The Sign of Virtue Fulfilled莊子 內篇 德充符

In Lu there was a man whose foot had been cut off, named Wang Tai. Those who followed him and studied with him were as many as those who followed Zhongni.

Chang Ji asked Zhongni, "Wang Tai is a man whose foot was cut off, yet those who study with him divide Lu in half with you, Master. He does not stand up and teach, he does not sit down and discuss, and still men go to him empty and come back full. Is there truly a teaching without words, a shaping of the mind that has no form? What manner of man is this?"

Zhongni said, "That master is a sage. It is only that I lag behind him and have not yet gone to him. I mean to take him for my teacher, and how much more should those who are less than I. Why only the state of Lu? I mean to lead the world along and follow him with it."

Chang Ji said, "He is a man whose foot was cut off, and yet you say he surpasses you, Master. Then he must be far removed from the common run. If he is such a man, what is this use of the mind that is his alone?"

Zhongni said, "Death and life are a great matter, and still he does not change with them. Though heaven and earth overturned and fell away, he would not be lost with them. He looks into what has no falsehood, and he does not shift along with things. He takes the changing of things as their fate, and he keeps to their root."

Chang Ji said, "What does that mean?"

Zhongni said, "Seen from the side of their difference, the liver and the gall are Chu and Yue. Seen from the side of their sameness, the ten thousand things are all one. A man who is such does not know what his ears and eyes hold fitting, and he lets his mind wander in the harmony of virtue. He looks at the one thing that things are, and he does not look at what they have lost. He looks upon the loss of his own foot as upon a clod of earth thrown away."

Chang Ji said, "He works for himself. With his knowing he gains his mind, and with his mind he gains the constant mind. Why then do things gather to him?"

Zhongni said, "No man mirrors himself in running water. He mirrors himself in still water. Only what is still can still the many that come to rest.

Among the things that receive their fate from the earth, only the pine and the cypress are so alone, and they are green in winter and in summer. Among the things that receive their fate from heaven, only Shun was so alone, and he was upright. He was fortunate enough to make his own life upright, and so to make the lives of the many upright.

Now take the sign of one who keeps his beginning and the substance of one who does not fear. A single brave warrior charges boldly into nine armies. A man who seeks a name and can hold himself to it does even this much. How much more one who takes charge of heaven and earth, who is the storehouse of the ten thousand things, who lodges in his six limbs for a while only, who makes forms of his ears and eyes, who makes one of all that his knowing knows, and whose mind has never died. He will choose his day and climb far off, and men follow him for this. How would he be willing to make things his business?"

Shentu Jia was a man whose foot had been cut off. He studied under Bohun Wuren together with Zichan of Zheng.

Zichan said to Shentu Jia, "If I go out first, you stay. If you go out first, I will stay."

The next day they were again in the same hall, sitting on the same mat. Zichan said to Shentu Jia, "We said that if I went out first you would stay, and that if you went out first I would stay. Now I am about to go out. Will you stay, or will you not? And you see the chief minister and do not step aside. Do you hold yourself the equal of the chief minister?"

Shentu Jia said, "Within our master's gate, is there truly such a thing as a chief minister? You are a man who delights in being chief minister and pushes others behind him.

I have heard it said, 'If the mirror is bright, dust does not settle on it. If dust settles, it is not bright. Stay long with a worthy man and you will be without fault.' What you now take as great is our master, and still you speak like this. Is that not a fault?"

Zichan said, "You are already such as you are, and still you would contend with Yao in goodness. Weigh your own virtue. Is it not enough to turn you back upon yourself?"

Shentu Jia said, "Many are those who set out their own faults and say they should not have lost what they lost. Few are those who set out no faults and say they should not have kept what remained. To know what cannot be helped and to rest in it as in one's fate — only a man of virtue can do this.

Wander inside the range of Yi's bow, and the very center is the place that is hit. And yet not to be hit is one's fate. Many are the men who laughed with their whole feet at my foot that is not whole. I flared up in anger, but when I went to our master's place I came back with it all swept away. I cannot tell whether our master washed me clean with goodness.

I have studied with the Master for nineteen years, and he has never once known that I am a man whose foot was cut off. Now you and I meet within the body, and you look for me outside the body. Is that not a fault?"

Zichan grew uneasy. He changed his look and his bearing, and said, "Say no more."

In Lu there was a man without toes named Shushan Wuzhi. He walked on his heels and came to see Zhongni.

Zhongni said, "You were not careful, and you have already met with this trouble. Though you come now, how can it help?"

Wuzhi said, "I only did not know what to work at, and I used my body lightly, and so I lost my foot. I have come now because there still remains something higher than a foot, and I wish to keep it whole. There is nothing heaven does not cover, and nothing earth does not carry. I took you, Master, for heaven and earth. How could I have known you would be like this?"

Confucius said, "I was narrow. Why do you not come in, sir? Let me tell you what I have heard."

Wuzhi went out. Confucius said, "Work hard at it, my disciples. This Wuzhi is a man whose foot was cut off, and still he works at learning to make up for the badness of his earlier conduct. How much more should a man whose virtue is whole."

Wuzhi said to Lao Dan, "Has Kong Qiu not yet reached the utmost man? Why does he come so often to study with you? He wants a name for the odd and the marvelous to be heard of, and he does not know that the utmost man takes such a name for his own fetters and cuffs."

Lao Dan said, "Why not simply make him take death and life as one thread, and the permitted and the not permitted as one string, and so loosen his fetters and cuffs?"

Wuzhi said, "Heaven is punishing him. How can they be loosened?"

Duke Ai of Lu asked Zhongni, "In Wei there is an ugly man called Ai Taituo. Men who stay with him think of him and cannot leave him. Women who see him beg their parents, saying, 'Rather than be another man's wife, I would be this man's concubine,' and there are more than ten of them, and it has not stopped.

No one has ever heard him lead the song. He only joins in with others. He has no ruler's place from which to save men from death, and he has laid up no stipend with which to fill men's bellies. Besides this, he startles the world with his ugliness. He joins in and does not lead, and his knowing does not go beyond his own four borders, and still male and female gather before him. There must be something in him that is not like other men.

So I called him and looked at him, and he did indeed startle the world with his ugliness. He had not stayed with me a full month before my mind went out to the kind of man he was, and the year was not out before I trusted him. The state had no chief minister, and I meant to hand the state over to him. He looked blank, and then he answered, and vaguely he declined. I was ashamed, and in the end I gave him the state. Not long after, he left me and went away. I felt bereft, as though I had lost something, as though there were no one left to take joy in this state with me. What manner of man is this?"

Zhongni said, "Once I was sent on a mission to Chu, and on the way I saw piglets sucking at their dead mother. After a little while they started, and they all left her and ran away. It was because they did not see themselves in her, and she was no longer like them. What they loved in their mother was not her body. They loved what moved her body.

A man who dies in battle is buried without the feather fans. A man whose foot has been cut off has no reason to care for his shoes. In both the root is gone. The women who serve the Son of Heaven do not pare their nails or pierce their ears. A man who has taken a wife stays outside and is not sent on service again. If so much is done for the body that is whole, how much more for a man whose virtue is whole.

Now Ai Taituo is trusted though he does not speak, and is held dear though he has no merit, and he makes men hand him their state with nothing to fear but that he will not take it. He must be a man whole in his powers, whose virtue does not show."

Duke Ai said, "What does it mean to be whole in one's powers?"

Zhongni said, "Death and life, keeping and losing, hardship and success, poverty and wealth, worth and unworth, blame and praise, hunger and thirst, cold and heat — these are the changing of affairs and the going of one's fate. Day and night they take their turns before us, and knowing cannot measure where they begin. So they are not enough to trouble the harmony, and they may not be let into the storehouse of the spirit. One makes them run in harmony and ease without losing gladness, and one lets no gap fall between day and night, so that one is spring together with all things. This is to meet what comes and let the season be born in the mind. This is what is called being whole in one's powers."

"What does it mean that virtue does not show?"

"Level is the utmost that still water comes to. It can serve as a standard because it is guarded within and not shaken without. Virtue is the cultivating that brings harmony to completion. When virtue does not show, things cannot leave him."

On a later day Duke Ai told Minzi, "At first I thought that facing south and ruling the world, holding the cords of the people and grieving over their deaths, I had reached the utmost. Now that I have heard the words of a utmost man, I fear that I have nothing of the substance, and that I use my body lightly and will lose my state. Kong Qiu and I are not ruler and subject. We are friends in virtue, and that is all."

A man with bent feet, a crooked body and no lips spoke to Duke Ling of Wei, and Duke Ling was pleased with him. After that, when he looked at men whose bodies were whole, their necks seemed thin and scrawny. A man with a lump like a jar on his neck spoke to Duke Huan of Qi, and Duke Huan was pleased with him. After that, when he looked at men whose bodies were whole, their necks seemed thin and scrawny.

So when virtue has something in which it excels, the body has something that is forgotten. Men do not forget what should be forgotten, and they forget what should not be forgotten. This is called true forgetting.

So the sage has a place where he wanders. He takes knowing for a curse, binding for glue, virtue for making connections, and craft for trade. The sage lays no plans, so what use has he for knowing? He does no cutting, so what use has he for glue? He loses nothing, so what use has he for virtue? He sells nothing, so what use has he for trade?

These four are the nourishing of heaven. The nourishing of heaven is the feeding of heaven. Having received his food from heaven already, what use has he for men?

He has the form of a man and not the feelings of a man. Because he has the form of a man, he flocks with men. Because he has not the feelings of a man, right and wrong do not fasten on him. How small and faint is that by which he belongs to men. How towering and great is he, alone completing his heaven.

Huizi said to Zhuangzi, "Is a man of himself without feelings?"

Zhuangzi said, "He is."

Huizi said, "If he is a man and has no feelings, how can he be called a man?"

Zhuangzi said, "The Way gave him his looks and heaven gave him his body. How can he not be called a man?"

Huizi said, "Since he is called a man, how can he be without feelings?"

Zhuangzi said, "That is not what I call feelings. What I call being without feelings is that a man does not wound himself within by liking and disliking, and that he always goes by what is so of itself and does not add to his life."

Huizi said, "If he does not add to his life, how does he keep his body?"

Zhuangzi said, "The Way gave him his looks and heaven gave him his body. Do not wound yourself within by liking and disliking. Now you drive your spirit outside you and wear out your vital force. You lean on a tree and hum, you prop yourself on a withered paulownia and doze. Heaven picked out a body for you, and you cry out about hard and white."