The Writings of Chuang Tzu (Inner Chapters) · 4 of 57 · tr. James Legge
Book I (part 4)
Yâo ruled the people of the kingdom, and maintained a perfect government within the four seas.
Having gone to see the four (Perfect) Ones 3 on the distant hill of Kû-shih, when (he returned to his capital) on the south of the Fän water 4 , his throne appeared no more to his deep-sunk oblivious eyes 5 .
7.
Hui-dze 6 told Kwang-dze, saying, 'The king of Wei 7 sent me some seeds of a large calabash, which I sowed.
The fruit, when fully grown, could contain five piculs (of anything).
I used it to contain water, p.
173 but it was so heavy that I could not lift it by myself.
I cut it in two to make the parts into drinking vessels; but the dried shells were too wide and unstable and would not hold (the liquor); nothing but large useless things!
Because of their uselessness I knocked them to pieces.' Kwang-dze replied, 'You were indeed stupid, my master, in the use of what was large.
There was a man of Sung who was skilful at making a salve which kept the hands from getting chapped; and (his family) for generations had made the bleaching of cocoon-silk their business.
A stranger heard of it, and proposed to buy the art of the preparation for a hundred ounces of silver.
The kindred all came together, and considered the proposal.
"We have," said they, "been bleaching cocoon-silk for generations, and have only gained a little money.
Now in one morning we can sell to this man our art for a hundred ounces;--let him have it." The stranger accordingly got it and went away with it to give counsel to the king of Wû 1 , who was then engaged in hostilities with Yüeh.
The king gave him the command of his fleet, and in the winter he had an engagement with that of Yüeh, on which he inflicted a great defeat 2 , and was invested with a portion of territory taken from Yüeh.
The keeping the hands from getting chapped was the same in both cases; but in the one case it led to the investiture (of the possessor of the salve), and p.
174 in the other it had only enabled its owners to continue their bleaching.
The difference of result was owing to the different use made of the art.
Now you, Sir, had calabashes large enough to hold five piculs;--why did you not think of making large bottle-gourds of them, by means of which you could have floated over rivers and lakes, instead of giving yourself the sorrow of finding that they were useless for holding anything.
Your mind, my master, would seem to have been closed against all intelligence!' Hui-dze said to Kwang-dze, 'I have a large tree, which men call the Ailantus 1 .
Its trunk swells out to a large size, but is not fit for a carpenter to apply his line to it; its smaller branches are knotted and crooked, so that the disk and square cannot be used on them.
Though planted on the wayside, a builder would not turn his head to look at it.
Now your words, Sir, are great, but of no use;--all unite in putting them away from them.' Kwang-dze replied, 'Have you never seen a wildcat or a weasel?
There it lies, crouching and low, till the wanderer approaches; east and west it leaps about, avoiding neither what is high nor what is low, till it is caught in a trap, or dies in a net.
Again there is the Yak 2 , so large that it is like a cloud hanging in the sky.
It is large indeed, but it cannot catch mice.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The sage advises letting go of the grasping desire for conventional utility to find true freedom and function in things, reflecting a radical release of will.
The ethical imperative to live in accordance with one's innate nature and avoid artificial social constraints that harm it.
The entire passage argues that each thing has its own inherent nature and proper function — the Yak cannot catch mice, the large tree is unfit for a carpenter's line, the calabash is too large for drinking vessels — and that forcing things into artificial social constraints (conventional uses) is a form of stupidity.
The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.
The text dissolves the binary distinction between useful and useless by showing how 'uselessness' can preserve life or enable new functions beyond human categorization.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
[auto] Zhuangzi employs paradoxical stories (the useless tree, the large gourd) to challenge Hui Shi's rigid understanding of utility and value, destabilizing ordinary reasoning.
The doctrine that reality has two registers — an Absolute truth as the divine or ultimate mind knows it, and a Relative truth as finite human reason perceives and must act on — with both held as legitimate on their own plane rather than the second being simply an error to correct. Distinct from apophatic_theology (a claim about how the divine may be described, by negation) and unity_of_being (a claim that being is ultimately one) in being a claim about two coexisting registers of truth-claim itself.
The hand-salve parable demonstrates that the same property (preventing chapped hands) yields radically different results depending on the register of use — one register (bleaching silk) and another (military command) — showing that value is not intrinsic but depends on the perspective or context applied.
Effortless action aligned with the spontaneous flow of the Dao; non-coercive, non-striving conduct that yields results without forcing — the sage acts without acting.
[auto] The passage centrally illustrates acting in accordance with the natural function of objects (floating on the gourd) rather than forcing them into conventional roles, embodying effortless action aligned with the Dao.