The Secret of Nurturing Life莊子 內篇 養生主

My life has a limit, but knowing has no limit. To follow what has no limit with what has a limit is perilous. And to go on after that and make knowing your business is perilous indeed.

Do good, but do not come near fame. Do ill, but do not come near punishment. Follow the spine and keep to the middle as your constant course. Then you can guard your body, and keep your life whole, and care for your parents, and live out the years given you.

Pao Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. Wherever his hand touched, wherever his shoulder leaned, wherever his foot trod, wherever his knee pressed, there came a rasping sound, and as he plied the knife it sang out. None of it was out of tune. It went with the dance of the Sanglin and fell in with the measures of the Jingshou.

Lord Wenhui said, "Ah, splendid. How has your skill reached such a height?"

Pao Ding laid down the knife and answered, "What I love is the Way, and it goes beyond skill. When I first began to cut up oxen, I saw nothing that was not an ox. After three years I never saw a whole ox. Now I meet it with my spirit and do not look with my eyes. My senses stop, and my spirit goes where it will.

I follow the grain of heaven. I strike into the great openings and guide the knife through the great hollows, and I go by what is there of itself. I have never touched the place where sinew and flesh are knotted together, still less a great bone.

A good butcher changes his knife once a year, for he cuts. An ordinary butcher changes his knife once a month, for he hacks. My knife is now nineteen years old and has cut up several thousand oxen, and its edge is as if it had just come from the whetstone. Those joints have spaces, and the edge of the knife has no thickness. Put what has no thickness into what has space, and there is room and to spare for plying the knife. That is why after nineteen years the edge is as if it had just come from the whetstone.

Even so, whenever I come to a knotted place I see the difficulty of it, and I take warning and go carefully. My looking stops, my movement slows, and I ply the knife very finely. Then all at once it falls apart, like a clod of earth dropping to the ground. I stand with the knife in my hand and look all around me. I linger until my mind is satisfied, and then I wipe the knife well and put it away."

Lord Wenhui said, "Splendid. I have heard the words of Pao Ding, and I have learned how to nourish life."

Gongwen Xuan saw the Master of the Right and was startled. He said, "What man is this? How is it that he has but one foot? Is it heaven that did this, or man?"

The reply was, "It is heaven, not man. When heaven brought him forth it made him single. The form of a man is given its pair, and by this I know it is heaven and not man."

The pheasant of the marsh pecks once in ten steps and drinks once in a hundred, but it does not ask to be kept inside a cage. Though its spirit would thrive there, that is not good.

Lao Dan died, and Qin Shi came to mourn him. He wailed three times and went out.

A disciple said, "Were you not the master's friend?"

"I was."

"Then is it right to mourn him in this way?"

"It is. At first I took him for that man, but now I see he is not. A moment ago I went in to mourn, and the old were wailing for him as they would wail for a son, and the young were wailing for him as they would wail for a mother. Among those who gathered there, some must have spoken who did not ask to speak, and wailed who did not ask to wail. This is to flee from heaven and turn against what is true and forget what was given. The ancients called it the punishment for fleeing from heaven.

He came because it was the master's time. He went because the master followed the course of things. Be at peace with your time and dwell in the course of things, and sorrow and joy cannot enter. The ancients called this the loosing from heaven's hanging."

The finger comes to an end where the firewood is used up, but the fire passes on, and no one knows its ending.