Last night, Chuang Chou dreamed he was a butterfly, spirits soaring he was a butterfly (is it that in showing what he was he suited his own fancy?), and did not know about Chou. When all of a sudden he awoke, he was Chou with all his wits about him. He does not know whether he is Chou who dreams he is a butterfly or a butterfly who dreams he is Chou. Between Chou and the butterfly there was necessarily a dividing; just this is what is meant by the transformation of things. (Graham p. 61)
I. A Twig
Zhuangzi’s dreaming of himself as a butterfly is not particularly meaningful in and of itself. The point is to highlight the seamlessness between his dream and his waking; the “dividing” between them is so narrow that he is left confused about which side is the dream and which is the waking. This seamlessness is what he means to point out when he says “just this is what is meant by the transformation of things. That is, the “dividing” between the untransformed and the transformed is imperceptible to he who undergoes transformation, and the one who follows Zhuangzi excels at being comfortably and naturally active in whichever role, without differentiating the two. With ease Zhuangzi passes from waking to dreaming, and dreaming to waking again, taking no notice of the ‘necessary’ divide between them.
The one who follows Zhuangzi fills, with “spirits soaring”, the role into which he finds himself transformed, and marks no difference between them. This is opposite the erudite sage, whose role it is precisely to mark out differences, and emphasize the division between a butterfly and a man.
II. Two Branches
First Branch: Yan Hui questions Kongzi about Mengsun Cai (Graham p. 90-91)
The Master’s conversation with his favorite disciple holds the key to understanding Zhuangzi’s dream. Yan Hui observes that Mengsun’s mourning did not reflect any real affliction of “his inward heart”, which seems to good Confucian Yan a failing. Yet, Mengsun “is renowned as the best of mourners throughout the state of Lu.” Kongzi explains that Mengsun “has the whole secret, he has taken the step beyond knowledge.” The core of this secret is Mengsun’s lack of knowledge (he is beyond it) of the “dividing” between transformations:
Besides, at the stage of being transformed how would he know about the untransformed? At the stage of being untransformed, how would he know about the transformed? Is it just that you and I are the ones who have not yet begun to wake from our dream?
In the context of Mengsun’s mourning, this simply means that “When another man wails he wails too”. When the role of mourning comes, Mengsun mourns without premeditation, as quick as a bright mirror reflects. As for transformations, Mengsun would not know about the untransformed once he’s been transformed, and vice versa, so he fills his role just as well, not only without looking back to his previous state, but without knowledge that a previous state existed, and without knowledge of a future state to come.
This secret of the step beyond knowledge is again expressed at the end of this passage in terms of dreaming. The Master says to Yan Hui:
You dream that you are a bird and fly away in the sky, dream that you are a fish and plunge into the deep. There’s no telling whether the man who speaks now is the waker or the dreamer. Rather than go towards what suits you, laugh: rather than acknowledge it with your laughter, shove it from you. Shove it from you and leave the transformations behind; then you will enter the oneness of the featureless sky.
Zhuangzi seems to prefer to refer to what we are calling ‘the secret of the step beyond knowledge’ by examples of not knowing waking from dreaming. Here, “Rather than go towards what suits you, laugh” is the same as “spirits soaring he was a butterfly”: without acting on discursive preferences, be at home in the state the Maker of things has formed of you, and laugh; without any human-ish qualms about being a butterfly in a dream, fly with spirits soaring. “Shove it from you” means taking “the step beyond knowledge”; the “it” that one is to shove away is thinking of the difference between transformed and untransformed and the “dividing” between them. In a word, to “shove it from you” is to abandon discursive A-not-A thinking, which allows one to “enter the oneness of the featureless sky.”
Second Branch: Mengzi expounds the difference between humans and animals (Mengzi 4B19, Ivanhoe & Van Norden p. 136)
“Mengzi said, ‘That by which humans differ from birds and beasts is slight. The people abandon it. The gentleman preserves it.'”
Mengzi’s gentleman emphasizes the difference between man and animal, uses perspective to widen the “dividing” between transformed and untransformed, in order to discriminate right from wrong, and with this fire of discretion heat to red-hot the brand of goodwill and duty. He does this because, like Kongzi, he is “condemned by the sentence of Heaven.” (Graham p. 90) This is only to say that it is the role of the gentleman and the sage-king to discriminate between waking and dreaming, and refrain from taking the step beyond knowledge.
Yet, in acting as they do, the gentleman and the sage-king are filling the roles of their current states. Mengzi is dreaming he is a sage, spirits soaring he is a sage; he preserves the difference between human and animal, teaches goodwill and duty, leads people astray from stepping beyond knowledge and forgetting waking and dreaming, and in so doing never departs from the Way. Mengzi prefers a sky with clouds, and there is a time for such weather.
III. Leaves
If there is necessarily a dividing between waking and dreaming, how can it be imperceptible? To perceive has to do with acquiring knowledge of what is perceived. If one has taken the step beyond knowledge, the dividing between waking and dreaming is precisely what one has stepped beyond, thus it is imperceptible. If one has not taken this step, then one will see ‘waking’ and ‘dreaming,’ and make a separation. Hence, the text says “there was necessarily a dividing”, because in positing a Zhou and a butterfly it does not speak from beyond knowledge, and must treat the two as two.
If the follower of Zhuangzi spontaneously fills whatever role he is transformed into without making distinctions, whereas it is the role of the erudite sage to make such differentiations, are they really opposite each other if the erudite is just filling his role? In what each seems to do, they are opposed, but in what each actually does, how could they be opposed? All under Heaven fulfills the role of its state, is transformed, and unthinkingly takes on the state of the transformed. Seeing opposition arises from taking a particular view. From this view, how could any things under Heaven be opposed?
How is it that Mengsun Cai, who feels no real affliction when he mourns, is considered the best of mourners in Lu, in preference to the many excellent mourners there must be in Kongzi’s home state? Mengsun Cai is like a bronze mirror, while those other mourners would be like bronze vessels.
(This need not be taken in the same sense that Kongzi would say someone is like a vessel.) Bronze vessels can be filled with offerings of meat and grain, and the food will remain in them until they are emptied, for vessels are made with space inside them to hold things. They can be filled with wine, and it will remain inside them until it is emptied or completely evaporates, which might even take three years. A bronze mirror, on the other hand, has no space inside to hold anything, so, while it will readily reflect offerings of food, once they are gone, they will not remain even as a residue on the metal. If you were to submerge a bronze mirror into the same wine that the vessel may hold, it would reflect it perfectly, but it would be foolish to say the wine was inside the mirror.
How does one take the step beyond knowledge and enter the oneness of the featureless sky? As one also condemned by Heaven, I cannot say. In the place where I live, the sky is often clouded over, sometimes filling the whole dome of the horizon with undifferentiated white. Other times there are darker clouds bearing rain upon this vast cover. Occasionally, the clouds are broken and the blue shows through. Heaven undergoes these transformations unceasingly, sometimes changing dramatically several times even in a single day, yet who would say it is not Heaven at all these times? Similarly, I begin to wonder if anything can help but step beyond knowledge in the course of normal walking.
Reference:
- The translation of Zhuangzi (??) referred to herein is that of A.C. Graham.
