The Writings of Chuang Tzu (Inner Chapters) · 44 of 57 · tr. James Legge
Book VI (part 5)
Dze-sze 1 , Dze-yü 1 , Dze-1î 1 , and Dze-lâi 1 , these four men, were talking together, when some one said, 'Who can suppose the head to be made from nothing, the spine from life, and the rump-bone from death?
Who knows how death and birth, living on and disappearing, compose the one body?--I would be friends with him 2 .' The four men looked at one another and laughed, but no one seized with his mind the drift of the questions.
All, however, were friends together.
Not long after Dze-yü fell ill, and Dze-sze went to inquire for him.
'How great,' said (the sufferer), 'is the Creator 3 !
That He should have made me the deformed object that I am!' He was a crooked hunchback; his five viscera were squeezed into the p.
248 upper part of his body; his chin bent over his navel; his shoulder was higher than his crown; on his crown was an ulcer pointing to the sky; his breath came and went in gasps 1 :--yet he was easy in his mind, and made no trouble of his condition.
He limped to a well, looked at himself in it, and said, 'Alas that the Creator should have made me the deformed object that I am!' Dze said, 'Do you dislike your condition?' He replied, 'No, why should I dislike it?
If He were to transform my left arm into a cock, I should be watching with it the time of the night; if He were to transform my right arm into a cross-bow, I should then be looking for a hsiâo to (bring down and) roast; if He were to transform my rump-bone into a wheel, and my spirit into a horse, I should then be mounting it, and would not change it for another steed.
Moreover, when we have got (what we are to do), there is the time (of life) in which to do it; when we lose that (at death), submission (is what is required).
When we rest in what the time requires, and manifest that submission, neither joy nor sorrow can find entrance (to the mind) 2 .
This would be what the ancients called loosing the cord by which (the life) is suspended.
But one hung up cannot loose himself;--he is held fast by his bonds 3 .
And that creatures cannot overcome p.
249 Heaven (the inevitable) is a long-acknowledged fact;-why should I hate my condition?' 10.
Before long Dze-lâi fell ill, and lay gasping at the point of death, while his wife and children stood around him wailing 1 .
Dze-lî went to ask for him, and said to them, 'Hush!
Get out of the way!
Do not disturb him as he is passing through his change.' Then, leaning against the door, he said (to the dying man), 'Great indeed is the Creator!
What will He now make you to become?
Where will He take you to?
Will He make you the liver of a rat, or the arm of an insect 2 ?
Dze-lâi replied, 'Wherever a parent tells a son to go, east, west, south, or north, he simply follows the command.
The Yin and Yang are more to a man than his parents are.
If they are hastening my death, and I do not quietly submit to them, I shall be obstinate and rebellious.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The metaphorical transformation of body parts into other forms resembles spiritual alchemy.
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 sufferer maintains an easy mind and allows neither joy nor sorrow to enter, demonstrating radical letting-go of attachment.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The Creator and Heaven are depicted as actively ordering the unfolding of the individual's physical condition and fate.
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 effortless action and submission to the flow of time and Heaven without resistance or striving.