MEDITATIONS: ZHUANGZI, CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Heaven’s COurse

My critiques of the prior chapter, “Heaven and Earth,” seem to have presaged to some degree the blending of Taoist and Confucian ideas that we see here in chapter thirteen, “Heaven’s Course.” Though a strong case can be made that this section’s true author was probably influenced by principles outside the normal bounds of the Taoist sphere, I believe it is within the spirit of the Tao to allow for even seemingly contradictory ideas to play about the field of our consideration. After all, to assume a contradiction is present just because one seems to be there is to assume one’s own correctness before actually experiencing that which is. Furthermore, such an assumption is predicated on a deeper, axiomatic presupposition—that of non-contradiction which, while necessary for coherent thought, is itself in contradiction with the ineffable, objective universe as it is (recall chapter two in which we discovered the chaotic, contradictory nature of fundamental reality). Therefore, to overcome this conundrum, we will become like the Way itself—empty:

This emptiness and stillness, this placidity and flavorlessness, this silence and quiescence, this non-doing is the even level of heaven and earth, the full realization of the Course and its intrinsic powers. Thus emperors, kings, and sages all find their rest there. Being at rest, they empty, and once emptied the actual comes to fill them. To be filled with the actual in this way is to take one’s place in relationship to all things (Zhuangzi 109)

To be still and empty means to silence the mind of its biases, desires, and presumptions; it means to become vacuous and therefore open as to be capable of seeing the world, others, and oneself as they actually are. This is the first step in being able to embrace reality for what it is and to love ourselves and our existence for what we are. It is the eastern Way to the path of Stoicism—to a path beyond Stoicism toward Amor Fati. It is what the Zhuangzi calls Heaven’s Course.

Where elsewhere I have discussed living, “in accord with the source of the Tao,” I have been discussing just this: “To clearly understand the intrinsic powers of Heaven and Earth is what is called the great root and the great source. This is to harmonize with heaven. . . . Harmonizing with Heaven produces the music, the joy, of Heaven” (Zhuangzi 110).

And what is music and harmony if not human beings’ most direct reference to the thing in itself?

Thus it is said, if you have come to know the music and the joy of heaven, your life is just heaven’s own activity, and your death is just the transformation of all things. When you are still, you share the intrinsic powers of the Yin; when you move, you share the undulations of the Yang. Thus one who knows the music and joys of heaven is free of any resentment of Heaven, of any criticism of humans, of any bondage by things, of any punishment from ghosts. (Zhuangzi 110)

From this we arrive at the teleology of Heaven’s Course—the Stoic (or even Nietzschean Hyper-Stoic Amor Fati) radical affirmation of the conditions of beings itself. It is a transvaluation of imperfection and perfection. It is the adoption of an attitude of affection toward the human animal. And it is the release of the Spirit of Revenge—the letting-go of vengeful feelings against “God,” “Society,” and “Nature,” despite the injustice, inequity, and unfairness intrinsic to life and to being itself.

It is at this juncture the chapter enters into a Confucian defense of social strata and hierarchy:

. . . when those above are non-doing and those below are non-doing as well, those below exert the same intrinsic powers as those above. If those below exert the intrinsic powers of those above, they cannot be their subjects. And if those below engage in doing, but those above also engage in doing, those above share in the same course as those below, and if they are sharing in the same course as those below, they cannot be their lords. So those above must be non-doing, served by what the world offers, while those below must engage in doing, being of service to the world. (Zhuangzi 111)

This is a far departure from the Rousseauian pre-historical utopia described in the early Outer Chapters. Instead, what we have here is an affirmation of the necessity of institutional social hierarchies. It is a return to “Wandering Far and Unfettered.” Remember the great gap between Peng and the scoldquail, the vast difference between the high and the low. They are so far apart, that neither can understand one another, and what to one is good is to the other poison. It is the very dialectical relationship between the noble and the vulgar as described by Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals.

There are those whose acculturation and instincts are simultaneously well-developed and in accord with the nature of reality, so much so that they are able to bear acknowledging their true selves, thereby enabling them to course correct when in error. This places them on the Great Course itself.

Likewise, there are those who, of fault both theirs and not their own, are not capable of self-course-correcting. To them, such an arduous process of self-reflection and adaption seems insane. It makes no sense to them to expose themselves to the quantity and intensity of pain necessary for self-transformation. It is as a consequence of this disposition that they themselves fall astray from the Great Course unless discipline and virtue are modeled for them—and at times imposed upon them, though this latter situation is doomed to stultification, senility, and corruption if left to continue—a Confucian idea, that the ideal father should model right-conduct and the cultivation of character so that his children learn to do the same independent of his parental dictates.

But now we are far astray from the thesis of this essay, that cultural order is also an intrinsic feature of the nature of the universe:

For heaven and earth are the most imponderably spiritual of all things, and yet they, too, have their order of precedence between exalted and lowly, first and last; how much more so must these be present in the Course of humankind! In the ancestral temple, we honor our relatives. In the royal court, we honor rank. In the villages and towns, we honor age. In working at tasks, we honor ability. These are the sequential orderings of the Great Course. To speak of the Course and yet to critique its sequential orderings is to negate the Course itself. (Zhuangzi 112)

What is being suggested here? That same suggestion which I made at this essay’s outset, that order, hierarchy, rank, constraint, limitation, inequality, inequity, and even oppression are themselves part of the Tao source of life. In other contexts, one might say, “The problem runs all the way down.” It means there is no escaping these aspects of life. No way of living, no social system, no institution of any kind can abolish laws of the objective universe—laws which apply to us just as much as they do to all of existence.

The only way out from here is life-denial. The will to be free from these constraints, “Perfect Freedom of the Will,” as I like to call it, is in reality the nihilistic desire for destruction. It is the will to nothingness, to non-being, to life’s end. It is the worship of false idols to which one sacrifices what is real for what isn’t.

And so it seems in the dialectical struggle between life-affirmation and life-denial, there is no contradiction between Confucian order and Taoist freedom. In truth, one is a subset of the other. Only when they are artificially divided, like one might divide Yang from Yin, does there seem to be conflict between them. That, too, is a sort of denial-of-what-is, an unbalancing of the world through a desire for the philosophies in oneself not to be in tension. They are, and it is up to each of us to accept this.

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