is.

Ruo is telling the River God, telling us by proxy, that this whole conversation of “should” is itself the mistake. There is that which is in accord with the nature of the self and the universe (which that self is also a part of), and there is everything else which falls out of accord with nature—which is the same as saying “out of accord with reality.”

In the end, it is a simple message: don’t worry about “should” and “ought,” but be what you can’t help but become.

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