…one who takes his seat on the Tao and its Attributes, and there finds his ease and enjoyment, is not exposed to such a contingency. He is above the reach both of praise and of detraction; now he (mounts aloft) like a dragon, now he (keeps beneath) like a snake; he is transformed with…
The artisan Chui made things round (and square) more exactly than if he had used the circle and square. The operation of his fingers on (the forms of) things was like the transformations of them (in nature), and required no application of his mind; and so his Intelligence was entire and encountered no resistance….
The officer of Prayer in his dark and square-cut robes goes to the pig-pen, and thus counsels the pigs, ‘Why should you shrink from dying? I will for three months feed you on grain. Then for ten days I will fast, and keep vigil for three days, after which I will put down the…
‘Take the case of a drunken man falling from his carriage; – though he may suffer injury, he will not die. His bones and joints are the same as those of other men, but the injury which he receives is different: his spirit is entire. He knew nothing about his getting into the carriage,…
When Zhuangzi went to Ku, he saw an empty skull, bleached indeed, but still retaining its shape. Tapping it with his horse-switch, he asked it, saying, ‘Did you, Sir, in your greed of life, fail in the lessons of reason, and come to this? Or did you do so, in the service of a…
The earl of the Ho said, ‘Very well. But what am I to do? and what am I not to do? How am I to be guided after all in regard to what I accept or reject, and what I pursue or put away from me?’ Zo of the Northern Sea replied, ‘From the…
‘A frog in a well cannot be talked with about the sea; – he is confined to the limits of his hole. An insect of the summer cannot be talked with about ice; – it knows nothing beyond its own season. A scholar of limited views cannot be talked with about…
‘There is no end or beginning to the Tao. Things indeed die and are born, not reaching a perfect state which can be relied on. Now there is emptiness, and now fulness; – they do not continue in one form. The years cannot be reproduced; time cannot be arrested. Decay and growth, fulness and…
Zo of the Northern Sea replied, ‘From the standpoint of the Tao, what is noble? and what is mean? These expressions are but the different extremes of the average level. Do not keep pertinaciously to your own ideas, which put you in such opposition to the Tao. What are few? and what are many?…
The earl of the Ho said, ‘Well then, may I consider heaven and earth as (the ideal of) what is great, and the point of a hair as that of what is small?’ Zo of the Northern Sea replied, ‘No.’ The (different) capacities of things are illimitable; time never stops, (but is always moving…
