Lie Yukou

Studying the Course is and shall always be insufficient, for no amount of conscious understanding will allow our egos to dictate fate. We can only transform our attitudes about ourselves and allow our potential selves to come into being. However, saying such a thing is infinitely easier than doing so; and even if ten-thousand people read and agree, that will only make ten-thousand people no closer to correcting their attitudes than before they read anything.

What, then, can be done to transform study into practice? I believe a combination of story and practice are that to which our instincts have evolved to respond. And so in today’s Meditation, I will share a excerpt from a story from the Zhuangzi, chapter thirty-two, “Lie Yukou”:

There was once a man named Slowpoke, from the state of Zheng, who studied and recited the classics at the Qiu clan compound. After three years there, Slowpoke had become a Confucian. As the river irrigates all around for nine miles, his fecundating influence reached all the three sets of his relatives—causing his younger brother to become a Mohist. The two of them, now a Confucian and a Mohist, thenceforth were often locked in the usual debates, and their father always took the side of the Mohist. After ten years of this, Slowpoke killed himself. Then he appeared to his father saying, “It was I who caused your son to become a Mohist! Why, why have you failed to see my good deed? Why do you not visit my grave, where I have already become an autumn fruit hanging from a cypress tree?” (Zhuangzi 260)

There is much to discuss in this fragment of a story. For context, we should briefly describe Confucianism and Mohism. Confucianism is a philosophy emphasizing the virtue of parochial hierarchy, order, responsibility, and benevolence; it can be summed up as seeing the world through the structure of the family. In contrast, Mohism is a philosophy concerned with equal and equitable impartiality and altruism; righteousness, and consequently protection from judging spirits, in Mohism comes from such treatment toward others—that is to say, virtue in Mohism is to flatten hierarchal considerations when it comes to generosity, loyalty, and humankindness; whereas, virtue in Confucianism is predicated on proper hierarchal considerations.

Now, back to the story.

At the beginning, it is most natural to assume that Slowpoke’s success studying Confucianism is something positive. He has achieved some form of competency, which makes him better than he was before, right? As we read on, however, we discover that Slowpoke’s learning spurred opposition in his family. His brother took to an opposing philosophical view as a consequence of elder brother’s preaching. Again, and out of context, the younger brother’s studies might be seen in a positive light. Yet, the consequence we know to be discord and strife.

Often times we can only see the rosy hue of what it would be like to accomplish our goals. Almost never are we able to conceive of the negative consequences that follow almost from necessity of getting what we want. We often overlook that we create our own enemies through our very acts of virtue. We do not notice that, by becoming good, we inevitably spur envy, jealousy, and opposition.

And it gets worse.

In our Taoist parable, it is not just the two brothers, but the father who gets involved. He takes the side of his younger son, playing favorites to one’s views consistently over the other. By either school of thought, Confucian or Mohist, the father has failed to uphold his moral duties as a father. In the Confucian sense, he has subverted the proper hierarchy of respect. In the Mohist sense, he has failed to remain impartial to his sons. And this all as a consequence of the seeking of wisdom by both of the brothers!

What we assume is good, what we think we might want can easily result in the opposite—can easily make hypocrites of us and our loved ones. It can even result in tragedy.

Eventually, Slowpoke commits suicide. His reasons are not explicitly given, but they can be inferred to be double-sided. On their face, his reasons suggest despair at being abandoned and possibly disparaged by his father and brother. His world-view would see this as a complete unmooring from above and below. Deeper, though, his reasons seem to be those of revenge. He wanted his father’s attention, and as a Mohist-sympathizer himself, the father was most vulnerable to the notion of being tortured my spirits for his failure to remain impartial. In a sense, it is a bit of karmic irony. Slowpoke even points this out himself, comparing his “service” to an autumn-bloomed fruit. By “service” he means the consequence of his Confucianism, his younger brother’s Mohism, which the father failed to recognize as a consequence of the former.

We see from their example that what we assumed to be good resulted in destruction, and what the father presumed to be bad—his elder son’s Confucianism—resulted in his younger son’s Mohism, which he agrees with.

So what is the proper moral judgement here?

The Taoist answer is that there isn’t one. What we judge as good or bad is always interconnected to a gossamer web of a thousand-thousand consequences. That is not to say that there are not particular Ways and that those Ways are not proper, but that each of those Ways is like a tributary of the vast, Great Course.

Our position as human beings is not one to stand judge in our own case but to accept or deny the inevitabilities of existence. “The Path waits for the proper man, and then it is trodden” (The Doctrine of the Mean).

Knowing this, with the unpredictability and contradictory manifestations of virtuous behavior from our story in mind, perhaps we can begin to put into practice some amount of daily acceptance of what lies over the horizon.

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