Zhuangzi

The Useless Tree

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, I have a large tree which no carpenter can cut into lumber. Its branches and trunk are crooked and tough, unfit for the axe. It stands beside the road, and no carpenter even looks at it. Now your doctrines are grandiose yet useless, and so everyone alike rejects them.

Chuang Tzu replied, Have you never seen a wildcat crouching, watching for something to come along? It leaps this way and that, high and low, until at last it gets caught in a trap. And then there is the yak: it is big as a cloud in the sky. That is big, all right, but it cannot catch rats.

Now if you have a big tree and are at a loss what to do with it, why not plant it in the domain of non-existence, whither you might betake yourself to inaction by its side, to blissful repose beneath its shade? There it would be safe from the axe and from all other injury; for being of no use to others, itself would be free from harm.

Chapter 2: The Butterfly Dream

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called Metempsychosis.

Chapter 3: Cook Ding Cuts an Ox

Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee, the ox fell apart with a sound.

Lord Wenhui exclaimed, How wonderfully you have mastered your art!

Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond mere art. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now I go at it by spirit and do not look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop, and spirit moves where it wants.

I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

A good cook changes his knife once a year, because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month, because he hacks. I have had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I have cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone.

There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, there is plenty of room for the blade to move about.